Do You Have An Overweight Child?

Question: What would you do if you had a fat child? As my kids enter school, it becomes more difficult to control their diet. I have three kids, all under ten, two of whom are fat. One of my children was born 6.5 pounds, was exclusively breastfed, and nonetheless was very fat by four months. I thought I had a nicely chubby baby, but now that the child is older, I realize the tendency to gain fat was in the child from birth. While both my husband and I have obese relatives, neither of us is obese and my pregnancy weight gain was normal. I do and did have a huge sweet tooth. No gestational diabetes.

Answer: The same principles apply to children, though we have less data. For this reason, I would not necessarily advocate for a child to be fully ketoic (although nutritional ketosis is a known and proven treatment for intractable epileptic seizures in children and has been shown to be safe). For overweight children, I would look to the work of Dr. Lustig - strict restriction on ALL sugar, plus I would greatly reduce highly refined carbs and grains. You point out an obvious problem, of course, with respect to "food infrastructure" - i.e., what they are bombarded with outside of the house. Perhaps being very strict in the house (e.g., no cereal, no sugar, no soda, no juice) might be a start. - Dr. Peter Attia, M.D.