For years science has observed a fairly predictable growth cycle in which children gain weight during summer vacation months then return to a mostly stable weight during the school year.
The COVID-19 pandemic has turned that stability on its head with a triple whammy: restricted activities, no school sports, and all-day access to foods they probably shouldn’t eat.
“As it turns out, with the pandemic, children being at home mimics summer vacations. They lose the structure of school. Their activities are more limited, they have more screen time, they exercise less, and eat the foods we tell them not to eat.”
— Steven Heymsfield, MD, professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University.
What to do about it?
Sports medicine pediatricians have their own ideas about how to fix this problem. They share details about how to deal with the problem in this article published by Feeling Fit.
