
Introduction: In 1995 the World Health Organization declared obesity as a disease. Currently, obesity is considered an epidemic in both adults and children. The presence of this disease at an early age is a risk factor for obesity and heart disease in adulthood. Increasingly, overweight and obese children practice less physical activity and they are more interested in sedentary activities. These lifestyles are perhaps the main cause of low performance in motor patterns. Objective: To conduct a review and compilation of current studies in Latin America to talk about the relationship between obesity, sedentary lifestyle and children's psychomotor development. Materials and methods: The search was conducted in Pubmed and Scielo. The keywords used were: psychomotor, motor development, delayed motor development, childhood overweight, childhood obesity and childhood nutrition. Results: There is evidence supporting the relationship between childhood overweight/obesity with poor performance in psychomotor tests in Latin America studies. No studies that establish a positive relationship between overweight and obesity with better psychomotor test scores were found. Conclusions: The results confirm the negative impact of malnutrition due to excess of food in children’s psychomotor development. Although a greater number of experimental studies are needed to confirm this statement.