Parents listen up. If you have a child at home that you worry about is gaining too much weight or is overweight, I've got some great tips for you. One of our readers wants to know how to help her 12-year old child lose a lot, lose a fair amount of weight. Well first of all take your child to the doctor and make sure there's nothing, no health reasons you need to be concerned about. And secondly, we don't really like to put kids on diets. Instead we try to look around, look at their lifestyle and figure out how can we make them more active, eat a healthier diet and where can we get rid of the extras. A lot of kids eat a lot of junk food and drink a lot of sugary beverages so that might be a place to sort of cut out those extras. But parents we need to be role models and you need to walk the walk and do it yourself. So stock that kitchen with healthy foods, healthy beverages, things that will appeal to your child and appeal to you as well so lots of fruits and vegetables. And change it up. Maybe have them right easily accessible or cut up or pop some grapes in the freezer to make it a little different or get vegetables with a lowfat dip. Sometimes dipping make it a little more exciting. You gotta have chips go for the baked chips and do portion control. Nothing wrong with salt so with a few baked chips it's a nice snack. Lowfat popcorn another great snack that's also a whole grain. So you just want to transition to make sure the foods your child is getting offer nutritional goodness as well because calories count, they need those calories for growth and development and we can't really cut calories, we need to help them grow into it but give them the nutrients that they need. Find something fun they like to do - a zumba class, join a gym, bike riding. Even the electronic games that are fitness games that do more than just move your thumbs. So find things that are fun, even dancing. You know, put the music on and get your kids involved in dancing. So whatever it is, you need to fit in fitness, you need to help them choose healthy, make healthier choices. They need three meals a day. They probably need snacks, too. Most kids do. But as long as those snacks are nutritious snacks it will, the weight will come off slowly but surely. It's a journey. They didn't get there overnight and it's going to take some time. And it's better to focus on good lifestyle habits. Good eating that will last a lifetime and help them lose the weight.