What Can You Do?

As a teen, you do have some control over your own teen weight loss. You can be a leader by showing that you realize you have a problem, then be the example by doing something to solve the problem. Find someone who has a healthy weight and ask them how they do it. Choose to start living a healthier life. Ask your family and friends to support you in your goal to lose the weight. Think about your physical activities. If you are an avid gamer, instead of sitting and playing games all the time, take an hour a day and do some exercises, go for a walk or swim, or play a game that allows you to be physical (which can be a very fun way to lose weight.)

Eat Healthier

You do have a choice to make with the foods you eat. Teen weight loss will happen if you choose to eat healthier foods. Skip eating foods that are overly sweet or “junky”. Instead of candy and cookies, choose fruit. Instead of drinking sodas, try tea sweetened with a sugar substitute, or just plain water. Know that these choices will help you to fight and win the battle against child obesity. Encourage those closest to you to help you make better choices.

More Eating Tips

Ask the person who is responsible for cooking the meals to cook foods that include vegetables and lean meats. Ask them to fix your plate by giving you smaller portions. If you know ahead of time that is all you will get, you may find you will be as satisfied with the meal as if you had packed your plate. Teen weight loss requires a lot of will power, and enlisting those who cook your meals to help you out will help you to beat child obesity.

Winning the battle with teen weight loss means changing your life style completely. Make better choices with meals and snacks. Talk your friends into participating in more physical activities with you instead of sitting in front of the TV all the time, make them your accountability buddies. You will find that friends and family can be very supportive and helpful if you just ask them. You can mention to them that these will be good habits to create and will be healthier for them too.

Plain and simple these are your childhood obesity facts: our children are consistently eating too much of the wrong foods, and have become the most inactive generation in the history of our society. This is not a genetic problem (which is not to say that there are some adults and children that have a genetic and hormonal predisposition to obesity), this is for the most part a behavioural problem, and behaviours can be changed.

Think about it, is it really necessary for our children to be ingesting the vast quantity of refined sugars, processed foods, and hydrogenated fats that they do every day. Foods and beverages that are consumed in such large quantities that their bodies cannot process and eliminate at the rate that these foods are consumed. And because our children are not ‘moving’ any more, the results are inevitable: skyrocketing obesity rates, an alarming incidence of type 2 diabetes in children, a significant increase in childhood behavioural problems, with low self-esteem and a rise in depression rates.

These are your childhood obesity facts! The question has to asked, why are we allowing this to happen?
It certainly is not because of a lack of education or knowledge about what the proper foods are and what constitutes a balanced diet: complex carbohydrates (fruits, vegetables, whole grains), adequate proteins, and the right amount of good fats. And we all have an idea of the benefits of exercise both from a physiological and psychological level. We may not know the specifics but we know the generalities. The information and knowledge is at our fingertips, more available and accessible to us than at any time in our history.

Our problem lies in our habits and behaviours. How can we prevent childhood obesity? Change our behaviours. It sounds so simple, yet why don’t we? Because changing our habits, changing our behaviour is the most difficult thing we do in our lives. We resist change, we are creatures of habit, with the same thoughts, and the same patterns of behaviour day after day. This leads to complacency and comfortable laziness, and we pass this on to our children.

Yet we must change for our children’s sake. All change begins with awareness. Once we become aware of our behaviours and the consequences of them, we can begin to make conscious choices to change our behaviour and the behaviour of our children. And yes it is a greater challenge in our society today than in past times. It is so much easier to grab a quick dinner from a fast food chain and spend hours interacting with friends on some social media network.

The main contributing factors to childhood obesity are lack of physical activity and high calorie intake, as well as the variety of foods consumed. The recent emphasis on technology as well as convenience, high calorie meals have had a detrimental effect on child health. Furthermore, one of the worst physical effects of childhood obesity is the susceptibility to diseases such as diabetes, high cholesterol, and early onset of heart disease.

Obesity has negative effects on emotional health as well. Society today labels those that are obese as lazy or unmotivated. These stigmas contribute to the increasing onset of depression, anxiety, and low self esteem in children. These factors then affect the social health of children as well, as there can be a lack in the development of relationships and acceptance from their peers.

In this technological age, it is easy for children to develop a lack of physical activity. Both computer usages as well as the increase in video gaming systems are the major technological factors in childhood obesity. It is easy for parents to use these as ways to keep their children busy. While there have been recent advancements in gaming that involve total body interaction, the comparison of these games to actual physical activity such as sports or dancing shows a minimal amount of calories burned. The largest impact that parents can have on these factors is managing the amount of time spent on all screens within the home, forcing children to find alternative methods of entertainment.

Parents do have control over several factors that contribute to obesity. The eating habits of children can be controlled, as parents need to resist the urge to provide the quick, convenience meals such as fast food and high-calorie, low nutritional snacks. A higher consumption of fresh fruits, vegetables, lean meats, and whole grains may reduce the risk of obesity in children. Parents should provide healthy beverages to their children as well, such as reduced sugar juices, skim milk, and water, as opposed to high sugar liquids such as carbonated soda pops and sugar-based beverage mixes.

Parents can also provide a variety of physical activities for youngsters. A creative mind can create unique activities that require participation and motion. Some examples of such activities are outdoor play, such as games like tag or hide and seeks, and indoor play such as fort-building, balloon play, or dancing to upbeat music.

However, parents should also understand that not teaching their kids about good nutrition and fitness will only add to their future misery. Obese children are often bullied and made fun of to the point that it is hard for obese children to enjoy their childhood. In addition, they will often grow up with very low self-esteem which hinders their capacities and prevents them from becoming all they can. Because of this, parents should really know the steps to prevent childhood obesity if they want to give their children a healthy social life.

To understand the steps to prevent childhood obesity, it is important to understand why obesity happens in the first place. This will make it easier to understand the drastic steps needed to reduce the weight of the children.

The most common case of childhood obesity is lack of exercise. With the growing technology today, we can now see children absentmindedly sitting in front of computers and playing video games for hours on end. Instead of running around the neighborhood exercising their muscles and enhancing their metabolism, they sit idly for hours burning very few calories. Without exercise, chances are that children will develop obesity at an early age. So as a parent, you should encourage different kinds of physical activities for your kids so their bodies will burn the food they eat.

In addition to the lack of exercise, seeds of obesity are planted when children are exposed to large amounts of food rich in sugar. Children in general are sweet-toothed, and they are likely to eat sweet foods such as ice cream, cakes, doughnuts, and chocolate in very large amounts. To help prevent your child from suffering from obesity, you should encourage a healthy diet. Limit the amount of sweets you have in your home. Instead, fill a bowl with fresh fruits and vegetables and encourage your kids to eat them. Avoid putting desserts after every meal, and teach them to drink lots of water to neutralize their taste buds.

There are different plans that you can follow to reduce obesity in your child, but is not just about doing a diet for a while to lose weight, its about our lifestyle. We need to prevent childhood obesity by looking at the causes and changing our habits.

Most people don’t have idea of why their children are overweight they think that is his genetics, metabolism or even a psychological problem, in some instances its true but in a small percentage. The real causes are very obvious but no one wants to change their way of living.

If we want to prevent obesity we need to learn the most common causes and these are:

Lack of physical activity is one of the most common causes for obesity, children are watching tv and playing video games more time than they are at school, they no longer do any sports or physical activities they just sit and watch and eat.

Their nutrition lacks of any healthy foods, like fruits and vegetables, they are just eating fast food, candy and snacks.

Now, the way to prevent childhood obesity is first to encourage playing sports with friends and in school and don’t allow your child to watch too much tv or play video games for hours. They need to do activities that require physical effort, that will increase their metabolism and have a healthier lifestyle.

Another way to prevent obesity is to cook our children food instead of just buying fast food meals or pre made breakfast which are full or sugars, salt and fats. You should give your children fruits and vegetables so they become use to it, don’t give them candy every time they are hungry.

Our child are constantly exposed to multiple advertisements of junk food you have to educate them and make sure that what you buy at the supermarket is healthy and not just full of sugars. Make juice instead of giving soda and cook nutritive food full of vitamins.

Those are just some ways to prevent overweight in children, however there is a lot more that can do your community, school and government to encourage healthy foods at school and educate them.

1) Bullies: Any child who is different is going to be a target for bullying. While more and more of our children are overweight, those who stand out in that category are going to be dead on bullseye. Being teased and tormented doesn’t help in any way, shape or form. In fact it’s harmful because the child may turn to food for comfort, making the problem worse.

2) Eating Disorders: People, especially children, want to fit in. Once a child has discovered that overeating is the cause (or one of them) for being out of the ordinary, they may try any number of methods to stop. Unfortunately, these methods can lead to bulimia, anorexia and other eating disorders.

3) Education: A miserable child may have difficulties concentrating on what he or she is trying to learn. The focus may be inward, which makes listening and focusing on classwork extremely difficult.

4) Health Issues: This is the most important reason we need to protect our children from weight related issues. Young people in their early twenties are having strokes and heart attacks. Children are being treated for high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes in growing numbers. Being overweight can cut years off of a life, and cause life altering conditions.

5) Self Esteem: Even without bullying, self esteem is going to suffer. All it takes is a mirror and the television set. Knowing that you are over the weight limit can cause poor body image. This can lead to depression and sometimes to serious problems. Some may become cutters, and some have committed suicide over this issue.

6) National Security: Because of the health issues caused by obesity, many men and women who want to join the military are being turned away. This matter has been brought up on news reports, and it is something to pay attention to. If our military has trouble getting new recruits, how are we going to be able to defend ourselves?

In case you are looking for the answers to such questions, find below the answers that you might just be looking for. Here are some of them to help you start preventing childhood obesity in your child:

1. Eating The Right Kinds Of Food
Since parents choose the foods that the children will eat; or better yet, pay for all the groceries and the restaurant bills, the authority on what to buy or what to order should be the parents themselves. Simply put, we as adults should have the last say as to what will go through our credit cards.

What’s more, since it’s everyone’s job to prevent childhood obesity, we must know the kinds of foods that we should include in their daily diet. These comprise of the protein-rich foods such as the dairy products cheese, butter, milk, nuts, fish, meat, vegetables and fruits, cereals and so many others. Instead of buying chips, buy your kids their favorite cereals. Instead of buying processed goods, buy the fresh ones. Get rid of canned goods and sodas and concentrate on making fresh fruit juices. Stop bringing your children to fast food restaurants to help them stay away from their most loved fries, nuggets, burgers, floats and sundaes.

2. Getting The Appropriate Exercise
Do not allow them to just sit the whole day playing with their DS or PS3 gadgets; or perhaps get glued on the couch to watch their most favorite shows. Because believe me, when they get glued there, every show becomes their favorite show!

Involve them in cleaning up their room especially during school breaks. That will give them a little sense of self-discipline. Ask them to walk your dogs on the park or the playground near your house. Or simply ask him to join you as you bike or run during weekends. There are in fact, a lot of activities that you can encourage your children to take if only you will do so. Swimming, basketball, badminton and so many other sports are just a few of the activities that will help them become more active; and thus, help them avoid getting obese.

3. Self-Discipline
Last but not least, teach your children about self-discipline because with it follows self-control. You do not have to be physically present all the time to tell your child what he needs to eat and not; or what he needs to do and not. Indeed, the responsibility is on our shoulders and there is no doubt that it’s everyone’s job to prevent childhood obesity. Are you doing a good job with your child? If not, now is the right time to start!

According to Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona, we may see the first generation of children that will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.

Up to now, each generation has had a longer life expectancy than their parents because we keep learning about better diets, have more modern medicine and technology to help us – and we have more information about healthy aging. But this knowledge has met up with a different and newer phenomenon – which is fast food and processed food. And children are paying the price as more of them are becoming extremely obese and obese at younger ages.

The rate of obesity among children and adolescents in the U.S. has almost tripled since the early 1980s but at present it has stopped increasing. Is this good news? Well yes it’s good that the rate is no longer increasing – but it’s bad that the rate is stuck at about 32% – because it is that 32% of our children who are the ones with lowered life expectancies. That’s nearly one-third of the younger population!

Why is their life expectancy shortened? These obese children have high blood pressure and elevated blood cholesterol levels, which are early indicators for cardiovascular disease. And they are also developing diabetes. These are medical issues that had previously been seen in adult populations and this is what is putting them at risk of dying decades younger than normal-weight children of the same ages.

And to make it even worse, it’s not just bad physical and medical effects that come from obesity which are effecting the children; there are psychological effects as well. Obese children have lower self-esteem, negative body image and are prone to depression.

We want our next generation of adults to have had as normally happy a childhood as possible with their development as optimized as it can be – and yet we are not giving one-third of our children this chance. Instead, we are in a childhood obesity epidemic and shortening their lives.

This is a societal problem and cannot be solved solely by telling parents to “watch” what their children eat. We need the parents to act differently because children model their parents – which is why obese parents have obese children who turn into obese adults – if they live that long!

We need correct nutritional information and food education – and we need it now if we are to prevent childhood obesity and increase the life expectancy of children.

There are many way we can prevent child hood obesity. I would like to mention six practical ones that can be done by any parent, grand parent or care takers.

Get rid of all junk from your shopping list, your house and your car, even in your bags. All junk food is made to look so appetizing to the palate and when we see it, we want it. However if the food is not there, then we will have to do with what is available. Fill your pantry with colorful fruits and vegetables. Display the fruits at a child’s reach all washed and ready to eat. Clean all vegetables that can be used as a snack, cut them into small pieces and keep them in the fridge where a child can easily reach.

Feed your child six small meals all through the day. Have a healthy breakfast option first thing in the morning, a smoothie is always a great place to start. Do not force the child to eat, just make the food available when the child is hungry. If you force your child to eat then they will always eat everything on their platter even if it is not healthy. You want to avoid that.

Serve small portions of food. Do not have a large plate full of food for the child, small size is healthy and encourages self control.

Cook food at home. When you eat outside, often you will be tempted to buy soda and fried foods. If you cook from home, you will use what you have, and making french fries at home is hard. Home cooked food is fresh, tastes better and it encourages familiarity in the home.

Let the children help you prepare the meals. It works like magic, if the children help in meal preparation they own the meal, they feel like they did it and they will always eat it. They can cut the vegetables, add spices, taste the salads for seasoning, they can add fruits in the blender for the smoothies and they can run the blender. Safety is paramount but with your watch, they can help a lot and stay healthy.

Finally let the children play. Creativity in playing will make the children do more and get more from their playing. You do not have to tell them what to do, the children can always come up with what something to get them moving. When I say play, I do not mean video games, computer games or TV games. I mean, them getting outside or in their room and finding out ways to play, to run, to compete, even to fight. It is healthy for them. Buying children all the toys is killing their creativity and making them obese.

A lot of kids nowadays receive a lot because parents don’t want to refuse to their children. I don’t know if it is because so many children are being raised in single parent households, and they think when they don’t surrender for their child they may wish to go live with another parent. Or if they don’t give in to their children they will not love them or believe that they are the best parents around. I’m not sure what the real reason is behind parents letting their kids be in control, but it’s bad.

Without boundaries kids feel insecure, and parents are not doing their kids any favors by not setting down rules. Are you aware that based on Sarah Anderson, an epidemiologist there are three behaviors parents can make to their lifestyle that is associated with lowering the chance of obesity in kids. She analyzed data on 8,550 four year olds in a national study and found “The more of these routines the kids had, the lower was their chance of obesity.” She went on to say “If children had all three routines, their chance of obesity was 40% less than children who had no routines.”

You are probably curious in regards to what these three behaviors are that may lower obesity in children. They are quite basic routines that many people can adopt. Some families with different working hours could have a little more trouble implementing, but it is still doable. They are:

1. Eating dinner regularly with family. Eating a nutritious dinner with family a minimum of six or seven times per week.
2. Limiting children’s TV time to 2 hours each day
3. Getting at least 10.5 hours of sleep every night.

Based on the findings within this study, it suggests that by implementing these three routines, a household may have a powerful method to encourage healthy weight in their children in spite of their socioeconomic background.

Previously it was customary to eat together, however it doesn’t appear to be anymore. It had been a time a family spent together eating and talking about a full day, a time period of sharing and building self-confidence in a single another. Now it’s become a drive through experience, or a sit in front of the TV watching other people live.

To assist limit TV time, engage your children in family fun activities. Get going, kids ought to be active at least an hour each day. Exercise with your kids. Be an example. Possess a jump rope contest, play hopscotch together, and go bike ride. Let your kids pick some activity they would like to learn a treadmill they are doing well, and merely do it. Have some fun and obtain from the couch.

Sleep is crucial for children. A collection bedtime for weekdays, and weekends are a must. Routine, routine, routine, I can not emphasize just how important routines are to kids. The greater your kids understand what to anticipate the more secure they’re. Both you and your children are experiencing benefits from added sleep time.

The best way to improve your child’s weight is by implementing these changes like a family together. If questions arise why you’re changing some misconception emphasize wellness rather than weight. The bottom line is to begin. Even if it means just starting with one of these simple routines, and adding the following, until you do all three. They’re at your fingertips of the average family.

I know my friend has no set schedule, she’s no rules governing her TV time, and she has no set bedtime. My concern for her is real, and I is going to be there to encourage her, and become there when she needs me.