Overweight Children : Parents Need To Know

Overweight Children

Parents need to understand as early in their child’s lives possible, that in their child’s lives as possible, those nutrition habits are learned. As long as a child is started out on the right path early enough, any child can be. Nutritionally responsible. And that’s an important lesson to learn in this time when families everywhere seem to struggle with their overweight kids.

About one in five American families, to be precise. That’s the number of families that have overweight kids and seem to struggle in a losing battle against the problem. If you’re not entirely convinced that it’s a losing battle, just look at the statistics. The US Department of Health and Human Services estimates that in children under 19, obesity is a problem that’s gone up 300% over the last 40 years.

                     Overweight Children

                               Source Pic: Pixabay

There’s another reason why this should be a real problem – there is a 75% chance that any child who struggles with his weight, will grow up to be an adult who struggles with his weight. And that situation, we all know, comes with serious health consequences.

Overweight Kids

Parents  must understanding what Ails overweight kids to understand where the problem lies. Certainly, poor nutritional habits are a bad thing. But there is something else parents need to understand. They should look back at how when they were young, they never had a problem, no matter what they ate. When you’re young, your body is able to maintain itself most of the time. As long as you live a regular life – an active one.

A child who has trouble with his weight, more often than not, has a lot of trouble with his lifestyle choices – television and computer games, in other words. Most of the time, a child who eats irresponsibly, can still keep his weight under control if he has an active and healthy lifestyle.

Of course, this little piece of logic isn’t as cut and dried as it might appear. It isn’t just that watching television makes a child vegetate there on the couch when he could be out there playing. It’s also that when you’re watching TV, you see a lot of commercials for junk food. And TV time is a great time to sit there with a bag of Cheetos in your hand.
But this little problem apart, watching your child’s food habits certainly does make sense. Starting at birth. Every mother needs to remember that breast-fed children enjoy lower rates of obesity than formula-fed kids.

Past the age of five, children learn to eat according to the portion size they are given. If you want your child to eat less, load his plate with less food each time. Children don’t like to ask for second helpings. It would be a great psychological handle to get on the problem

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