Solutions and Cause For Childhood Obesity

With problems such as diabetes, increased blood pressure, high cholesterol, joint problems, clinical depression, and much more on top of that, it’s no wonder that people are so scared for the health of the youth of today. Childhood obesity is a serious problem but it can be stopped and reversed. Most frustrating of all, is that it can be stopped relatively easily too.

Childhood Obesity

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Is Childhood obesity a pandemic?
All over the world, Childhood obesity is currently a serious issue, like a pandemic, more and more children are gaining weight every single day and their health is drastically suffering as a result. We can't be an understatement. So serious is this problem in fact, that experts have actually been forced to make the deeply disturbing prediction that if things carry on as they are doing, then children born in this generation will actually have a shorter life expectancy than their own parents had.

Solutions For Childhood Obesity

Here are just a few ways in which you can help end the crisis once and for all.
Set a Good Example
As parents, it is your responsibility to set the right example for your children, and make no mistake about it, they will almost certainly follow in your footsteps and grow up with the same morals and ethics as you, so take heed. It’s not the school’s ultimate responsibility, it’s yours. Unless you are actively involved in educating your children about proper eating habits, then they are just a Taco Bell commercial away from wanting to eat those types of foods.

If you want to help your children to grow up fit and healthy, then you need to set a good example yourself. Get up off the sofa and get outside and start playing with your children. Don’t simply just sit in front of the TV all night. Make an effort to become more active and let them know how important it is. The same goes for diet and nutrition. Try to provide healthy and balanced meals, rather than sugary and processed meals pumped full of artificial ingredients. Take your children grocery shopping and help them read the labels to know what to look out for.

Get More Active
We mentioned it earlier, but it’s absolutely true that if you want your kids to be fit and healthy, you will need to ensure that they are regularly physically active. In order to do so, get active with them and get them involved in sports and games. Why not go on family days out and go for walks around local beauty spots? You could even invest in bicycles and engage in regular bike rides with your family. It doesn’t matter how you get your exercise, just make sure that you and they are regularly active.

If you must incorporate video games into the equation, there are plenty of fitness titles to choose from that you and your children can play.

Try to Enroll them in Sports
Another great way of ensuring your kids manage their weight and get some much needed physical exercise is to enroll them in sports – or sporting camps. Find a sport or physical activity that they show an interest in and sign them up for classes.

Activities such as football, athletics, swimming, dance, martial arts, or anything else for that matter are all perfectly great. Another great bonus of signing your kids up to classes like this is the fact that it will help them to socialize with others and to almost certainly make new friends along the way. Bonus: those children could also have similar mindsets of being and staying healthy, and those are values your children can learn and absorb as their own.

Cut Out the Sugar!
We mentioned the importance of good nutrition a little earlier on in the article, but here is one crucial aspect that you must consider, and that is to cut out high sugary snacks and drinks from their diets!

Sugar is arguably the leading cause of childhood obesity, and it’s certainly responsible for conditions such as diabetes. So get rid of it! Seriously. Go through your cupboards and kitchen drawers, and toss out the artificial and processed foods. You would never feed your kids poison, even if it tastes sweet, right? Forget about fizzy drinks that are loaded with sugar, and try to get them to drink milk and water. For an even healthier beverage, makeup vitamin waters by soaking slices of their favorite fruits in a jug of water with ice cubes and keep chilled in the fridge. The Alternative to ice cream, try an organic fruit smoothie!

Childhood obesity is rocking the shape of our future to its very core. We live in a fast-paced, gluttonous society where things can be fixed with a pill, so not many people think of their health down the road. We are not entitled to the perfect body or good health. We need to work for it, and we need to start with ourselves and our children. Start today