Childhood Obesity

When should you start becoming concerned about your child’s weight? Sure, all children gain weight and many grow into it well. But a few too many extra pounds, more than needed to support growth and development, can lead to childhood obesity.

Childhood obesity is clinically defined as when a child’s BMI exceeds 30. This is also the case for adult obesity. Childhood obesity is particularly troubling because diseases and illnesses associated with older people and adults, such as diabetes or high cholesterol, are becoming increasingly common in children.

The following are some jaw-dropping statistics compiled by the CDC on childhood obesity:

According to the CDC, 16 percent (or 9 million) of children ages 6-19 years old suffer from obesity, a statistic that has tripled since 1980. Another 15 percent were considered at risk of becoming overweight. That makes 18 million children in that age group suffering from obesity or at a high-risk for the condition.

In addition, the CDC also found that over the past three decades childhood obesity rate has more than doubled for preschool children aged 2-5 and adolescents aged 12-19 and has more than tripled for children aged 6-11. Overweight adolescents have a 70 percent chance of becoming obese and overweight adults.

One of the best strategies for combating childhood obesity is to improve the diet and activity levels of your entire family. The following is a series of steps to take in helping you child overcome obesity.

1. Have your child examined by a family doctor or pediatrician to rule out any medical causes for obesity and determine if your child can safely participate in vigorous physical activities.

2. Sit down with your whole family and talk about ways to become healthier that year. Be sure you don’t single out your obese child, but strive to make everyone feel and look better. Remember this, if a parent or both suffers from obesity, your overweight child has a 80% chance of growing up into obesity.

3. Don’t make succumbing to childhood obesity any easier for your child. Go through the pantry and refrigerator and throw out all junk food. Potato chips, pre-sweetened cereals, candy, cookies, ice cream, and sodas (try seltzer water with a little bit of juice). Don’t ban your kid from ever eating them, but not having them in the house will simply make it inconvenient to indulge. Forbidding these items completely will just make them more desirable.

4. If your child or even your family is suffering from obesity, limit fast food and pizza delivery to once a week. Meals prepared at home are generally lower in fat and sugar than fast food meals. To make it easier to always have home-cooked meals, use a crock pot the night before to create some really amazing dishes that will be ready the next day or partially prepare meals and freeze them. Many of the chronic illnesses associated with obesity are linked to a poor diet.

5. Try to avoid having your child come home to an empty house every day after school. Try a Boys & Girls Club if babysitting is out of your budget or try asking a neighbor. Children suffering from childhood obesity are often teased and bullied at school, resulting in there coming home and eating comfort food to make themselves feel better.

6. Get the whole family involved, especially if you all suffer from obesity, in a weekly or daily physical activity. Skate, walk, run, or bike, it doesn’t matter as long as every one picks one and does it. Even if you live in a neighborhood that isn’t conducive to nighttime outings (read: dangerous), pop in an exercise DVD or take advantage of tons of free online resources regarding obesity treatment. However, always ask a doctor if you and your family is healthy enough to participate in strenuous exercises.

7. Don’t let childhood obesity get your kid down. Always remind them of how much you love them for reasons besides appearance. Give your child opportunities to develop skills and talents to increase his self-confidence. Don’t let childhood obesity cause depression or social anxiety. Always support them.

Treatment Overview

Treatment for obesity and overweight will be most successful if you create a long-term plan and set reasonable goals with your doctor. Your initial goal should be to improve health, not to achieve an ideal weight. People with clinical obesity or overweight can actually be healthier, when measuring factors such as heart recovery following exercise, than sedentary normal-weighted people.

Although the formula for curing obesity and overweight seems simple, burn more calories than you take in, sounds simple, it is awfully difficult in practice, especially, if a person has lost weight before only to gain it back and then some. As a result, surgery and medication is becoming increasingly popular for people suffering from obesity and overweight. However, health guidelines suggest that people should attempt to make lifestyle changes for at least 6 months before trying surgery or medication to solve their obesity or overweight.

1. Initial Treatment

Be realistic, if you don’t think you are ready to lose weight, focus on improving your health and not gaining any weight. Obesity and overweight is more readily being seen as the end-result, not catalyst, of poor health.  Improve your health and your overweight problem should soon follow suit.

I. Eating Right
Aim for a goal of 1200-1800 calories a day. Research shows that limiting calories, not food types, cause you to
lose more weight. Eat foods that you enjoy, just remember to control portion sizes.

II. Increase Physical Activity
Physical activity helps you burn more calories. One of the best ways to increase your activity is simply walking.
It is an activity you can do safely and routinely alone and is easy to work into the daily schedule. Try using a
step counter as a motivation to improve. Consult your doctor for a moderate and vigorous exercise regiments
and if it is safe for you to do them.

III. Stick With It
There are so many factors that can make us stray from our plans. So start keeping track of everything: start a
food journal, count your steps, track calories burned and factor it into your daily calorie intake. As they say,
seeing is believing and simply looking at the progress you’ve made can be the motivating factor to push you
into the next day. Just remember, battling obesity and overweight may take just as long to heal as it took to
accumulate.

2. Ongoing Treatment

See your doctor after 6 months or so to get an accurate reading on your progress. Some people stop losing weight around this time, because their bodies adjust to the fewer calories, and this effects morale. Your doctor may recommend that you increase your activity and revisit a dietician or nutritionist to further alter your diet. At this point, your goal may switch from losing weight to keeping the weight off. Don’t be discouraged, you have made substantial progress in the battle against obesity and overweight at this point.

In addition, if you cannot lose weight or keep the weight off, it may be time to consider medicines to supplement your new lifestyle change. Remember, medicines without lifestyle changes only result in short-term results at best.

3. Treatment If The Condition Gets Worse

If you’ve made a lifestyle change, but your obesity continues to get worse, it may be time to consider surgery and medicines. The following treatment options are available:

I. Stomach stapling or gastric banding – Both make your stomach smaller and are reversible surgeries.
II. Roux-en-Y bypass or biliopancreatic diversion – Makes your stomach smaller as well, but also limits how much
food is absorbed in the small intestine.

Fighting Obesity

Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health. It is often the result of excessive calorie intake, lack of physical activity, and genetic predispositions.

The primary treatment for obesity is dieting and physical exercise. If this fails, anti-obesity drugs may be taken to reduce appetite or inhibit fat absorption. In extreme cases, surgery is performed or an intra-gastric balloon is placed to reduce stomach reduce stomach volume or bowel length. This leads to earlier satiation and the reduced ability to absorb nutrients from food.

Obesity is associated with an array of diseases, particularly heart disease, type 2 diabetes, respiratory diseases, sleep apnea, arthritis, and cancer. It is one of the leading preventable causes of death worldwide and health officials consider it as one of the most serious public health problems in the 21st century.

BMI is the leading indicator of obesity and is categorized thus:

1) < 18.5 BMI = Underweight
2) 18.5-24.9 = Normal weight
3) 25.0-29.9 = Overweight
4) 30.0-34.9 = Class I obesity
5) 35.0-39.9 = Class II obesity
6) > 40.0 = Class III obesity

In addition, some revised definitions include the following:

1) A BMI of 40.0-49.9 = Morbid Obesity
2) A BMI > 50 = Super Obesity

However, it is worth noting that BMI is highly subjective when considering people such as bodybuilders whose weight and height may classify them as overweight or obese, but they are actually mostly lean mass.

One of the focal points of the battle against obesity has been childhood obesity. Treatments used for childhood obesity mainly focus on lifestyle interventions and behavioral techniques. Surgery and medication is not FDA approved in this age group but has been used in some very extreme cases. It makes sense to begin with childhood obesity simply because they are the highest-risk group to become obese adults.

Childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the 21st century in both developed and developing worlds. In the United States, depending on the age group, rates of childhood obesity have double and tripled.

Rising childhood obesity has been blamed on everything from self-propelled transportation, lack of school physical education, and a drop in organized sports. However, the overwhelming majority of experts agree that when it comes to childhood obesity, genetics accounts for a minute proportion, but lifestyle habits is the number one cause of childhood obesity.

Childhood obesity often persists into adulthood, studies show that 70% of obese children go on to become obese adults and 80% suffering from childhood obesity go on to become obese adults if either or both parents are obese.

The following are the leading 5 ways to battle obesity:

1) The main treatment course is diet and exercise. Not only does this produce weight loss, but also lessens the chances of developing the many chronic illnesses associated with obesity.

2) Weight loss programs are a great way to find support to promote lifestyle changes. They have shown modest results in weight loss, but can go a long way in changing the mental state of someone suffering from obesity.

3) FDA approved obesity medication is available in two forms: orlistat, or Xenical, reduces intestinal fat absorption and sibutramine (Meridia) is a neuro-inhibitor which curbs your appetite.

4) Surgery generally takes the form of a band placed around the stomach or bowel shortening surgery. These options are reserved for those suffering from severe or morbid obesity.

Prevent Obesity

We all know the dangers of obesity and overweight. While it is true that being a little overweight is extremely subjective to body-type (higher levels of abdominal fat is worse than fat that is evenly distributed throughout the body), obesity and overweight contributes to an already bursting health care budget. Overweight and obesity are associated with an increased risk for some types of cancer. An overweight person has a 20% greater mortality rate from associated conditions than a normal weighted individual while someone suffering from obesity has a 70% greater chance and someone who is suffering from morbid obesity has a 200% greater mortality rate. Statistics have revealed that two of the most commonly associated diseases with obesity and overweight, stroke and heart failure, are also the two principal causes of death and disability among people in the U.S.

In addition to the above, obesity and overweight have been attributed to various mental illnesses such as depression, social anxiety, and even Alzheimer’s.

There are probably too many healthy foods out there to list and although it would make for an important topic, so let’s focus on the most common bad foods and how to avoid them.

The typical American diet is chock full of the following:

1) Refined sugars
2) Hydrogenated and refined oils
3) Chemicals and preservatives

The above have been increasingly added to our diet over the last several decades and has had an enormous effect on overweight and obesity.

The following food categories are often the most common ways we gorge ourselves into obesity and overweight on those three unnecessary substances:

1) Processed and Junk Food – Any food that has chemicals, preservatives, hydrogenated and refined oils, and refined sugars is not good for you. Fast food is high in all of the above. Pay attention to ingredients labels and avoid foods with high sugar, hydrogenated or refined oils, and dyes or colorings.

2) Avoid The Processed “White Devils” – This would encompass white processed flour, many processed wheat products, white bread, non-whole grain pasta, white rice, crackers, cereals, and non-whole wheat pizzas. These products are highly processed, high in sugar and carbohydrates and low in nutrients.

3) Avoid Refined Sugar – Refined sugar is often called a “poison” by nutritionists. It holds zero nutritional value and is merely empty calories. If you can do away with one substance for your life, it should be refined sugars.

Instead, anyone suffering from obesity or overweight should consider the following:

1) Lean meat – Whether it’s beef, pork, lamb, or chicken, they are all excellent sources of protein and do not contain large amounts of fat

2) Protein-rich foods – Protein rich foods appear to trigger mechanisms in our brain telling us we are full.

3) Pasta, rice, rye bread, and other whole grain foods are useful because they contain complex carbohydrates and have a low calorie count. These foods are digested slowly and lead to a gradual rise in blood sugar levels, unlike the spikes caused by fast foods, and leaves the stomach feeling fuller for longer.

4) Yogurts and fruits make good snacks because they help keep the biochemistry of the blood balanced. They can also be combined to make a pretty delicious snack. Be careful of taking in too much refined sugars though.