Healthy weight gain for children
Is it possible to gain weight in children healthily? Here are some ways and recipes that you will surely love.
In this article, we will talk about the steps to healthily gaining children's weight with delicious and popular dishes:
Steps for a healthy weight gain for children
When trying to gain weight for children, the goal is to introduce more calories by adding healthy fats to the child's diet. Here are some simple steps that will add more calories to the child's diet:
- Add a tablespoon of peanut butter to raw vegetables, apple slices, or bananas that your child eats to get an extra 100 calories.
- Add healthy oils such as olive oil or other heart-healthy oils to the food as they help in the healthy weight gain of children.
- Add peanut butter, avocado, coconut milk, and other calorie-dense foods by mixing them into smoothies.
- Use curd in pancakes or sour cream on baked potatoes.
- Try oral supplements that can help, but only after consulting a dietitian.
- Use powdered milk instead of water in recipes such as pudding or porridge oats.
- Add a serving of cheese to some foods, such as cereal on top of bread, for an extra 60 calories.
- Mash the potatoes and mix them with milk or cheese.
Important tips for gaining weight for children
Many parents suffer from not eating enough for their children, so the result is a child with low weight, so here are some tips that help in increasing the weight of children:
- Make mealtimes family time, and have the child sit around the table and enjoy the food they are eating.
- Don't associate food with reward or love, because the child will turn to food for comfort rather than eat it because he is hungry.
- Introduce a variety of foods and many flavors at an early age, especially if the child is gradually picky and in small amounts.
- Offer plenty of praise when the child eats a new food and ignore negative reactions.
- Be patient as some children will have to show new foods several times before they eat them.
- Try to count the insistence that the child eats everything on his plate.
- See a dietitian because he or she knows the right way to feed a child, and a dietitian can guide you to better choices for your child's diet.
Things to avoid when trying to gain baby weight
These are some of the things to avoid when trying to gain baby weight:
1. Excessive snacking
It is a common mistake, as random snacks will fill a child's stomach with foods with low energy content.
Therefore, it is better to determine the times of eating the main meals and snacks between them, as the child can feel hungry when sitting down to eat a meal and thus gets more calories.
But this does not prevent the child from getting food when he feels hungry during the day and not depriving him of that.
2. Use of electronics
We must encourage the child to eat healthy snacks as well as the main meals, on the dining table and not indifferently in front of the TV screen, phone, or computer screen.
3. A lot of fruit juices
These juices, especially those that contain added sugar, will fill the child's stomach and make him feel full without providing him with any energy, fat, or protein content needed for children to gain weight.
4. Eat protein powders
It is not recommended to use protein powder in an attempt to gain weight in children as children get enough protein in their regular diet and even those who are underweight children, these powders do not provide a balanced mix of nutrients needed for a child.
5. Eat empty calories
Prepared foods such as potato chips, fast food, and soda may seem an attractive option to many parents for overweight children, but these foods have low nutritional value so you should choose whole, nutritious foods instead.
6. Prevent the child from exercising
The weight gain of children requires equivalency of calories consumed versus calories expended, so some believe that an underweight child should be told not to move a lot and not to become hyperactive.
But it is a misconception because the child by nature does a lot of movement and activity, so do not restrict the movement of your child unless advised by the doctor.