Lately the child obesity rate is more and more prominent on the news. Obesity in a child can aggravate the risk for more child health issues like diabetes, dyslipidemia, cardiovascular diseases, lack of sufficient bone density, sleep problems, psychological symptoms and gastro-intestinal problems. Such disorders can be expected to continue into adulthood. Research has unfortunately shown that obese children has a much higher risk than other people to turn into obese adults.

Despite all the above, it is possible for parents to make a positive impact on the lifestyle of their offspring and give them the guidance that will ensure a happy and healthy adulthood.

What role can parents play to have a positive impact on obesity amongst children? Parents must address the causes of childhood obesity. Parents must pay attention to their kids and help them to feel that they belong and that they are in a secure environment. Children that are neglected by their parents have a much higher likelyhood of obesity than their peers. Be sure not to force your kids to eat more than they feel like at mealtime, all you will achieve is to train your child’s metabolic system to make your child eat more than he or she needs.

The amount of food eaten is not what is most important. It is much more important that the child must eat healthy food and then also get sufficient exercise to burn of the calories. If you worry too much about your child’s weight you are going to encourage eating behaviours that are abnormal.

Your child should not spend so much time in front of the telly. As your child spends more time in front of the TV so he or she will be more obese,TV obviously reduces physical activity, and then it naturally also reduces the body’s metabolism. The junk food commercials on television also affects children, they are encouraged to eat more junk food and drink beverages with high levels of sugar leading to increased weight problems for the kid.

If you can see that your kid weighs more than he or she should and is on the way to being obese, consult with a physician as soon as you can, to ensure that obesity is halted quickly and effectively. It is a myth that mothers to be have to eat for two people, too much food while you are pregnant just dramatically increases the possibility that both you and your unborn child will in future become obese. The young infant must be breastfeeded for at least one year. With your infant still very young, a greater emphasis should be on fruits, and vegetables and grains while all the time monitoring to see if the youngster is really hungry before feeding it.

If the risk that your child will become obese is high, you should consider using fat free milk instead of full cream milk. Sugar and fat containing snacks must be avoided, because they are high in low nutritional value calories. If your kid is still at school, you must enforce rules as to how much time can be spent each day watching television, snacks must be nutritious, food treats will be allowed only occasionally and generally good food habits must be maintained.

The child obesity epidemic is not static, it keeps on increasing with each passing year and, since 1981, there has been a dangerously high increase. The childhood obesity epidemic poses a great risk to our children’s children, it is now the time to stop it on a globewide scale.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 3:56 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.