Childhood obesity is of epidemic proportions in the United States. Attention focuses on such areas as fast food and food packaging. Companies should be conscience about the impact of their products, but the nutritionally void products come from demand. As parents, we have to look to ourselves to solve this problem. As long as the demand is great, companies will meet the demand. After all a company's first responsibility is to make profit.
Early in a child's life, their parent is everything. Children only know what their parent presents to them. As they grow up, they emulate their parents until they reach an age of discernment. These early behaviors manifest themselves in habits that children find hard to change as they enter teenage years and on into adulthood. The best way to fight childhood obesity is to take accountability for the behaviors that build good fitness habits and not lay blame on food manufactures and food producers.
First, as parents we can start educating our children early in their lives. Help them to differentiate between bad foods and good foods. Too often, we give into children's demands for candy, and sugar based foods to minimize crying and other annoying behaviors. How do you eliminate this problem?
- As parents, educate yourself about good nutrition.
- Eat healthy.
- Stock only healthy foods in the house and expose your children to healthy foods early.
- Learn to create recipes that are tasty and appeal to children's tastes, e.g. smoothies instead of milk shakes made with ice cream.
- Get your children involved in planning and making meals and snacks. This way they learn what taste good and why it is good nutrition.
- Start early in your children's life to change their behavior patterns.
- Become familiar with their external environments, e.g. school, the mall and discuss with them healthy choices where they have limited availability to nutritional foods. Try to eat at school with them and eat at the mall with them.
Hand-in-hand with nutrition is movement. We live in the age of computers and video games. Children are becoming sedate in alarming numbers. In many households where both parents work the parents stop and buy hamburger meals, carry the meal home where children grab their bag and promptly retire to their room to logon to the computer while they down a high calorie, high fat, and high carbohydrate meal. They then spend hours on the computer and go to bed with few calories burned. What is wrong with this picture?
- Parents have less time to spend with families today. It is important to create an environment where families can sit down to a meal together and have fellowship with each other. When eating together there is a better chance to excuse everyone from the meal to take a short walk or participate in some other physical activity for a few minutes.
- If parents relegate themselves to sitting on the couch and watching television children will emulate the same behavior. Encourage the whole family to go outside for a walk, ride bikes, go to the park, or any other opportunity to move and burn calories.
- Kids love computers. This culture parents are not going to change. Nevertheless, guess what we can use it to help our children become fit. WII Fit™ is a great computer based program that focuses on exercise and makes it fun. There are personal trainers who have web sites that offer fitness challenges where the whole family can participate. Each family member has their own web site where the trainer interacts and customizes their fitness program and the whole family has a web page that represents the whole family's progress. You could even involve, aunts, uncles, grandparents that do not live in the same community. These tools are available and inexpensive compared to the cost of obesity and health problems.
- During a child's early years where they play on playgrounds parents need to participate. They should not take a good book to read. They should chase their child around the playground, teach them to swing on the monkey bars, help them pull themselves up ladders, and participate actively while the child is playing. This not only shows the child good exercise behaviors, but gives the parent a chance to bond to the child.
- Involve kids in sports and intramural programs. Even if they are not gifted athletes, they will benefit from the activities and it teaches them teamwork, builds confidence, and teaches them how to overcome failure.
As parents, we need to become examples for our children. Eating nutritionally, getting up off the couch, and moving sends very powerful signals to our children during their formative years that will set habits well into their adulthood. We should not look to assign blame on others but take accountability for our children's fitness and wellness.
To see a model of a computer based "fitness challenge" go to www.strategyforfitness.com and click on "Fitness challenge".
Attack Childhood Obesity
Vic Vogel
Certified Personal Trainer/Sports Nutritionist
