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Bluffdale mom Michelle Longman was trying to protect her son when she stopped him from running around.
Braxton has asthma, and the movement made him gasp for breath.
When the boy, then 4 or 5, started gaining weight, Longman brought her concerns to his pediatrician at the Teen Mother & Child Program in Salt Lake City.
"He used to be a pretty skinny little boy and he just chunked up and I thought, 'I don't think that's normal baby fat,' " Longman said recently.
The pediatrician adjusted Braxton's asthma medication and put him on a program to let him run wild. Longman, from Bluffdale, also reduced the amount of juice he drinks, added wheat pasta and wheat bread to his diet and cut out junk food.
But the 8-year-old is still overweight, and Longman said the third-grader was teased at school, which affected his grades.
The University of Utah clinic, 3690 S. Main St., started a new approach to obesity to prevent it long before the bullying starts: It's targeting mothers during pregnancy.
"Once a child is obese, chances are they are going to stay obese," said Joni Hemond, the clinic's pediatric medical director. "Let's target them as early as we can — in the womb."
Hemond said 54 percent of the clinic's 400 teen moms and 28 percent of its 800 children are overweight or obese.
The program emphasizes the 5-2-1-0 daily guidelines for nutrition and physical activity:
• Eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables.
• Spend less than 2 hours watching TV or a computer screen.
• Get 1 hour of exercise.
• Drink 0 sweetened beverages.
The clinic is using those national guidelines in an unusual way: It interviewed its teen moms about the benefits of following the advice, what challenges stand in their way and how they would encourage a friend to follow the guidelines.
The results are two pamphlets aimed at pregnant and postpartum teens meant to motivate them to be healthy.
"We went to the teens themselves to gather information on how we should talk to them in our office," Hemond said. "We hope they would set up a lifestyle and a culture in their homes … [and] their children would grow up learning these things from the start."
She was surprised to learn from the teens how important the doctors' and midwives' opinions are to them — and how little they would be influenced by their peers.
Some teen-mom-influenced tips from the booklets:
• Make a bet to see who can go the longest without a soda or energy drink.
• Have chores or go to school to avoid TV.
• Ask your family if you can cook a couple of times a week.
Hemond said some teens may not have much control over what their children eat or watch. She recalled one mom was giving her daughter bottles of juice throughout the night to soothe her because the family slept on the floor of a house and fended off a large roaming dog.
As part of a study funded by Primary Children's Medical Foundation, the clinic will give the moms the booklets, help them set goals at each well-child checkup visit and see if, when the babies are 2, if the number of healthy behaviors increases and if obesity among the babies and mothers drops.
Longman, 24, says Braxton maintains his weight during the warm months — doctors don't recommend children lose weight — but she struggles to help him in the winter and plans to ask his pediatrician for help.
His doctor's advice is helping Longman, too: She's lost 25 pounds trying to help her son.
Getting healthy by the numbers
A University of Utah clinic program helping teen moms suggests these daily goals:
Eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables.
Spend less than 2 hours watching TV or a computer screen.
Get 1 hour of exercise.
Drink 0 sweetened beverages.