Great Topic!

As most of you know, I am a parent that is in the middle of dealing with all this. I don't know if my son was addicted to carbs, but he did eat a lot of them (because we all did) and he is overweight.

I agree with a lot of what has been said already, mainly that leading by example is the first key to helping young kids in this. I also agree about Mom and Dad being on the same page food wise, and about changing the kind of carbs that kids without a weight problem eat.

To me communication is going to be one of the key ingredients in helping a child change their WOE. When my wife and I decided to start back on this WOE, we sat down with my son (8 years old) and told him what we were going to do. We educated him about the diet, and why we were doing it, without ever telling him that “you need to be on a diet” or things like that. We simply asked him at the end of our discussion if he wanted to try it with us. I think that most kids will want to do what the parents are doing just to be involved. The key is to make it their decision to do it, and I will explain why – of course this can only start when the kids are old enough to understand the impacts.

If you have made it so the child has chosen to follow this WOE, then when “struggles” come up, you can revisit their decision to do this, and remind them that they wanted to do this. The first few months trying low carb with an addicted child will be very tough. The first time we went out to eat and my son realized that he couldn’t have Chicken Fingers and Fries he was upset. They don’t really get it until something like this happens. He sat at the table pouting while I ordered him a low carb item – but then when he ate it he decided he liked it better than the chicken fingers.

I also think that for kids you need to help them get off carbs by having some of the low carb chocolates and ice creams around – especially at first, and especially if they have a real bad addiction. You can’t expect small child to give up carbs cold turkey like an adult can. Over time he will get to the point where he doesn’t enjoy the carbs as much anymore, just like everyone does, and then you can start “weaning” them off of the sweet things. If you do things like this gradually – the child won’t even notice or miss it.

Finally – you can’t be overly strict on them. You have to realize that they are going to go to sleepovers, parties, etc. where there will be food that is not low carb. That is ok – let them have a cheat time. What you want them to learn is that this is a WOL, and that there are going to be times where it’s ok to do that. One afternoon of having something bad isn’t going to affect their long term health. Remember – even if they eat bad one day a month, they are still eating right 97.5% of the time over a whole year.