Avoiding Childhood Obesity Starts at Home

It’s of concern how often families today trust the education system to instruct their children all sorts of things other than just reading, writing and arithmetic. A lot of parents delegate the obligation for avoiding childhood obesity on the shoulders of the school board as well, thinking that gym classes and nutrition should be part of the school’s curriculum so that children can continue to be fit and healthy. This is an extremely ill-judged attitude by parents and one that is a surefire recipe for disaster. To combat childhood obesity and to keep children healthy and ablee-bodied, there must be changes made in the home first and foremost.

One of the reasons that parents cannot trust the school systems to take care of this is that many schools just cannot offer gym classes the way they once did. Schools are usually overcrowded these days so the gymnasium needs to perform as a lunch room for more hours than ever before. Without regular physical exercise, childhood obesity is an almost sure thing. And just educating a youngster about calories and fat and nutritional content of food doesn’t mean that he or she is going to avoid junk food and fast food also! Just knowing about these matters is not motivation sufficient to help a child make the choices needed to avoid childhood obesity.

A parent’s example and what goes on in the home is definitely a better indicator of whether or not childhood obesity will be avoided. Children generally learn lifestyle choices and attitudes from their parents whether they’re aware of it or not. Parents that are active and that always have activities to do will probably raise children that are active and busy as well. Those parents that lay around on the couch each evening and on the weekends may find childhood obesity a problem in their own home. This is because children are being taught to be sedentary and inactive. If a parent takes the effort to prepare meals that are simple but wholesome a child will learn to value wholesome food and to take the extra time and effort required to prepare such dishes. But when a parent is regularly falling back on drive-through meals and other poor dietary choices, a youngster may learn that such food is satisfactory. This also may increase the cases of childhood obesity in the home.

Adults too can set limits with their children while they’re with them to assist avoid childhood obesity. No one can altogether control their child when they’re on their own, but providing only nutritious meals and snacks when children are home will lessen any damage they’re doing by consuming junk at every other time! Many cases of childhood obesity are also associated to inactivity during the day and evening. With this in mind parents can plan times to go to a zoo, aquarium, or other places where everyone walks around. Other way to help stave off childhood obesity by biking, walking, playing catch, playing Frisbee, setting up a badminton net, or other activities that involve all the family members.

As a parent, you must take responsibility for the health of your child. This includes making sure that he/she gets proper nutrition along with adequate exercise. Without this, they may become oe of the many kids that are falling thru the cracks into obesity.

Is Your Child On The Road to Obesity? 4 Mistakes You Can Fix Now

Take a quick look around and you’ll observe the costly obesity crisis that is slowly overtaking our nation. How bad has it become you may say? Consider the idea that we are now seeing individuals parking in handicap parking spots to avoid having to park just a few extra feet away from a building.

In all honesty, we can not totally place the blame for this on the individuals themselves. Several studies have shown that for a number of people, their chemical and genetic makeup aide in their body’s ability to process certain fats. Sure being 100 plus pounds over weight might have been good in the Ice Age but today this is simply not the case.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in looking at childhood obesity and nutrition. Nutritionists estimate that for every point of body mass index a child is overweight by before puberty, the adult that child will grow into will be three points overweight by the time they’re thirty. Type II diabetes, where body stress from overeating builds up resistance to insulin, is becoming more prevalent in teenagers.

At the ages of 12 – 16 is when most young girls and boys are self conscious about their bodies. Even “normal looking” kids get teased. If we allow our children to continue down a slippery slope toward obesity, we are setting them up for a very difficult childhood. Parents must be told that healthy eating habits and not Slimfast diet shakes or Medifast meals are the key to weight loss and a nutritious lifestyle.

On the positive side of things, I want to let you know that there is hope. There is an easy way to solve this downward trend.

Remember when you were a kid? You know, before video games like the Nintendo Wii. You actually had friends who played outside with you. You had energy and used it.

When you were thirsty, mostly you grabbed milk, sometimes orange juice, not sodas. Cookies were a treat, not a staple of your diet. Snacks were things like apple wedges or an orange, maybe some peeled carrots.

Contrary to the popular belief, it is possible to training children to eat healthy foods. Caffeine laced drinks are a prime example. Researchers have uncovered an alarming link between drinking diet sodas and consuming high fat luncheon meets with cases of certain brain cancers. If you gain nothing else from this article, at least follow this one tip, please, do not allow your kids to drink soft drinks. Remember, water first before any juices or milks.

As for snacks, limit their intake of high sugar and high fattening foods and increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables. This may not be as hard as you think. Consider this, if you kids are not of driving age and do not have a job, the only reason they are eating the way they are is because you as the parent purchase the unhealthy food in your kitchen. Trust me, if you don’t buy it, they will immediately decrease their over consumption. Oh yeah, they’ll complain however it is up to you to be the parent.

Staying physically active is an absolute necessity. Children are usually mirror images of their parents. If you as a parent live a sedentary life, the chances of your child duplicating your example are very high. If you have little league teams in your town, encourage your children to participate. Not all kids are athletic but all kids need to be active. In addition, set aside at least one day in the week where the entire family is physically active together. It could be a walk in the park or playing tag in the backyard.

The key to providing life long health for your kids is inculcating these habits early in life, so they become habits. Explain why you’re doing it when they ask, but don’t preach. Your kids will adopt the behaviors they see you doing – you’re their parent, their role model, and these are the habits they’ll stick with as they get older.

Parents You Need to Tackle Childhood Obesity

The epidemic of child obesity is growing. Child obesity is considered by many to be an epidemic in developed Western countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. According to a 2007 report by the Trust for American’s Health, approximately 25 million children ages of 6 to 17 in the United States are either overweight or obese.

Childhood obesity is medically far more serious than most parents realise. It is a very real issue that is affecting millions of children each day. With the increasing rate of child obesity, paediatricians are becoming concerned of health problems among children that were rare in the past. Child obesity is directly related to a myriad of health complications as well as to poor quality of life, poor self-esteem and impaired social skills.

Obesity is usually defined as a weight greater than 20 percent of a person’s Ideal Body Weight (IBW). It can also be calculated using body mass index (BMI). Obesity is present when total body weight is more than 25 percent fat in boys and more than 32 percent fat in girls.

Problems of Obesity

Obesity is one of the worst health risks existing today because of the broad range of other diseases which it causes or makes worse. Obesity is associated with high triglycerides and decreased HDL cholesterol, and is the major cause of type 2 diabetes. Obesity can cause resistance to insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar.

It is associated with significant increases in hyperlipidemia, high cholesterol, coronary artery disease, degenerative joint disease and psychosocial disability, and obesity is also linked to depression and problems of self image and with body dissatisfaction.

It is widely recognised to be a serious medical problem resulting in myriad distressing illnesses and is associated with increased mortality and morbidity (shortening life expectancy).

Specific Problems of child Obesity

• Being obese as a child can have a lifelong impact. As well as the same problems that adults face, research has shown that children who are obese or overweight often have weight problems when they grow up. Overweight adolescents have a 70% chance of becoming overweight or obese adults.
• Obese children often suffer from teasing amongst their peers. Obese children also have increased average blood pressure, heart rate and cardiac output when compared to non-obese peers.
• Obesity in childhood is known to be associated with abnormal indices of lipolysis, including high cholesterol levels (greater than 170 mg per dL). Being overweight affects school attendance as well, possibly leading to academic problems later.

How do we tackle this epidemic?

• Childhood obesity is usually caused by kids eating too much and exercising too little. Researchers have discovered the obese children were 35% less active on school days and 65% less active on weekends compared to non-obese children. Parents need to set an example, be a role model and give their children guidance on exercise and healthy eating. Kids of all ages will enjoy life better if they are taught to eat healthy foods and to get enough exercise.
• Children are more likely to be obese at if one or both parents are obese. As children tend to eat what their parents eat, parents can also help their kids by addressing their own weight issues and modelling a healthy lifestyle that they’d like their children to emulate. Parents should also rid their kitchens from junk foods and act as role models by monitoring their eating habits and not eating what they ask their children not to eat.
• Part of the problem of child obesity is that the parents rarely exercise as well.
• Participate in fun backyard sports with your children and consider taking up a sport with them or one that you practised when young.
• A child growing up in a stressful environment, such as one where the child’s parents are having marital problems, mentally or physically abusing the child, can make a child turn to food for the only interest in life and he or she can easily overeat at that point, promoting obesity.
• Parents can also set rules for the home that help reinforce the healthy lifestyle. Parents also must be concerned enough to want to do something about their children’s obesity.

Parents need to tackle the issue of childhood obesity to ensure that their children grow up to be happy and health adults. Don’t be lazy and set your children a good example on exercise and healthy eating.

Childhood Obesity Facts Are Not Painting A Flattering Picture Of The Present Or Of The Future

It has been noticed that, over the past twenty years, the rates of obesity in children have seen a gradual rise in many countries of the world, and has led researchers to term it as an ‘international epidemic of childhood obesity’. The childhood obesity facts that have come to light over ten years from 1985 to 1995 are, it is believed, showing that in Australia, the number of obese children has more than doubled, and at the same time, there has been a tripling of obesity in all age groups of children of either sex.

An Alarming Proportion Of Children Are Obese

As more and more childhood obesity facts come to light, an alarming picture is being drawn in which, it is believed, that in 1995, the proportion of obese children was twenty-one percent in the case of boys and twenty-three percent in the case girls. There has also been dramatic increase in the case of teenagers, and this rate of childhood obesity in Australian kids seems to be accelerating sharply.

The case of childhood obesity in the US is no less alarming, and according to childhood obesity facts for this country, there has been more than a doubling of obesity in preschool children as well as in adolescents aged between twelve and nineteen years of age. In the case of children aged between six and eleven years, this figure has tripled and it is believed that, at present, there are as many as nine million children aged six or above that are obese.

With more childhood obesity facts coming to light, it seems that the trend of childhood obesity is increasing and they are the same in the international sphere as well. Obesity continues to affect children throughout the world irrespective of whether it is a developing country, developed or under-developed country. Other childhood obesity facts show that along with the increase in obesity prevalence, the heavy groups are becoming heavier while the lean groups of children are staying lean. This shows that there has been little change in childhood obesity over time.

Other childhood obesity facts show that almost sixty percent of obese children aged between five and ten years have a minimum of one cardiovascular disease risk factor, and twenty-five percent had two or more risk cardiovascular disease risk factors. Also, childhood obesity facts point us in the direction that, for children born in the US in 2000, the lifetime risk of being diagnosed with type II diabetes is around thirty percent for boys and forty percent for girls, and this figure rises in the case of ethnic minority groups. Not a very rosy picture!

Helping Kids to Eat Healthy

With all the fast food and advertising around these days, it is very hard to teach a child how he or she should eat healthy.  The cheapest and easiest foods are those that are normally the least healthy. 

If you give your child the choice between healthy food and junk food, you normally won’t like the results. It is very had to compete with the TV or with peer pressure

Even though it isn’t possible to get a child to like all healthy foods, here are some tips to get them to try and hopefully like at least a few of them. 

• Sneak the healthy food in.  Even though it would be great if your kid understood the importance of fruits and vegetables, this isn’t always possible.  If you can’t get them to eat good food willingly, there are ways to sneak them in, such as making muffins out of bananas or apples, or pizza with spinach on it.
• Call fruits and vegetables by funny names.  You can refer to broccoli as “trees”, making them more fun to eat.  There are many different names you can call fruits and vegetables, even making up your own if you prefer.  Most kids prefer to eat foods that sound fun.
• Make the foods taste better. Ranch dressing is great for broccoli, while peanut butter is a great topping for celery.  There are several combinations for vegetables that can make them taste much better.  You can let your child pick a topping for a vegetable; even if it’s something you wouldn’t normally like yourself.
• Dress the vegetables up.  Just as much as calling them names help kids eat healthy foods, making them look funny also helps.  You can do this by making funny designs on the plate, or setting them up to look like people.  Although some parents don’t like their kids playing with their food, sometimes it helps to get them to eat healthier.
• Try to cut down on Soda. It should be a treat but try to have them drink water and Milk. It they drink juice, juice it yourself and add plenty of water and no extra sugar.
• Processed, canned, or preserved vegetables may also contain added sodium.  Like sugar, excess sodium is not good.  There are some food companies that are actually canning vegetables with less salt.  You can look for these in the market area or choose fresh and even frozen vegetables.

There are several ways to make your kids eat healthier, but to make them enjoy it also has to be fun as well.  This isn’t always an easy task, because kids normally don’t like foods that are good for them.  It can however, be done with a bit of creativity.  Hopefully, doing this will help your child develop a love of healthy foods for the rest of their lives.

 

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