Childhood Obesity prevention tips

Gone are the days when children played around for whole day and their mothers had to call them back home for study and other activities. Today, on an average four out of six children spend their time watching Television for more than five hours a day. The present generation is very television centric and sees their world through an idiot box.

Watch out if your child does not spend his/her energy in any physical activity and instead he/she likes sitting in front of a TV screen for hours eating junk food, if he/she is getting lazy to such an extent that he/she don’t even want to move across home, if your child eats too much and move too little, this might lead your child to obesity, which now a days has become an epidemic among children. The number of children who are facing obesity problem has doubled in last few years and the number is sure to increase in next few years.

There are many causes of obesity like energy imbalance where kids are not able to consume the energy they get from food they eat, instead they spend less energy in physical activity, habit of eating junk food, which is one large source of fat which accumulates in body, heredity takes some share of obesity in children. Along with all other reasons causing obesity in children, genetic factors play an important role; children with obese parents are at high-risk end.

Children with obesity problem are prone to many other diseases. It was a time when type 2 diabetes was found only in adults whereas now it is common in obese children. Overweight children continue to be overweight adults inviting diseases like heart disease, high blood pressure, asthma, hypertension and stroke. But the most undesirable thing that can happen to an obese child is social discrimination, overweight children are teased and this develops a low self-esteem causing them stay away from society.

If you don’t want your child to be obese and face any problem, then you must hurry up and talk to a good doctor. You should take care of Body Mass Index (BMI) of your child, get your child weighed and calculate the height-weight ratio regularly and compare it with a health chart to keep control of the extra flesh that your child is carrying. It is very important to teach kids the importance of fitness. Parents should guide their child encouraging physical activities and a healthy lifestyle. Parents should take care of making their child follow a proper exercise program. It is observed that exercise has not been a successful strategy; it should be accompanied with other things such as educating kids of fitness benefits, encouragement of other physical activities etc. Proper diet management should be followed. As it is not at all possible to stop children from eating junk food, or the food they like, it is better to try and teach them the problems, which they might face because of the eating habit they entertain.

Be sensitive to your kids, do not place restrictive diet plan, ask your child for his/her liking, do not stop them from eating what they want and avoid making your child follow a specific diet, instead try to change their habit gradually and teach them the difference that the healthy food would cause. Involvement of entire family is a motivating factor, participate in different activities with your child, plan for family activities like exercise, sports etc. Teach your child how he/she can control his/her habits.

There are some good techniques, which can help in fighting obesity in children, but before all a good doctor must be consulted in deciding which program to follow. Drug treatment is also available to bring down the problem of obesity in adolescents, however no drug has been approved to treat obesity in children. Surgical procedures such as gastric bypass have been performed successfully on adolescents. However surgery for adolescents is usually considered only when severe medical conditions are present that can improve with the surgery.