Save your Children from being Obese

Children don’t become obese by accident. I know that the few extra pounds to start with can easily go unnoticed, but the signs that a child is becoming overweight are usually fairly obvious after a certain stage has been reached. For a start the clothes that have to be bought as the child grows in size are a fairly obvious indicator that growth other than just height is happening.

It's the parents’ responsibility to prevent their children from becoming obese. If your child is becoming overweight, then you need to do something about it. Do not wait until your child is obese. Obesity is something that must be prevented.

If you follow the advice given in this article you’ll go a long way to helping your child to become fit and healthy. (and will probably become fit and healthy yourself. What a great side-effect!)

What are the common causes of children becoming obese?

The most obvious causes are overeating and lack of exercise.

(a) If your child is constantly snacking between meals, especially if the ‘food’ is crisps or chocolate or things like that, then the fat will just grow and grow.

(b) If your child is also quite inactive, for example, sits watching TV or playing games on the computer most of the time, then this is a contributory factor to the increase in weight.

So the first thing you must do is to change your children’s eating habits.

Slowly get your children either to cut out the snacks or make them healthier. Slowly is the important word here and a gradual introduction of any changes you make will certainly be most beneficial.
Then you should see exactly how healthy your children’s meals are and the first things to eliminate are the sweet foods; chocolate cakes, donuts, etc. (but remember, slowly does it)
Breakfast is an important meal. Start the day off in a healthy way. Fruits, low fat milk and wheat cereals, etc. for breakfast is a great way to start the day.

Then for the rest of the day’s meals try to introduce as many vegetables as you can. This can be difficult, I know.

One way I tried to persuade my children to eat more vegetables was to cook about six different ones for all the family. We’d sit down together and everyone had to eat at least a small amount of each vegetable, even if it was only one pea!

The other method to increase the amount of vegetables eaten was to mash all the vegetables except peas and potatoes together and present everyone with meat (chicken or other lean meat) or fish, peas, potatoes and a multi-coloured vegetable mush. Magically they all ate the mush and enjoyed it!

If eating vegetables becomes the normal thing to do for everyone (yes, adults included!) then it shouldn’t be too long before everyone is eating in a healthier way.

The second important way to keep your children from becoming obese is to introduce them to physical exercise.

Now the most common sorts of exercise are walking, running and swimming. They’re all aerobic type exercises and are good for all round health.

Sports, such as football, rugby, netball and hockey, either at school or at a local club are also great for keeping off those extra pounds. Others are gymnastics, karate and judo.

For the non-sporty children, you can find other activities they enjoy doing and change them into qualifying aerobic activities (See my article about changing an activity to a qualifying aerobic activity)

Explain the benefits of weight loss to your children. Also tell them about the bad things that can happen to those who don’t take enough exercise. Being the same size as the man in this picture not only looks terrible, but it is extremely unhealthy!

Mention the fact that obese people are more prone to heart diseases and diabetes. Telling them how some silly people make fun of obese people can sometimes be a clincher to persuade them to exercise.

If you maintain a good diet and get involved in qualifying aerobic exercise regularly, then your children will realize how important you feel this is and they’ll follow your example. .

Become fit and healthy together.