9 year old girl needs help!

Hello, I am the parent of a nine year old girl that is finally realizing that she is overweight and what that means. First let me give you a little history. Mikayla was born 8"4 and she has been chunky her whole life. I have tried to watch her eating and her activity but she still continues to gain weight. She is nine years old and 5" tall and 140lbs. I Myself have had gastric bypass a year ago so I know what it means to be overweight. But in my case I did not gain weight until after I started having kids. But more about Mikayla. She is fairly active in sports. She plays softball and basketball. I have taken her to see her doctor he says that she is perfectly healthy and he just told me to watch her intake of food. I guess what I need to know is how do I make her understand that her eating choices and her lifestyle will effect her later. I know that middle school and high school can be very rough on a kid and I want to try to spare her as much as possible. Please any advice would be appreciated.

Hello... Well I was an overweight kid and not that my mom did not try she tried the wrong ways. I kinda rebeled and went behind her back to eat and went to my grandmothers house where i ate as I pleased. I woulnd not force her in any way to particpate in something that she ddoes not want to,,, she will be mad at you.. get all the "crap" out of the house and doing the work out thing together is an excellent idea. Make it a girls day or something that will make her feel good about herself and her relationship to you,., Best wishes -KIM

My parents and I really struggled throughout my childhood with my obesity, and so I guess my advice comes from what I wish we would have done. I agree with everyone else that junk food should be taken out of the house, better choices made, and more exercise done. With the junk food, I would say to slowly remove it and replace it with healthy snacks without really saying much about it. I think it's important that those snacks also be very tasty, so she begins to associate healthy foods as yummy foods! For excercise, I would strongly sugguest that you do not ask her to do workout tapes or anything like that. Instead, work on changing the lifestyle to be a more active one. You could go fly a kite on a not so windy day, which would be fun yet involve her running around to get the kite up. You could also take her shopping at a mall and get walking in that way. As others have said, the most important thing is to lead by example, and allow your daughter to make choices to improve her health.