How 10-Year-Olds Lose Weight

If you're a 10-year-old who thinks you need to lose weight, make sure you talk to your parents and your doctor about your weight concerns. Just because you're shaped differently than your friends doesn't necessarily mean you need to lose weight. If your parents and doctor agree that you should, following well-established guidelines for healthy eating and physical activity should help you lose weight over time.

Weight Loss and Youth

Before you try to lose weight, understand that your 10-year-old body is still growing. As you grow, your body adds bone mass, muscle mass and additional tissue to support your increased height. These things naturally increase your weight, meaning that your "goal weight" will be a little bit of a moving target. You may want to change your focus from weight loss to a different body measurement such as BMI, body fat percentage or waist circumference measurements. These measurements will help you track your body's changes, without focusing too much on a specific number.

Exercise Daily

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Exercise will help you burn calories while also developing strong muscles and bones. All of these factors work together to improve total body composition. Make sure you set aside at least 30 to 60 minutes a day for planned exercise. You may have PE at your school, and you can count that toward your exercise plan, but make sure you only count the actual time that you're running around and moving. If you don't have PE, or you don't exercise enough during PE, try riding your bike to and from school or planning an after-dinner game of soccer with your siblings. The more active you are, the more success you'll have at weight loss and maintenance over time.

Eat Colorfully

What you put into your body can make a big difference in your weight. You may think you don't have a lot of control over your food choices -- your parents buy the groceries and you eat whatever is served at school. One way to make sure that you're eating well is to eat colorful foods. Helpguide.org suggests that you should eat at least one red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple food each day. This is an easy thing for you to track, and it can help you communicate to your parents the types of foods you'd like to start eating.

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You probably spend a fair amount of time watching TV, playing video games, doing homework on your computer and texting your friends. All that screen time cuts into activity time. The Mayo Clinic suggests limiting that screen time to one or two hours each day to encourage daily physical activity. You'd be amazed at all the fun, active things you can do when you're not spending time sitting and staring at a screen. Even if these activities aren't scheduled "exercise time," the extra movement can contribute to your total calorie burn and total weight loss.