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