Unwanted Summer Weight Gain Likely Started in March This Year
By Jennifer Sacheck
Like most of us with children, I have been at home with my three kids 24/7 since mid-March. Sure, this has been a blessing, but it has also added a tremendous amount of pressure to be everything for them. Not only am I their mother, but I am also now an educator across multiple grade-levels, CNN news filter, top chef, screen-time monitor, barber, and Lego creator, to name just a few of my newly elevated roles. I have also been concerned about their ability to learn online, too much screen-time, their loss of social connectedness, newfound anxieties, and other aspects of their health and well-being.
I also have this added pressure of knowing how important staying active is for my own personal mental and physical health and how critically important it is for my children — especially with the loss of everything that once was routine: walking to school, recess and PE, organized sports and playing out in the neighborhood. Early in the pandemic, I added daily scheduled slots in my calendar labeled “RWK” where I moon-lighted as my kids’ personal trainer in between meetings otherwise known as “Run With Kids” time. During RWK, sure there may be alternative days of lacrosse, basketball, or a Zoom fitness class, but you’ll usually find us on the trails with my kids doing some combination of running and biking, along with my youngest in a jogger with me, and Cody, our trusty lab on the leash. Don’t laugh, I’m serious.
Now it is summer. The time when we are all enjoying the weather, moving more and eating an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables. This is how summer should look, especially for our kids. But data, including my own research centered on obesity prevention among schoolchildren, have continued to prove our notions wrong. Summer is actually the time when children are most vulnerable to accelerated weight gain. The summer slide for learning loss is actually similar to BMI (body mass index) increases among children and more often than not, the extra weight is not lost. There are several theories, but most have focused on the simple abundance of unstructured time that negatively impacts dietary behaviors, physical activity, and sleep schedules. We can likely blame screens, the freedom to snack and eat more frequently, and staying up later simply because there is no morning alarm.
This year, our summer routines likely started earlier. In March, we found ourselves squarely in the midst of a global pandemic that has afforded us with even less opportunity for structured days but also within the confinement of our homes and immediate surroundings. Many people, especially children from lower-income communities who already are at the greatest risk for excess weight gain, have more limited access to healthy foods and open spaces to play freely. Data on U.S. food purchasing patterns indicate increases in self-stable, often highly processed calorie-dense foods, snack items, chocolate, ice cream and potato chips. My colleagues and I are working to understand within our ongoing studies in several urban communities across the U.S. how children’s health behaviors have incrementally changed during this time and how this may consequently impact BMI trajectories. We are definitely going to have a “6-month summer” and perhaps longer as many schools consider hybrid models of in-school and online instruction.
Right now, we are all squarely focused on infectious disease prevention, and rightly so, but we cannot have a blind eye towards chronic disease prevention. We had a childhood obesity epidemic before the COVID-19 pandemic started and it has not gone away. If anything, many of the in-roads that we made prior to 2020 may be rebounding. So if you find that I am a bit over the top with scheduling active time with my kids, you should see what I try and feed them for dinner. I am working hard to instill lifelong healthy behaviors. I am constantly aware of how fortunate I am to be able to do so but also equally as lucky as a public health professional to be working with children and families that may benefit from forward-thinking nutrition and physical activity programs, policies and strategies that continue to combat obesity and related health outcomes in our most vulnerable communities.
Jennifer Sacheck, PhD, is the Sanofi Professor of Prevention and Wellness and Chair of the Department of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences at the GW Milken Institute School of Public Health.
