Joanna Strober’s 11-year-old son was diagnosed as being overweight a few years ago. The doctor told her to keep her son from eating the unhealthy foods he enjoyed – like bagels and French toast – in order to get him to lose weight. Aside from that, the doctor didn’t offer other solutions.
Both Strober and her son left the doctor feeling incredibly frustrated. Her son even went as far to say, “Mom, I’m never going to another doctor again.”
But for Strober, as a mother, she knew she couldn’t just throw in the towel. Once they returned home, she began to Google search “weight loss for kids.” But no one had any solutions better than what the doctor had already said.
Strober had no choice but to simply limit her son’s food intake. He responded by becoming angry, particularly since other members of the family (like his brother) didn’t have to follow the same rules. Arguments about food cropped up constantly.
There wasn’t an easy way for Strober to navigate this territory. She knew her son was already getting bullied and discriminated for the way he looked; it was hard to not evoke those memories and emotions when she was constantly asking him to join weight-loss programs where he would have to talk about his feelings or asking him to considering using a myriad of calorie counting apps.
The entire time, Strober’s son refused to be pulled along with all of his mother’s plans.
Strober was fresh out of ideas, so she sought out outside help: Thea Runyan, lead coach at the Stanford’s Pediatric Weight Control Program.
When Runyan also failed to come up with great “weight loss for kids” suggestions, she and Strober decided to make their own weight loss program, specifically focused on developing “health coaching to help children establish better eating habits.”
Here’s what they came up with: Kurbo, a health app that teaches kids what’s healthy and what’s not. Every single type of food is separated into three categories: green, yellow, and red. If a food is green, that means you can eat as much of it as you want. Yellow is to “proceed with caution, and red includes “cheese, candy, sodas” and other foods meant to be limited and further restricted over time.
Since Strober’s son started using Kurbo, he’s lost a significant amount of weight – and improved his relationship with his mom. Kurbo assigns each child user a health coach so parents don’t have to become the “bad guy” restricting their child’s food consumption.
So far, it’s fairly safe to say that Strober’s app works. Her son is now extremely healthy, has a good relationship with food, and the entire family has become much healthier – both mentally and physically – for it.
