Does it bother you that obese kids are bullied or rejected every day and lead shorter, sicker lives than children of average weight? If you’re a parent and want to help, you have to understand the problem first. Obesity is a state where your body has excessive weight. It is a condition of medical concern. Obesity is not only related to your body fat, but once you have obesity, it is more likely that you will get other health issues.
Obesity results in two factors: first it will increase the mass of adipose tissue, and secondly it will increase pathogenetic products’ secretion from the enlarged big cells. The major contributors to childhood obesity are lifestyle issues — too little exercise and too many calories from food and beverages. But genetic and hormonal factors may also play a role.
Parents want everything good for their children and love to see them learn and grow. Few parents really know how to teach their kids to eat with attention and joy, mostly because they don’t know how themselves. Nurturing and teaching are the key responsibilities of parenting, and they often go together. Nurturing means providing healthy food that promotes growth and well-being. It also means avoiding using food as a bribe or love-substitute, or withholding food as a punishment. Kids in supermarkets whine for candy. Parents say, “If you’re good, you can have one piece.” Perhaps if they are extremely good, they can have the whole bag.
Goodness! In a child’s mind, it means only one thing: complying with the parental will, usually by being quiet and unobtrusive. If you are “good” you will receive highly concentrated simple and complex sugars and fats, which are naturally designed to feel good in the mouth and brain. The children will hence do everything to be “good”. This is emotional eating, which is a number one contributor to obesity. The parents also may push their poor habits to their children and hence making it even harder to control. It’s important to note that obesity in children is challenging to control in adulthood, as the cells are accustomed to high amounts of glucose. As such, it’s a call to all parents to first learn about better nutrition practices and pass the same to their children.
The most critical periods in childhood obesity are before birth, from after birth to 5, and from 11 to 13. Parents need to control what their children eat during this period. It’s important for parents to help control the amount of food the children taking into their stomachs when kids are going through the exact three periods. If kids don’t get a good habit of controlling how much they are taking in, it’s really difficult for them to lose weight afterwards. This is especially through adequate diet band encouraging physical activity.
