6 Steps to Beating Childhood Obesity

These days kids would rather spend time on the computer than go outside and kick a ball around or ride their bikes. And with all the junk food advertisements aimed at children by the media, us parents definitely have our jobs cut out for us.
The bottom line is our lifestyles have changed. We don’t walk as much as we used to. We eat pre-packaged or fast foods instead of home cooked meals. And what exercise can compete with video games?
Times have definitely changed but that doesn’t mean we have to completely give up. It’s just a matter of putting some simple measures into place.
Here are some easy tips to ensure your kids develop a life-long healthy lifestyle.
1. Limit your kids television, computer and video games time. This may not be easy at first, but be persistent. Suggest an activity they can do, or better yet go outside with them and join in. Children learn through example, so if you’re all set to go for a bike ride they may just want to join you.
2. Get your kids involved in the family food shopping. Make a list of healthy foods everyone agrees on and point out the health benefits to your kids. You’ll be surprised at how open to eating healthy your kids can be. You don’t have to drastically cut out the cakes and cookies altogether, but instead let each child choose one item they can enjoy as a special treat. This teaches kids to learn about moderation and that , yes, they can have cookies or chocolates as treats not as regular food staples.

Causes of Childhood Obesity

Obesity is defined as an excessive accumulation of body fat. Obesity is present when total body weight is more than 25 percent fat in boys and more than 32 percent fat in girls. There are various medicines like Phentermine, Adipex etc. which aid in the weight loss for adults but these medicines are definitely not meant for children.
Obesity in children leads to many risk factors. It is the leading cause of pediatric hypertension. It increases the risk of childhood cardiac disease, type2 Diabetes Mellitus, the risk of painful joints. But the most important what some researchers feel is the amount of psychological pressure and the social pressure that he has to undergo among his peers which make him susceptible to depression at times. Thus the social pressure is one of the main consequences of childhood obesity. Not all obese infants turn to obese children and similarly not all obese children turn to obese adults. Childhood obesity results from a combination of factors like genetic or hereditary, psychological, or nutritional.
Family: A child whose both parents are obese has a higher chance of developing obesity as compared to other children. This can happen for a variety of reasons like genetic factors or may be the sedentary lifestyle of the parents or the lack of exercise in their daily routine. This can make the child born with obesity.
Inactive Life: Children these days spend more of their time on playing video games and watching T.V. This has prevented the children of today to engage in some healthy ground activities like sports. Hence children are gradually becoming couch potatoes. Leading an inactive life has made them grow into an obese from just being overweight.

Malnutrition Causes Obesity

Axiom Number One - Nourish your body.
Probably the most important and least understood axiom of successful weight loss is that you have to nourish your body. The main reason why most people are overweight is that they are malnourished. In our modern grocery stores are all kinds of processed and packaged foods. The nutritional value of any food substance is inversely proportional to the amount of processing. The more a food is processed, the less nutrition is present.
Trace minerals and elements
Food grown by today's commercial methods are not grown in healthy soil. The soil is essentially dead and there is no life (nitrogen)sources in that soil. The nitrogen is added to the soil as liquid fertilizer along with a lot of not so good for your health -pesticides. This approach to farming may produce some great harvests, by weight, but not by nutrition standards. A lot of what the human body needs is lost in this type of food production.
Incomplete foods
When you eat a lot of heavily processed food grown in dead soil you do not get all the nutrients that the human body needs. You end up hungry all the time so you eat more of the same foods. In addition to being incomplete foods, they more often than not have added sweeteners and sometimes even added chemicals like aspartame (Nutrasweet). The body has to do something with all the added incomplete calories so it turns them into fat.

Obesity And Pregnancy

If you are overweight when you become pregnant, your physician will likely recommend that you gain less weight than a woman who is average or normal weight. You should not diet during pregnancy because it is vital that you supply your body and unborn baby with an adequate number of nutrients. What you can do however to minimize your weight gain is to ensure that you eat a healthy selection of foods during your pregnancy.
One of the best things you can do to avoid too much weight gain is ensure that you have a healthy selection of snacks handy when at times when hunger strikes. Think about things like yogurt, raisins, nuts, fruit and other healthy selections that are not only convenient but also taste good.
There are health conditions that being overweight or obese increases the risk for during pregnancy. Among these include:
- Preeclampsia
- Premature Birth
- Gestational Diabetes
- Cesarean Sections
Giving Birth to Children with Obesity Problems
Unfortunately women who are already overweight prior to pregnancy are more likely to gain excessive amounts of weight during pregnancy. Several studies have suggested that more than 80 percent of overweight and obese women will gain too much weight, defined as weight exceeding 40 pounds or more, during their pregnancy.

Obesity And Fast Foods - The Lethal Link

Obesity and fast foods - there's little doubt about the link. Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United states. And it's an epidemic that has grown side by side, step by step with the the fast food industry.
Eric Schlosser in his brilliant and shocking book, Fast Food Nation, describes the US as "an empire of fat," and he lays the blame for this clearly and convincingly at the door of the fast food industry.
Obesity Fast Food Data
Twice as many American adults are obese today as in the 1960s. More than half of all adults and a quarter of all children are now obese. Over this same period, fast food has become cheaper and easier to buy. Further evidence for the link between obesity and fast food can be found outside the US. Since the early 1980s, American-style fast food culture has spread like wildfire around the world... And obesity has followed, accompanied by its many unwelcome side effects: heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and other ills.
As people in countries like Japan and China have abandoned traditional healthy diets in favour of fast food, the rates of obesity and associated diseases have soared.
In countries which have resisted the spread of fast food culture, like France, Italy and Spain, obesity is far less of a problem. The good news is that there is now more awareness about the ill effects of fast food than ever before, thanks in part to books like Fast Food Nation and documentary movies like Morgan Spurlock's popular and punchy Super Size Me.