How should us parents help our children with obesity?!
Question: any tips? thanks
Answers: any tips? thanks
try theese:
Approximately 14 percent of children in the United States are obese. This is a disturbing and dangerous statistic. As a parent, there are things you can to do help your overweight child.
Avoid Verbal Abuse
If you think that making derogatory comments about your child's appearance will shame him/her into losing weight, you're wrong. You will cause anger, hurt and resentment. Worse than that, you'll condition your child to develop negative labels ("I'm just a pig," "I'll never be good at sports," or "Nobody will want to date me when I grow up,") that could be lasting.
Introduce Positive Labels
Don't you think your child wants to feel better, get back energy, vitality and self-esteem? Instead of providing criticism and judgment, you can provide help and encouragement. Start offering positive labels: "I can achieve whatever I set out to do," or "I am loved and valued."
Look at Why They Eat
Instead of looking at what your child eats, look into why he/she eats. Childhood obesity can be a symptom of stress. If your child is self-medicating with food, what is being medicated? Adults often turn to drugs and/or alcohol to self-medicate when they are looking to fill a void or cope with stress. Children often turn to food.
Look at Your Lifestyle
If your lifestyle is contributing to your child's obesity, change it. If you keep junk food in the house, stop. If your schedule is so hectic that your family is forced to eat high-fat, low-nutrition meals like fast food, you need to slow down. If your family life is centered around sedentary activities like watching TV, make an effort to include some form of physical activity in your child's life.
hope I helped :)
Check out www.sparkpeople.com. There are articles there about dealing with overweight children and ways for the family to work together to lose weight.
Teach them the right ways to eat..and don't make it boring or forceful for them like the parents who threaten their kids to "eat veggies or no videogames for a week."
Just show them the differences between the right and wrong ways of eating and they should eventually catch on to it.
cut back on how much junk food you have in the house. also add more fruit for them to snack on. most importantly limit the intake of fast food. once a week is a good start but still to much try limiting it down to atleast once a month
Don't buy any unnecessary "junk food" or snacks to entice them.
Cook healthy meals with appropriate serving sizes.
Ensure that they drink a lot of water.
Encourage them to participate in a sport or any activity to keep them active. You can even let them hang out with friends more often.
Eating can also be triggered by depression and similar personal problems, so you might want to look into that as well.
Make sure that indoor activities (TV, computer) time is limited. Kids (we all) need alot of exercise. Eliminate fast food, junk food, sugar, fried greasy foods and soda, watch/ limit carbohydrates. Diabetes 2 with severe heart disease runs in my daughters fathers family and she has asthma so eating right and exercise is not an option. I make my daughter ride her bicycle when the weather is good, participate in school activities (sports related and even music), she is limited to 30 minutes a day of either TV or computer but not both. I ride with her and we go on "bike riding picnics" and on nice days I will ride my bike with her to school (only about 3 miles away so it is easy). If you teach kids how to eat and take care of their bodies when they are young then when they get older they will not need to "re-learn" how to eat properly. I also practice what i preach. I eat the same food she does and I love riding bicycles and taking long walks with our dogs.