Need Advice- My daughter needs to lose weight!

I think it's important to look at the excess weight as a symptom, and not as a disease to be cured. you can't make healthy eating and exercise some unpleasant "medicine" to get rid of the excess weight. The *last* thing you want is to make healthy eating and exercise a chore - as soon as she is no longer accountable to you, she'll stop. "At home i have to get on the elliptical for an hour before I watch TV...so now that I am here in college I can watch all the TV I want!"

Regardless of weight, excess screen time and junk food are harmful.. There is no reason anyone needs to stare at a screen at home for more than an hour a day. If your daughter was thin, I'd give the exact same advice - unplug. There shouldn't be junk food in the house; we don't keep any in ours. Focus on encouraging the correct lifestyle, not reducing her weight - once the lifestyle improves, her weight will reduce.

I hate, hate hate the idea of using exercise as a punishment for being overweight, or treating exercise as a chore to complete before getting to "fun" sedentary activities. That's what my parents did with me and I avoided exercise like the plague for that reason. In my 20s I started exercising for fun and now, the hour I spend at the gym is one of the best parts of my day. Why? It's not a punishment. I am not exercising because I hate my overweight body. I am exercising because I love my body and I want it to be in the best shape possible, and I love pushing limits and seeing what it is capable of doing.