The eating habits that most people carry on for their entire lives are those that are established during childhood. For this reason, the diet of the entire family is of concern when a child is overweight. The most common scenario is an overweight child with one or more overweight siblings and with at least one parent with weight issues. Trying to solve the child’s weight problem is as much a matter of getting the entire family involved as it is addressing specific issues with the child. Things like weight loss camp for kids can help your child start his new eating plan.
One big problem today is that kids and teens are simply given too much freedom to choose what they eat. A couple of generations ago kids were only allowed to eat whatever was put in front of them. Children were not able to choose what food was put on the table and they didn’t have a pantry full of unhealthy snacks or vending machines around every corner at their school.
There was recently a study conducted where over 18,000 kids and teenagers took questionnaires home that asked about family eating habits. The results showed that four in five families allow their child to have a say in what they eat. The same study revealed a connection between children that have healthy eating habits and those kids that eat what their parents feed them. In other words, kids are not very well qualified to set a healthy diet for themselves. Another finding of the study was that the more families ate together, the less chance the child would become obese.
There have been other studies that have revealed a link between children with low self esteem and obesity but the question of causality still remains – does obesity cause low self esteem or does low self esteen cause obesity? The types of camps formerly know as “fat camp” take a proactive approach to the link between overeating and self esteem.
However, there is no argument about the sharp rise in cases of childhood obesity during the last two decades. These obese children aren’t just putting unnecessary strain on their bodies but they are also pushing the health care system to the limits. Obese children normally become obese adults. There are an increasing number of cases of adults suffering from diabetes due to being overweight and the nubmer of children that suffer from Type II Diabetes (previously believed to only affect adults) continues to grow. This is a great reason to deal with obese children as soon as possible.
It is believed that 10 percent of the United States children population was classified as overweight/obese in 1980. In 20 years, the numbers tripled and now stand at 30 percent. It is these staggering numbers that has brought much discussion to the childhood obesity crisis.
Parents who want to help their child lose weight must often undo problems they caused. If they allowed the child to dictate what he ate without restriction it will take time to establish nutritional rules. It may also require the full cooperation of every member of the family. A child who is not allowed to have sweets will feel only frustration if he knows a locked cabinet is filled with sweet snacks that other family members are eating. He feels deprived, unloved and mistreated and will not be able to focus on solving his own weight problem.
A good place to start is to get rid of the unhealthy foods and snacks that are likely filling up your pantry and learn to replace them with healthier alteratives. It’s a good idea if you don’t take your children shopping with you because they may try to sneak all sorts of goodies into the cart. Of course sometimes you may want to take an older child shopping so that you can explain about ingredients in foods and why they are unhealthy.
Make sure to establish a family meal plan that doesn’t include fried or over-sauced foods. Start a low fat diet for the entire household. If you can change the eating behaviors of the whole family, the overweight child has a higher chance to succeed in their weight loss attempt.
Finally, kids need to be active to lose weight. Avoid letting the child sit in front of the television all day and night. Instead, go walking with him/her. If your child is driven to school, consider dropping him/her off at the school’s curb rather than the front door. Put together some weekend activities that involve a lot of walking, swimming and more but make sure it’s something he/she be willing to do so that they don’t drag behind…not wanting to join in on the fun. This is integral to the successful strategy used at weight loss camps for kids.
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