“What can I do to help my son lose weight?”

Hi, welcome to Tips on Teens. My name is Kent Toussaint, licensed marriage and family therapist
here at Teen Therapy Center in Woodland Hills, California. Coming to you every Wednesday at
noon, joining you for lunch live on Facebook to answer your parenting questions. We love your
questions, keep them coming. Again, if you want to send us your questions, you can always email
us at tipsonteens at teentherapycenter .com or you can message us here on Facebook Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram. It's all good. Anyways, here is this week's question for you guys. All
right, here it goes. I was hoping to get some advice on my 14 -year -old son. He's extremely overweight
and I've done all I can to try to help him lose weight. He's over 300 pounds and is constantly eating
unhealthy food, fast food, sweets, and so on. My husband and I try to limit how much he is allowed
to eat, but we find that at nights he'll sneak into the fridge and take food he's not supposed
to be eating. We confront him on this every

time, but it never sticks. I'm so worried because I know this is taking years off his life. We've
taken him to a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, and nothing is working. What do I do to help
him lose weight? So there's a lot going on. Here are the things that you're doing right. You're
getting professional help. You're consulting with a nutritionist. You're talking with this
therapist. You're working with a doctor. Hopefully all three these professionals are working
together as a treatment team to help your son because he needs support needs help he's in over
his head um keep working with him um this is not a quick easy fix there's a lot of questions i have
uh you know why is he eating this way obviously he's not for nutrition and he you may not know this
answer he may not know this answer but working with this therapist i think it's important to
find what is the emotional need that's not being met is there Is there a trauma in his past that
has not been addressed? Is there anxiety or depression

or does he have some development, excuse me, developmental delays like autism or something
like that that is preventing him from veering off this path and choosing a healthier path. So
I think all those things need to be addressed. Secondly, where is he getting this unhealthy
food? He's 14. Is he getting it from the house? Is he getting it from school? fool, it probably
means that the whole family needs to make a shift. If you can't stop him from sneaking out at midnight
and going to the fridge and getting food. You can't put a locker in the fridge. I don't think it's
a healthy thing to do. But if the fridge is stocked with healthy foods, fruits, vegetables,
lean meats, whatever it is you find is healthy and consult with the nutritionist what that would
be, if the only thing to eat is healthy food, he's either not going to eat or he's going to eat the
healthy food. And if he's going to eat it's much better these eating healthy food than eating,
you know ice cream So, you know this carrots

usually better than ice cream and we all know this as because of adults in America We've all been
on diets. We've all failed our diets We've all gone and had the pizza when we shouldn't have eaten
the pizza or the ice cream or the cookies or whatever and we're fully Developed adult brains
in here. Your 14 year old does not have a fully developed adult brain His brain is more impulsive
his brain does not see cause and effect the way an adult would um you know you need to guide him
you need to set boundaries for him that he can't set for himself until he's older and more mature
um another thing is i think not only seeing a therapist but getting him into a group you know overeaters
anonymous you know for teens group i think would be really helpful so he's feeling not alone
i'm wondering if this kid at home is the only one going through this and his parents and the siblings
don't have this problem so he feels isolated alone shamed and we don't want to shame him because
that's just gonna feed
the problem more and no pun intended but getting him into a group I think is really important
and also being active you know how much screen time does this kid have is he on his iPad or his computer
all day you know limiting that to one or two hours a day at most and making sure that there's time
for him to go out and be active whether it's hiking, whether that's a sport, whether it's, you
know, it doesn't matter what it is, it doesn't matter that he's doing it. Obviously, whatever
that activity is, make sure the doctor feels that's appropriate for his obesity. So that's
important. There's a lot of things you can do. Keep supporting him, keep loving him. When he
falters, you know, when he, you know, steals a candy bar or something like that and he eats it,
don't shame him. Keep showing showing him love, unconditional love, but still set boundaries.
You can set boundaries and still be compassionate, but shame and judgment is just going to lead
to the self -loathing, which is going to mean,

I don't care, why don't I just eat the ice cream because it doesn't matter. My other concern is
if things keep getting worse and his emotional state is getting worse, he's getting more depressed,
he's getting suicidal, whatever it is, it could be that you know this young man could benefit
from in a residential treatment program to help him get through some of this to get you know get
a jump start on this and it's tough because this weight loss at 300 pounds it takes a long time
to get to a healthy weight he could lose 30 pounds that could take six months that's a long time
and 30 pounds is not gonna feel like that much to him so it's really important that he's getting
a lot of emotional support through group through family through therapist his doctor nutritionist
it's a big team team approach. So that's it. That's our question for today. Hope it's helped.
Obviously we can go a lot deeper, there's a lot to talk about, but I don't want to take up your whole
lunch. So if you have more questions

about this, you can always contact us here. If you have more questions you'd like to ask, you'd
like me to answer them next week or the week after, email us again at tipsonteens at teentherapycenter
.com or message us right here on Facebook. You can see an archive of these on our Facebook page
or on our website teentherapycenter .com and thanks again and I'll see you guys next Wednesday
at 12 o 'clock right here on Facebook bye bye