I just found out that my little sister, who is 11 years old gained around 40 lbs since last summer and she now weighs 180 lbs. I'm very concerned because that was what I weighed in high school and she's only in 5th grade. She's around 5' tall and definitely has food issues.
She hates vegetables and even fruit. For the longest time all she would eat was chicken and french fries and very little else. She's very picky... she doesn't even really like cereal, which most kids do. Now she found that she likes perogies but she over does it with sour cream and she likes bologna sandwiches but again, over does it with mayo.
She's also very hard to motivate when it comes to exercise. She spends most of her time on the computer, rather than playing outside—which I kind of don't blame her because there are NO kids in the neighborhood. I lived there for a few months over the summer and I was on a big exercise kick and my main thing was dancing. I thought I could get her into it since dancing is fun, but she's would stop after a minute saying she was tired.
My mom doesn't know what to do because she's very argumentative and has behavioral problems and it's always a struggled to get her to eat the right things. They stopped buying ice cream and ketchup months ago but she's still gaining weight. My mom says she hides food and sneaks extra portions when no one is watching.
I'm really worried about her. A big part of why I want to lose weight is to be a better role model for her. I know she looks up to me and I'm hoping that as I lose weight she will take an interest in what I'm doing. Unfortunately I live almost 3 hours away and I can't be there day to day to help her, but I want to come up with some ideas to help my parents.
If anyone has any advice I would really appreciate it.
Thank you.