If your efforts at home are unsuccessful in helping your child reach a healthy weight and your physician determines that your child's health is at risk unless he or she loses weight steadily, you may want to consider a formal treatment program.

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To locate a weight-control program for your child, you may want to contact a local university-based medical center. The Weight-Control Information Network (WIN) maintains a list of nationwide university-based medical centers.

Look for the following characteristics when choosing a weight-control program for your child. The program should:

Be staffed with a variety of health professionals. The best programs may include registered dieticians, exercise physiologists, pediatricians or family physicians, and psychiatrists or psychologists.

Perform a medical evaluation of the child. Before being enrolled in a program, your child's weight, growth, and health should be reviewed by a physician. During enrollment, your child's weight, growth, and health should be monitored by a health professional at regular intervals.

Focus on the whole family, not just the overweight child.

Be adapted to the specific age and capabilities of the child. Programs for 4-year-olds are different from those developed for children 8 or 12 years of age in terms of degree of responsibility of the child and parents.

Focus on behavioral changes.

Teach the child how to select a variety of foods in appropriate portions.

Encourage daily activity and limit sedentary activity, such as watching TV.

Include a maintenance program and other support and referral resources to reinforce the new behaviors and to deal with underlying issues that contributed to overweight.

The overall goal of a successful treatment program should be to help the whole family focus on making healthy changes to their eating and activity habits that they will be able to maintain throughout life.

Source: National Institutes of Health