If you have an overweight child or teen and are considering something like a weight loss camp for the summer, you may be looking for some ideas for ways to get started today. After all, why wait until the summer? Thankfully, there are a number of things that parents can do at home to help their kids begin to lose weight. Ultimately, it comes down to diet and exercise. Here are a few tips:

Get your kids excited about eating better by involving them in meal planning, shopping, and cooking. This gives your kids less of a feeling that a diet is being “forced” on them and gets them more invested in the efforts.

Try increasing their exercise levels with incentives or by finding fun activities that they will not consider “exercise.” Most kids (even kids that are not overweight) cringe when they hear the word “exercise.” If your kid would rather spend hours watching TV, make them “earn” some TV time by exercising. Also keep in mind that “exercise” doesn’t have to be things like jumping rope, doing sit-ups, and so on – anything that gets kids active is exercise. Taking a bike ride, jumping on a trampoline, throwing a football around, even vacuuming the house!

The key is to get your kids invested in the weight loss effort and creating a supportive environment. This is what makes our weight loss camps so successful, but is also the kinds of things that can be done at home. Fun exercise. Healthy dieting. It really is that simple.