My son is chubby, should I put him on a diet? 2026

“Wow, how beautiful you are!”, “But how fat you are!”, “Wow, you really eat well, right?”… Carmina was tired of hearing these types of comments about Gabriel, her one-year-old son. "Would you dare say the same thing to an adult? No, because it would be rude," he complains.

Your child, with large cheeks and a double chin, chubby hands and unreachable thighs, usually wears clothes for larger sizes, up to two or three years old. "He has a very good appetite. Everything you give him he eats without blinking. To me it seemed like a sign of good health, until I began to become obsessed, above all, by the pressure he received from the outside. There came a time when everywhere I read news about growing childhood obesity," confesses Carmina. However, the pediatrician reassured her and assured her that the important thing was that Gabriel seemed like a happy child and did not have any psychomotor delays or difficulties. To rule out any pathology, they did some metabolic tests, which were negative. “Of course, he recommended that I stop putting baby food in his bottles and give him less milk,” his mother remembers.

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“There are few occasions when pediatricians find true obesity in children under three years of age,” explains pediatrician Carlos Casabona, author of the book You Choose What You Eat. Only 2-4% of cases of excess weight at such early ages have a genetic burden associated with metabolic disorders. In the rest of the cases, the key is to check that the child follows an adequate diet and does not indulge in low-nutritive and very fattening products.

"It is not about putting him on a diet, meaning reducing the number of healthy calories he needs, what should be investigated is whether he eats cookies, buns, chips, chocolate, industrial processed foods... If so, unhealthy products must be removed from his diet. It is also common for him to be overweight due to maintaining incorrect habits such as continuing, after 12-18 months, with several bottles a day with excessive amounts of milk and, on top of that, reinforced with totally unnecessary baby flours (and sugary, like porridge)”, clarifies the expert.

Along the same lines, our Nutrition specialist, Dr. José Manuel Moreno Villares, states that, as “the first two years of life are a time of great growth, of the body and the brain, there is no need to make any specific restriction of nutrients or “diet”.

But what indicator can help us know if he is fat? There are no scales or immovable parameters. Neither the percentile nor the body mass index are decisive. “The tendency is to follow common sense, simple observation, general exploration of their physical state and their psychomotor and emotional development…” says Dr. Carlos Casabona.

If your little one has healthy eating habits, you have little to worry about, no matter how plump he or she is. This is what happened to Carolina with her daughter Manuela. “At one year old, she was as fat as a watermelon, she was bursting with fat everywhere. And almost the only thing he drank was breast milk, sometimes he ate some of our food, but he didn't take a bottle, or baby food, or anything with sugar. The pediatrician told me that I didn't have to worry. It would only be missing! My little girl would have plenty of time to want to be styled like Barbie. Of course, now he is seven years old and he has remained like an asparagus. The same people who told me that I was very fat as a baby now give us shit about "she has to eat more, how skinny she is," Carolina tells us. And, despite what some grandmothers say, that they become happier the more their grandchild swallows, our responsibility is not that children eat a lot, but that they eat healthy. It is a rule that should be followed from their first months, taking into account that not all products labeled as baby foods (cookies, porridge, juices, dairy desserts...) are recommended.

It is common that, like Manuela, children who are plump as babies start getting taller after the age of two. Generally, their appetite tends to decrease, since they no longer need as many calories and the growth rate is no longer as rapid as in the first months. In addition, they do more physical exercise, walking, running, jumping... and are so enthralled in exploring the world around them that their interest in food decreases. And it happens to them like Manuela, that they go from being fat babies to children with just the right amount of fat.

There are also, of course, cases in which the opposite occurs. “Be overweight and move,” explains Dr. José Manuel Moreno Villares.

On the other hand, the constitution of the parents also plays a role. Just as if they are rather short, it is normal for the child to not have basketball player size; If they have a robust build and strong bone structure, it is understandable that the little one is too. We talk about complexions, but be careful, that does not mean, at all, that obesity is inherited without remedy.

“Much more important than genetics is the influence of the environment and way of life,” says Dr. Carlos Casabona. It won't help if you force him to snack on fruit instead of buns, if he sees that you gobble down a bacon sandwich with chips and soda at the slightest opportunity and that, after sitting all day in the office, you prefer to spend the afternoon on the couch rather than take a walk. They are sponges and their parents are their role model, so the best way to transmit healthy habits to them is by example.