Things You'll Need:
- Children
- Nutritious Food
- Ability to make dietary adjustments for the whole family
- Ability to make activity and hobby adjustments for the whole family
- Ability to learn, model, and teach the appropriate handling of emotions
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Step 1
Healthy Snacks - Heather InksThe easiest part of the childhood obesity problem to correct is diet and nutrition. Swapping out poor food choices, diets, and habits and putting better healthier choices in the home and their meals is relatively easy.
A quick and easy way to evaluate where the dietary issue problem lies is to keep a journal of all foods served and eaten by the child for a week or two weeks.
With the food journal, it will easy to clearly see some areas that can use improvement in almost anyone's diet. From here, make a plan to correct things. You might find that your child only eats 5 servings of vegetables a week and it is only corn and white potatoes the whole time. You might also see that you child consumes several bags of chips a week too.
Learn to incorporate more fruits, vegetables, and nuts in the diet. Also learn the tips and tricks for making water a more enjoyable drink and also simple tricks about improving the diet by using better ingredients, like using olive oil instead of other oils. There are plenty of free tips and recipes all over the internet and in books at the library. Always check out the source of your information, the author of the article, their education, their experience, and what their own health and the health of their children looks like if you want the best results. Some will be listed in the resources below. -
Step 2
Mother and Baby Exercise Course - this baby will grow up to love exercise - Heather InksThe next step is to evaluate your child's exercise and lifestyle habits. Keep a journal for two weeks to a month of your child's activities, also it might be helpful to keep a journal of your own too.
For good cardiovascular health, at least 30 minutes of exercise needs to be done several times a week. This can include walking, bike riding, swimming, tennis, soccer, ballet, kick ball, etc. For good muscular health, some activities need to work out the muscles, these can including those that stretch the muscles and those that work them out, actually using the muscles to exert some energy. For instance, lifting weights or shoveling dirt for a garden both require muscular strength.
The easiest way to improve physical health for your children and yourself will be to schedule some times for physical activities. Scheduling them and keeping your commitment will be important because if you don't schedule them, then it is easy to forget or push it aside.
Make the activities fun. Schedule a bike ride at a state park or along the beach. Schedule another day of jogging or fast walking along a lake or a beach - even a 2 year old can walk along a beach. If you have a baby in the bunch, push a stroller quickly beside the other children or get a baby seat for your bike. They also have baby buggies to attack to bikes like you attach a trailer to a truck. Set up a net and play volleyball, tennis, or other sports in your yard. Take your children to a park and play with them. Take them to a field and play tag or soccer.
If the weather is cold and you have no where to go, then rent some exercise dvds for children at the library or purchase some. There are some adult exercise programs that children also like to do, know yourself and your children to pick the best ones.
If you need to lose the most weight as fast as possible, get up earlier in the morning and take a walk or jog with the kids. Exercising in the morning will allow the metabolism to burn all day long or until a nap is taken when it resets. -
Step 3
Teach Children to Mature Beyond Tantrums for their Health and Weight - Heather InksThe most neglected area in child obesity, childhood obesity and adult obesity is the emotional aspect of the disease. Disease can be evaluated as dis - ease, not in harmony.
If anger is handled improperly whether outbursts or internalized, this will trigger a flight or fight response in the body. This will cause EVERY cell in the body to be soaked in hormones including cortisol and adrenaline. These are great for running from a bear; however, they are harmful if they are triggered daily or even several times daily. Your body can "cook in its juices" causing premature aging and a whole host of health problems including diabetes, cancer, and much much more.
If children are young, a parent's anger, fear, stress, or anxiety can be picked up by the child. This will affect the child's health, weight, and the child's body's ability to absorb nutrients and fight disease. In short, a parent's emotional issues can harm a child's immune system and overall all.
Children need to be taught how to talk about their feelings in healthy ways, not screaming, being dramatic, or having tantrums. Children also need to be taught appropriate and healthy ways to express anger and sadness, as well as ways to use up the negative energy. An example of getting out anger or sadness would be a write a letter than is not sent, talking to God about things, praying for help with the issue, and studying scriptures on anger, sadness, or fear.
An example of using the energy that sadness or anger creates would be encourage your child to create some art. Not angry art, but just using the energy, channeling the energy into something good like drawing a detailed animal or flower when angry. If a child is angry about something tragic like a drunk driver killing their parent or a rape or molestation, help them to create an outreach in the community to address these issues.
Transferring an injustice into a way to improve things to prevent someone else from experiencing the pain too will teach children to find a way to use their influence even when it appears that they are powerless, because they are not powerless when they choose their reaction.
The ability to forgive, let things go, transmute or change pain into positive art, music, or an outreach, and to appropriately communicate, handle, and express emotions will lead to health for the brain, body, cells, immune system, and metabolism.
Comments
heatherinks said
on 4/29/2009 Thanks for the comment on How to Prevent Childhood Obesity. There are very few cases where child obesity cannot be prevented by wisdom - knowledge applied. Knowledge is useless when a parent fails to apply it.
naturalpath said
on 4/29/2009 Very nice article about childhood obesity. This is an important issue. Thanks for writing on it.