How to prevent or reverse childhood obesity | Your Healthy Child

Posted on October 7, 2012
By Amanda King
Fitness and Nutrition

Obese children are at risk for developing the same health problems of adults. (shutterstock photo)

About one in every five children in the U.S. is overweight or obese?, and that statistic isn?t improving over time.?Obese children are at risk for developing the same health problems of adults with poor health habits, such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and cholesterol, joint, bone and skin problems, depression and low self-esteem. What can we do to prevent childhood obesity, or to correct the problem in children who are already overweight?

We all know the answer lies in eating healthy and getting plenty of exercise, but what does that really mean?

Many children, just like adults, struggle with what and how much to eat, and how to get the right amount of movement to achieve a healthy weight. How can we properly implement healthy habits in the lives of our children to help them get and keep their bodies healthy?

The Center for Disease Control recommends that children get at least 60 minutes of physical activity daily. ?This may sound like a lot of exercise, but most children easily meet this recommendation when given the opportunity to play in an active way.

Running around the playground with friends, riding bikes and scooters, and participating in sports are all easy, fun ways for a kid to meet her exercise goals. Send your child outside to play, make a date to meet friends at the park, or take up an active hobby such as roller skating, and exercise with her. Most kids don?t respond to isolated, pressured physical activity like jogging or walking on the treadmill, and that?s okay. Climbing across the monkey bars and playing soccer with friends count as exercise. (Maybe you could even benefit from changing up some of your boring workouts for an evening on a local bike trail or a game of basketball with your child?)

Probably the most influential component of your child?s health and the fight against childhood obesity is eating habits. Your children should be loading up on fruits and vegetables at every meal.

Alongside a hearty helping of veggies, they should be eating small portions of whole grains like brown rice, quinoa, whole grain pasta or bread, and small portions of heart healthy proteins like organic tofu, tempeh, nuts and nut butters, beans and legumes, chia and other seeds, organic eggs and hormone and antibiotic free meats.

Forget packaged foods, even low calorie and low fat ?diet foods? like rice cakes or sugar free candy and cookies, which are loaded with chemicals that interfere with the body?s healthy functioning.

you are the biggest influence in your child?s life. (shutterstock photo)

Don?t focus on the scale. If your child is working hard to implement healthy habits, celebrate what he is doing right!

Reward him for exercising and making heart healthy choices, and don?t put pressure on him to weigh a certain amount. Focusing too much on the number on the scale could cause embarrassment and anxiety, and probably won?t work, in the first place.

Remember that the goal isn?t necessarily to have a smaller body, but a more healthy one.

Overweight children are very aware of their bodies, and how their weight makes them different from other kids. Many of them have encountered bullying at the hands of classmates and insensitive remarks from adults. No one has ever gotten healthy by being made to feel ashamed.

Bringing up weight over and over will only serve to remind your child why he doesn?t feel good enough, and undermine the confidence he needs to succeed at getting healthy. Weight is simply an indicator, in a long list of indicators, of someone?s level of health.

Cardiovascular fitness, strength, energy levels and stress management are also important aspects of being healthy that should also be paid attention to and strived for equally.

Focusing on weight alone is likely to make your child fail at getting healthy. Focusing instead on a newfound sports skill or cooking together or on a fitness goal will allow your child to make choices that will lead to greater health and weight loss, without framing the experience in a way that is shame inducing and overly concerned with his size.

Overweight kids are reminded every day, by themselves, by other kids, by the adults they look up to and by the media, that there something wrong with them because of their size. They don?t need any more negative messages about their bodies. They need to find ways to love the things their bodies are capable of, which will happen as they get stronger and more skilled at being active, and as they feel better from eating better things.

Most importantly, set a good example. If you want your child to be healthy, the most helpful thing you can do is to live a healthy life yourself.

Children learn to interact with the world through an imitation of role models, and as a parent, you are the biggest influence in your child?s life.

Eat healthy, move your body and celebrate all the things your body can do, instead of obsessively weighing yourself and putting yourself down. Make health a priority in your own life, and it will soon become a priority in the lives of your children.

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Article source: http://www.voxxi.com/prevent-childhood-obesity/

Source: http://yourhealthychild.net/how-to-prevent-or-reverse-childhood-obesity/

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