Preventing child obesity means that we need to examine how our children eat and what they eat.  As parents, we need to provide them with nutritional meals and eliminate items such as sugary drinks and fatty snack foods.  We have become a society of people in a hurry.  We are in such a hurry that we don’t have time to stop and eat a nutritional meal.  Instead, we speed through the drive through and purchase a meal that contains enough calories to sustain us for an entire week.

It is becoming very important to think about these serious issues and work towards preventing child obesity by changing how we ourselves look at food and also how we get involved in physical activity.  We need to work together as a family unit towards healthier lifestyles.  This means purchasing more healthy food items, such as lean meats, whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables and lower fat milk products.  The more close to fresh that the food is, the better the value of the nutrition that it contains.

This means we need to avoid processed foods which contain unnecessary ingredients of no particular nutritional value to us.  They do not sustain us, only fill us for a short time and in fact, many of these foods are so high in things like sodium and sugar that they are very unhealthy for us and for our bodies.  When you consider children, their bodies are growing and developing at a very rapid rate, and it is of the utmost importance that they receive good nutritional value from the foods that they eat.

In addition, we need to discuss with our children the changes that we implement and why we are making those changes.  The more your children understand about good and bad food choices, the more they will learn about the effect that unhealthy eating habits can have upon them.  You can teach your children that preventing child obesity begins at home by making sensible choices and forming good eating habits.  Too often we rush when we eat.  The simple act of sitting around a dinner table as a family unit with no television on in the background can make all the difference in the world.

There is a way to get good advice on preventing ,The Youth Fitness Solution .

We have forgotten how to eat healthy and be active and it is showing up in the most alarming places, such as our children.  The rate of obesity in children is rising annually and we need to get a handle on this, because if we do not, our children will not outlive us.

With obesity increasing amongst our youngest citizens, we need to look to our government to outlaw things such as trans fats, which they have been working on for several years now.  We need to understand that if we do not demand change and implement it in our lifestyles, we will pay the ultimate price with the onset of serious disease and early death.

Children have become increasingly sedentary and are exposed to sugary, high fat food choices, from snacks to school cafeteria lunches.  The schools do not even seem to be overly concerned about their offerings, because it is well within the budget to provide these low nutrition meals to our children.

If your child is exposed to these types of foods and snacks, they may well have an issue with obesity increasing, and they may develop various serious illnesses that are ultimately preventable.  It is important to immediately implement changes when and where possible.  This does not mean putting your child on a “diet”, it means offering healthier and more filling nutritional food choices.  It means ensuring that they consume more fruits and vegetables and less sugary beverages.  It also means that you make sure that you and your family become more active and do things together, such as bike riding, walking or hiking.

There are many ways that you can get involved and take action, including:

·    Eating breakfast together as a family – which improves concentration for children who attend school, makes them more alert and helps them to function better emotionally.
·    Try to eat healthy meals at home, as opposed to food on the go at a fast food restaurant.
·    Set a good example by exercising regularly yourself and making healthy food choices.  Children do what you do, so if your habit is to sit down with a big bowl of ice cream after dinner, they will want the same.
·    Children are much more likely to become and stay active if their parents lead an active lifestyle.

With obesity increasing, not only in adults but in children in particular, it is very urgent that we start to take action by eating more healthy and getting regular exercise, together, as a family.

Here’s a simple solution to the obesity problem, if your looking for ways to help your child with this problem.

Click here to get your copy of The Youth Fitness Solution

Our entire society is growing more obese annually and we need to find a solution to this growing problem before we all succumb to the effects of being obese.  Not only is being obese unhealthy, it puts unnecessary strain on the joints and the heart that can cause a plethora of issues.

When we look at the growing problem of obesity adolescents are now faced with their own set of problems.  Many of these adolescents are fifty percent larger than their counterparts ten years ago.  They have learned to consume food with no limits and they do not even consider the long term consequences.

Eventually, if they do not deal with their obesity adolescents do not have a prospect of living into their middle years.  Taking into account the strain they are putting on their organs and their heart, high blood pressure, diabetes and various other diseases, they are shortening their lives by eating, unabated, and not even getting adequate exercise to sustain their health.

The basic premise to optimal health is calories in and calories out.  If you consume more calories than you burn off, then you gain weight.  If you eat foods that are high in fat constantly, you gain weight, and soon, you become obese.  Obesity is quickly becoming the number one cause of death in our society.  It is reaching critical mass and we must do something about it before it is too late.

The future of our planet is threatened with the prospect of our next generation dying off before they even get to live their lives.  What can be done about the epidemic of obesity adolescents face?  We can work towards educating our youth about the importance of healthy eating habits and regular exercise.  We will have to hope against hope that it is not too late to reach them and tell them that they must change their ways or shorten their lives by as much as 40 years.

The availability of unhealthy and cheap food that is high in fat and caloric is unprecedented.  We need to press our governments to regulate the kinds of foods that can be sold by these restaurants.  We have to stand up for our society and tell these restaurants that we do not want unhealthy food.  We want to have healthy, reasonable portions that won’t kill us by making us obese and unhealthy.  We also have to educate our children in schools about the dangers of overeating and leading a sedentary lifestyle.  If we don’t take action now, there won’t be a future for our children.

Let The Youth Fitness Solution, help guide you to a better life style.

Children are our future, but unfortunately, obesity is threatening their existence and life span.  It is important to educate ourselves on how we can reverse this trend and take care of our children, reducing them to healthier weight ranges that can increase their chances of attaining a longer life.

Most of the education that we need with respect to nutrition and activity is common sense.  You need to eat less unhealthy food, eat a wider variety of foods, including fruits and vegetables and burn off the calories that are consumed with regular activity and exercise.  The problems begin with our super sedentary lifestyle, where we are constantly being presented with very low cost high calorie food choices.

It is entirely possible to eat a better diet by searching for sales at grocery stores and purchasing in bulk to ensure that you get a good price on items.  Many cities have multiple competing grocery stores and you can use this competition to your advantage when you are shopping for healthier food choices.

Articles on childhood obesity tell us that children who are obese have low self esteem and are much more likely to be bullied and harassed throughout their school lives.  They become socially isolated and have a hard time fitting in.  They also experience high levels of stress and anxiety which makes it difficult for them to complete their school work or to function on a daily basis.

Children that are obese are also more likely to develop learning disabilities because of the issues that they are dealing with.  Obesity can also lead to high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and cancer amongst some of the more serious diseases.  Liver disease can also develop along with the chance of strokes.

Reading articles on childhood obesity can educate you and open your eyes to the possibilities of what will happen to your child if you do not take action and change their eating habits and lifestyle.  It is important to incorporate activity into your family’s lifestyle, whether it means going out for family hikes, bike rides or a simple walk every day.

Another really good source of information and methods is, The Youth Fitness Solution.

We have changed a lot over the years, into a society of convenience.  We no longer even have to leave the house if we don’t want to.  We can pick up the phone and order pizza, or any other number of high calorie take out foods.  Note, you don’t often see salad delivery!  Take out food, convenience food, processed food, these are all laden with calories and unnecessary ingredients that do us more harm than good.

Learning to sustain ourselves on these types of foods is a very bad choice.  Even worse, we are teaching our children that it is okay to eat out of the box, instead of turning to fresher food solutions with nutritional value.

The youth obesity solution is to change entirely the way that we eat including what we eat and portion sizes.  Often, going out to eat at a restaurant means that you are given a super sized portion that is far too much food for the average person.  This is not even taking into consideration the option of going to a full serve buffet.  A person can load up a plate, consume everything on it and then return for seconds or thirds.  A family can go to this type of restaurant and eat a weeks’ worth of food, collectively, in just one sitting.

We really need to rein ourselves in and take a good look at our lifestyles and our eating habits.  We are teaching our children that when you are hungry, you eat.  That in itself is not the problem.  The problem is that we are choosing foods that are very unhealthy for us, while containing no real nutritional value.  The youth obesity solution is to show our children how to eat in a more healthy way and also to be physically active.

with our modern lifestyle is not only the amount and type of food we consume, but also the lack of activity that we do on a daily basis.  Many of us will eat and then retreat to the living room couch to watch television for the rest of the evening.  A better choice would be to, collectively, as a family, get out for a walk after dinner.  This allows us to spend time together as a family and to help to burn off and process the dinner we recently consumed.

Books on childhood obesity.

It is possible to reduce the amount of calories that you eat; however, this will slow down your metabolism, because your body will see the reduction in calories as a form of starvation, and then it will attempt to preserve the calories that you consume by storing them as fat. Once you reach this slow resting metabolic rate, it becomes nearly impossible to lose weight at all.

The relationship between exercise and obesity is clear. You cannot lose weight without exercising. This is why many of our children are obese. These days, children watch an inordinate amount of television. Many of them are glued to computers and video games for hours on end. One good rule of thumb is to limit their “screen time” with respect to any of these activities to two hours or less per day. If you tend to have big arguments with your children about the actual amount of time, agree on a timer system. You will set a timer to a predetermined amount of screen time, once the timer goes off, your children will immediately shut off the tv, computer, video game or whatever they are involved with and do a physical activity.

You can assist in encouraging your children to become active by doing activities together with them. Family activities can be fun, such as skating, walking, hiking, playing volleyball at the beach, swimming or riding bikes. It does not have to be an activity that is grueling, so long as you all get out together and do something physical several times per week.

Exercise and obesity are directly related. Exercise combats obesity and that is all you really need to know. You do not need to be an athlete to exercise, you simply need to get off the couch and get moving. Eating in a healthier way and consuming foods that are more valuable nutritionally are also excellent ways to decrease weight. Children learn what you teach them, and so if you teach them to eat in a more healthy way, they will learn that they just feel better when they eat foods that are better for them.

If children are offered poor choices in food, including foods that are sugary, high in fat and have very little nutritional value, they will consume more calories than they require and that is when obesity starts to become a major problem.

Exercise is not a bad word, find out why.

If we do not get a handle on this epidemic obesity, our health care systems will soon become overloaded with the complications of being overweight, including sleep apnea, heart issues, high blood pressure and hypertension.

Often, when people climb the scales to epic proportions, their only option is gastric bypass surgery once they reach a certain weight.  It is not uncommon for a person who is obese or morbidly obese to weigh in at over 400 pounds.  This immense weight can cause other problems physically, making it impossible to walk or move around without pain, leaving many massively overweight people bedridden.

The US Surgeon General reported that the epidemic obesity cost over 117 billion directly and indirectly when examining the cost of health care.  One senator who underwent gastric bypass surgery helped to pass a bill forcing insurance companies to offer coverage for such surgeries.

Insurance companies are paying for epidemic obesity in one way or another, whether it is for medications to keep the morbidly obese alive or the ultimate surgery to deal with the issue of obesity, gastric bypass surgery.  This is, of course, not the magic bullet, because removing 95% of the stomach necessitates that a person has to take numerous supplements each and every day just to remain alive.

The youngest recipient of gastric bypass surgery was 16 years of age. This alone is a wake up call to us that we need to examine not only how we eat, but how much exercise we get.  We cannot continue on this destructive path of consumption and sedentary lifestyle and expect to remain alive past our forties.

Children need to be educated on proper food choices and becoming active.  The best way to do this is to lead by example and to show our children that physical activity can be fun as well as enjoyable.  Doing activities together as a family is one of the best ways to accomplish this.  As well, we need to consider carefully how we eat and what we eat.  It is time to ditch those empty calorie snack foods and implement healthier eating habits before it is too late.

The Youth Fitness Solution, can help!

Over 26% of children in the United States are overweight or obese.  These children are at risk of being obese in adulthood and are at a much higher risk of having chronic disease such as type 2 diabetes, heart attack, stroke, joint issues and even mental health issues.

The major risk factors that contribute to the obesity in children are inadequate physical activity and very poor eating habits.  The calories in are generally a lot higher than the calories out (activity) due to the lifestyle that we lead which encourages less physical activity and more high calorie convenience foods.  The very minimum of physical activity of any kind should be at least 90 minutes per day, whether it is walking or playing or any other moderate activity, yet over 51%  of children do not even come close to this basic guideline.

Increased screen time, including television, computer and video games is one of the leading factors to obesity.  Of the most frightening child obesity facts, this increased screen time of just two hours per day led to increased obesity in children.  The average child spends 35 hours in front of a screen of some type, and this represents more time than is spent in the average classroom at school.

More alarming child obesity facts point to children consuming far too many calories due to increase portion sizes, higher intake of fatty foods and processed foods as well as sugary drinks.  In fact, the consumption of sugary drinks is one of the leading factors of childhood obesity.

Socio economic factors are also a leading cause of child hood obesity.  It is known that family income has a big effect on access to food and physical activity such as organized sports.  Low income families tend to purchase foods that are lower cost with less nutritional value and higher fat and starch content.  Higher income families can generally afford to purchase more expensive lean meats and fruits and vegetables.  Basically, lower income families purchase foods that are higher in energy without the nutritional value, leaving their children at risk for obesity.

Another leading factor in childhood obesity is where a child lives.  Those who live in better neighborhoods tend to have greater access to parks and playgrounds and will get more physical activity.

The Youth Fitness Solution, can help!

One side effect of this convenient lifestyle and lack of physical activity is obesity among children.  Children are now larger than they have ever been.  They are used to a very sedentary lifestyle, unseen before modern times.  It used to be that children were an integral part of the historical lifestyle, and many were expected to pull their own weight on farms with chores and completing daily work.  These days, there are no such expectations place on children, and many are bored.

Video games have become a staple of children’s lives and is one of the leading contributors to obesity among children.  There are no physical requirements to play video games, except to hold a controller and play a game.  Add to this activity high calorie snack foods that are mindlessly consumed while games are being played and you have a recipe for disaster and severe weight gain.

The combination of the sedentary lifestyle, high calorie foods and neglect of nutritional needs all contribute to obesity among children.  It is not long until children start to become super obese if they are left unchecked.  It is very important to encourage your children to choose healthy snack foods, and you can assist with these choices, as a parent, by providing them with healthy options rather than purchasing junk when you shop.  You should read food labels to examine the value of the food, if there in fact is any.

You should also encourage your children to get involved in extracurricular activities, such as swimming, soccer, baseball or any other sport they may show an interest in.  If your child is overweight, there may be special classes for them to allow them to exercise moderately to work up to the more demanding length of physical activity that average weight children participate in.

Identifying obesity among children and then doing something about it is very important.  The food consumption and activity levels that children develop or do not develop in their child hood are habits that will follow them for a lifetime.  Obesity into adulthood can bring on many dangerous diseases, and so it is important to try and deal with the obesity issue with good nutrition and adequate activity while your children are young.

For more information how to deal with, Your Childs Weight Loss!

If you are concerned about child obesity fast food should be eliminated from their diet.  Fast food does not really provide much nutritional value in any event, it is a lot of empty calories and fat.  This fat and those calories are not burned off in a child who is already obese, and it only adds to their condition and problems.

It is important, as a parent, to provide and encourage healthy food choices for your children.  With child obesity, fast food is one of the main items that you will need to eliminate.  If it is a regular habit of your family to consume fast food, then you will need to examine this aspect of your lifestyle and try to change the eating habits of your family as a unit.

One really good starting point is the government food pyramid.  If you have a look at their website, you will see guidelines that are set out within each food group.  You can then determine the total amount of foods that should be consumed within each food group and start to keep track of this consumption.  Adding more fruits and vegetables into your children’s diet is an excellent way to improve their health.  In addition, eliminate altogether those fast foods and do not at any time offer food as a reward.  Food as a reward encourages obesity.

The major problem with food as a reward is that it leads to your child associating food with good feelings, and at any time they have an issue or a problem, they will turn to food to solve their problems.  This, of course is not the best way to deal with an issue of any kind.

Fast food is convenient; however when it comes to child obesity fast food is a major contributing factor.  We need to get a handle on this soon before we eliminate all of our healthy food choices.  Forcing fast food restaurants to offer healthier choices is one approach by the government.  They are outlawing trans fats, for example, which forces fast food restaurants to re think the kind of food that they are serving to us and to our children.

Ned a guide, The Youth Fitness Solution.