Resources for child obesity

Now that we know what obesity is all about, what are the action that we need to do as an adults and community.

There are several places that are helping children with obesity. These places are not only to help kids but also help parents who are struggling with kid obesity problems.

We can see www.kidseatright.org they’re having campaigns and have a several tips to helps kids in obesity. Their goal is to help community to improve nutrition and physical activity in school and families, promote health nutrition needs and prevention to kids, and work with RD to provide evidence based nutrition guidance to support quality nutrition and healthy weights.

This seems like we are not alone to solve this problem, many organization and community are working towards improving our kids’ nutrition.

I will post some of the websites and places where it can be helpful for you to visit.

http://www.eatright.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=6442468266

http://www.eatright.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=10795

http://www.eatright.org/programs/kidseatright/activities/content.aspx?id=6442459457&terms=child+diabetes

Importance of Activity Level

These days with high technology, computer system, and TV programs, Kids tended to stay home and become couch potato. There is no movements and not much of lively activity.

This is where parents need to jump in. Our parents need to promote and ask our school to continue with PE classes and more activity during free time.

Parents also can take kids out to park or can do some activities such as running, swimming, tumbling, throwing, and catching (these are activity for 4-6 years of age). This will be a starting point to prevent from further obesity.  Ages from 6-9, parents can encourage their kids to walk, dance, or jump rope and may enjoy playing miniature golf. Depend on gender soccer, baseball, basketball and etc.

Planning on family activity together as one will make whole family healthier and it can help your child from this difficult situation.

So reduce the amount of watching TV, playing video games, and sitting front of computer.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/117/5/1834.full

http://medi506.pbworks.com/f/sdarticle-3.pdf

http://children.webmd.com/obesity-children?page=2

Healthy Habits

For obese child healthy habit and healthy eating habit is very important. Most of the time obese child eats more calories per day, too much fat in the diet and too much sugar in the diet. We need to start healthy habits early on in their life.

Few of the things that parents can do:

1.      Don’t stop eating carbohydrate: kids are still in growing stage, you don’t want to limit foods but watch the portion size

2.      Keep working toward decreasing consumption of fat: American diet has high of saturated fats, trans fats, and cholesterol. Consume less than 10% of calories from saturated fatty acid and less than 300 mg/day of cholesterol, and keep trans fatty acid consumption as low as possible. When selecting and preparing meat, poultry, dry beans, and milk or milk products, make choices that are lean, low-fat, or fat-free

3.      Watch calories and portion size: American portion size has doubled in last decades. Many restaurants offers large sizes, eat smaller portion and bring left over for next day

4.      Don’t reward kids for good behavior: Parents tend to reward kids with sweets and treats to fix bad behavior this is not a good idea. Think of other activities that you can do with kids

5.      Don’t maintain a clean-plate policy: reinforce the idea that they should only eat when they’re hungry

Birth to age 1: breastfeeding is the best option to prevent excessive weight gain. Somehow these kids have less of obesity problem.

Ages 2 to 6: start good habits early; help shape food preferences by offering a variety of healthy foods.

http://www.myoverweightchild.com/low-carb-diets.html

http://kidshealth.org/parent/general/body/overweight_obesity.html#

National Nutrition Month

March is National Nutrition Month. I thought it will be a good time for me to share what are some healthy tips for your child. I realized that it’s really hard for a child to eat vegetables and fruits. Although I’ve notice that some children are pretty good with fruits but vegetables are pretty hard. To meet daily requirement for vegetable for children from 2-5 years old is ½ cups 3-4X a day, which might be a challenging for a child, especially if they’re not vegetable eater. I had this really nice cook book made by Dole company, and it had a very fun ideas and way to cook together with children. Whenever I show the book to children they would always love to eat those cool looking vegetables.

I have found out the CDC also came up with cooking tips with children. I would like to share this http://www.choosemyplate.gov/food-groups/downloads/TenTips/DGTipsheet11KidFriendlyVeggiesAndFruits.pdf

You can make fun dinner with your child and make it healthy.

I also looked at how parents can be a role model to their kids. http://www.choosemyplate.gov/food-groups/downloads/TenTips/DGTipsheet12BeAHealthyRoleModel.pdf

It seems little simple things such as going to grocery shopping together, listening to their thoughts, and parents eating whole grains and healthy foods. I see that parents are always great example for the children. So print those out and put it up in the refrigerator and remind yourself daily.

www.Choosemyplate.gov

Early Maternal Child Relationship

More and more I realized that these days many people are formula feeding their children. It's easier and simplier but there is always consequences.
Study has shown that early maternal-child relationship has effect on adolescent obesity.
This can be one of the factor that we can try with our kids to feel love and care, and this will increase their self esteem and have better emotion control.
I think this can also improve with eating habit, which can improve on their health.
So, think about going home, snuggling with your little kid and have a bonding time together.



Anderson, S, Gooze, R, Lemeshow, S, Whitaker, R. Quality of Early Maternal-Child Relationship and Risk of Adolescent Obesity. American Academy of Pediatrics. 2012.  

Excessive Fruit Juice and Cow's Milk Consumption Associated with Obesity

This week I happen to have lots of client who were overweight or leading to obesity.
I usually see clients from infants to 5years of age. This week I have seen age between 2-5 a lot and lot of them were either overweight or close to obesity.
I always ask what kind of drinks are offer to those kids. This week I ran into a child who drinks 8oz 7-8X a day. Wow... that is a lots of milk and top of that he gets juices 8oz 3-4X a day. He must be a big drinker here.

What happen to people who takes large quantity of milk? Study has found that there is low intakes of iron, linoleic acid and vitamin E, and excessive intakes of sodium, potassium, and protein, which indicates poor nutrition. These kids might be so full and they don't want to eat nutritious foods throughout the day, instead they would just snack throughout the day.

As we all know fruit juices has large quantity of sugar, which link to dental caries and gastrointestinal symptoms. Also there was a study that shown when excessive fruit juice consumer, decreased their juice intake their growth improved (Pediatrics 1994;93:438-43). So we can say that juice cause malabsorption and could displace other nutrients in the diet.
Those who are worry about their children, think about how much juice and milk products are given to them. Child who is under 5 should only be given 4oz 4-6X a day of milk products (which include not only milk, cheese and yogurt count as milk product).

http://journals.lww.com/jpgn/fulltext/1997/1100/excessive_fruit_juice_consumption__how_can.13.aspx

How can you tell if your child is overweight or obese? 

One of the easy way you can find out at home is to find your child's BMI. Body mass index (BMI) uses height and weight measurements to estimate how much body fat a person has.
http://kidshealth.org/parent/general/body/bmi_charts.html
Remember BMI is a good indicator, but it's not direct measurement of body fat.
Also, BMI is not a diagnostic tool.
I will post BMI chart along with it, you can see where your child fall into.

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/childrens_bmi/about_childrens_bmi.html
If you are worried that your child is overweight or obese, make an appointment with your doctor, and see if there are other particular problem with your child's health.

As I mentioned above, BMI is not a diagnostic tool, so you can go see a doctor to determine if your child has excess fat, and do further assessment.

When I was studying for my master's degree, one of my professor was doing a study on measuring people's body fat after Zumba dance class. She used Bod Pod and this is device that accurately measure body composition. I was able to measure my body composition and the information they provide was great help.
It showed body fats such as non-essential fat or excess body fat, total body fats in your body, calories you need to burn for individuals, activity level for individual etc. Maybe, your child can do something similar to this so that you can determine whether the child has excess fat or non-essential fat or not.

Thank you EKing for making me to think more deeper into how we can determine overweight and Obese child. 

Definition of Childhood Obesity

Many times we will never think that child obesity can be considered as a serious medical condition. Some might think that this can be changed when child get older but most likely it will be hard to alter back to normal weight. So we define childhood obesity as a serious medical condition that affects children and adolescents that are way above normal weight for their height and age.
This can be trouble because when they get older they can cross to the health problem such as diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Not only that it can lead to low self esteem and depression.
So when you see that your child is putting too much weight, talk to doctor or health care provider, so that they can look at your family history, child's growth and development. This can help to determine if your child's weight is unhealthy or not.
But most of the time we notice that childhood obesity is caused by kids eating too much and exercising too little. This can be one of the things that parents can look into and see if your child is eating too much and if your child is moving and being active.
This week what you can do is to write down what your kid is eating and how much they're being active. When you go see Doctor or Dietitian, they can notify you what your child is needed.
I hope this little step can help some of the people out there. ^^

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/obesity/facts.htm

 

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/childhood-obesity/DS00698

Hello everyone, I am very excited that I have a nutrition blog. This is my first time creating my own blog, which makes it more exciting. My blog will mainly focus on child obesity. I love kids and I have passionate heart for them. It breaks my heart when I see children who are having a hard time with living healthy life. I would love to share my knowledge that I have learned from nutrition courses and post most updated information on child obesity. LET’S GO GO GO !!!!