Teens and Body Image: Reasons Not to Put Your Children On a Diet Without Doctor's Orders

 Childhood obesity is endemic in the United States, so much so that the Unites States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that up to 18% of American kids between the ages of six and 11 are obese. These kids are more likely to suffer from pre-diabetes, and are at a higher risk for cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure. In an effort to capitalize on this health crisis, many companies and for-profit entities are advertising diets for kids, ostensibly to slim kids down while lining their own pockets. Before you buy into the hype, these are seven of the reasons why you should never put your child on a diet that hasn’t been ordered by his pediatrician.

• Growing Bodies Have Very Real Nutritional Needs – The body of a growing child requires a specific balance of nutrients, fats and calories in order to develop normally. Those needs are very different from those of an adult, and putting your child on a regimented diet that isn’t prescribed and supervised by your child’s doctor can actually deprive her of the things she needs most. The low-carb, high-protein diet that helped you lose weight simply isn’t appropriate for a child’s needs, and can cause more harm than help.
• Hunger Leads to Desperation – When you’re on a strict diet, you understand that the hunger pangs are something that you’re managing in order to achieve a desired outcome. Your child, on the other hand, only knows that she’s hungry and that food is being withheld from her. The desperation to fulfill that hunger can easily lead to problems when you’re not watching, up to and including gorging when she’s not being supervised.
• Emotional Eating isn’t Curbed by a Rigid Diet – Just like their adult counterparts, kids that learn to view food as a source of comfort will turn to it in times of stress. When you’re forcing her to adhere to a harshly restrictive diet, you’re only causing your child to feel the stress that makes her want to eat. You’re not treating the root of the problem, only the symptom.
• Diets Encourage Deprivation, Rather Than Promoting Physical Activity – Kids need plenty of fuel for their growing bodies, but they also need plenty of physically intensive, active play to stay healthy. When you put your child on a diet, you’re placing the emphasis on what she eats, rather than the lifestyle she keeps. Encourage healthy activity and provide ample access to nutritionally sound, healthy snacks, rather than taking an approach that espouses minimal activity and maximum deprivation.
• Diets Condition Kids to Look for the Quick Fix – A crash diet works in the short term, but is typically accustomed to a return to the poor habits that led to the weight gain in the first place. Teaching kids to diet in order to lose weight temporarily not only complicates their relationship with food and potentially causes a host of other problems, but also sends the message that the quick fix is the solution to their problems, rather than concentrated and sustained efforts to make better choices all of the time.
• Putting Kids on a Diet Can Damage Fragile Self Esteem – Even young children know, thanks to social conditioning, that “diets are for fat people.” Putting your child on a diet and, even worse, using the term “diet” is effectively telling your child that she’s fat and needs to change because the person she is right now isn’t appealing to you. The renowned Mayo Clinic suggest placing an emphasis on health when discussing food and dietary choices with your child, rather than weight.
• Dieting Creates a Complex Relationship With Food – Kids need to see food as fuel for their active bodies, not an enemy to avoid or a friend to turn to when they’re upset. Complicating your child’s relationship with food can lead to very real problems with eating disorders as she gets older, which will only damage her health further and make her adult life more stressful than it should be.

If you have concerns about your child’s weight, discuss the matter with her pediatrician and work together to find a solution that’s both nutritionally sound and unlikely to be emotionally damaging to your child. Remember that the lessons you instill in her as a child will shape the adult she becomes, and act accordingly to avoid causing lifelong problems with food and overeating.

Source:  Nanny Sites

Teen Obesity: 10 Frightening Fact About Childhood Obesity

What snacks are your kids eating?

There’s really no questioning it: childhood obesity is a problem. Many have labeled it as an epidemic. In the past, the term “obesity” has only been associated with adults, but this idea has changed, as cases of child obesity are increasing every day. Studies show that childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years — The Center for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that obesity among children from the ages of 6 to 11 years has increased from 6.5% in 1980 to 19.8% in 2008, and that obesity among adolescents from the ages of 12 to 19 years increased from 5% in 1980 to 18.1% in 2008 (and these statistics are now 3 years old).

More often than not, obesity is the result of a flawed lifestyle, where the number of calories consumed far outweighs the number of calories expended. Although genetics can be a factor, it is more and more common now for children to be obese or overweight because of environmental and behavioral factors. With nearly 25 million children affected by it today, the bottom line is that obesity is a threat to our children. These 10 frightening facts illuminate just how dangerous and costly childhood obesity is.

1. Only 2% of kids in the U.S. eat healthy: Based on diet specifications established by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), only 2% of children in the United States have a healthy diet. It can be easy to dismiss statistics when so many numbers are thrown at you at once. Don’t be fooled. This means that 98% of American children eat unhealthy meals every day. This is a staggering number. In a survey of American high school seniors, only 3 out of every 10 report eating vegetables “nearly” every day. Of the vegetables consumed in the United States, one-fourth are in the form of french fries or potato chips. We hate to say it, but vegetables fried in grease hardly count as your daily dose of vegetables (even though they taste oh so good). Vegetables aside, soft-drink consumption has increased 300% in the last 20 years. 300%! To give us all a little perspective, one 16 ounce serving of regular Coke has 194 calories and 54 grams of sugar. That’s bad.
2. Fast food consumption is rising: One of the primary contributing factors to obesity in both adults and children is fast food consumption. We all know that fast food is bad for us and yet we continue to eat it. Fast food can be easier and even cheaper when time and money are both scarce. However, the more fast food children consume, the further we get from remedying the epidemic of child obesity. In a survey of high school students, the average teenager in the United States eats fast food twice a week. Eating fast food at a young age develops the habit of eating fast food as an adult. Studies show that low income families are more likely to eat fast food than higher income families. Even more alarming, a study done of 200 neighborhoods reported that there were three times as many supermarkets in wealthy neighborhoods as there were in poor neighborhoods, leaving fast food restaurants as the most convenient option for many low income families.
3. About 25% of kids don’t do any physical activity: When we think of being a kid, we think of running and playing tag or going t-ball practice. In movies and television shows little kids seem to be constantly running around and playing. Our idealized conception of childhood as a time of playful activity is what makes the following statistic so shocking: one in every four children does not participate in any free-time physical activity. What?! This means that one-fourth of all children under the age of 10 are not running and playing tag or hide-and-seek. No chasing each other on the playground? No climbing trees or jumping rope? More and more kids are spending their free time doing stationary activities. Furthermore, the importance of activity for children is going unnoticed as physical education classes are cut because of lowering school budgets. 92% of elementary schools do not have daily P.E. classes year-round and less than a quarter of high school students take a P.E. class once a day.
4. Kids spend up to 5 hours daily watching TV: To further the problem, in addition to physical education classes being cut, children are spending more time pursuing sedentary activities. According to The Clinton Foundation, a typical American youth spends approximately 4 to 5 hours a day watching TV, using the computer or playing video games. It’s no real surprise that television watching is closely correlated to childhood obesity. After all, there is no way a child can burn the calories he or she consumed that day if nearly all of their leisure time is spent sitting in front of a television. Several studies indicate that television viewing should be regarded as an important contributing factor to childhood obesity. Among kids ages 12 to 17, the prevalence of obesity increased by 2% for each hour of television viewed, even after considering variables such as prior weight, race, and socio-economic status.
5. Obese children make poor students: There is growing evidence indicating that children who eat well and lead an active lifestyle perform better academically. It’s not hard to believe that a healthy body makes a healthy mind. As discussed by the organization Action for Healthy Kids, a recent study of 5,000 children established a relationship between diet quality and academic performance. The lower the quality of diet, the lower a person performs academically. Research shows that regular physical activity aids in cognitive and academic development in kids between the ages of 7 and 11. Furthermore, overweight children miss 4 times more school than a child of normal weight does. So, on top of the fact that poor diet and low activity levels make it more difficult to perform cognitive functions, obese children are also missing valuable time in the classroom because of their obesity. If kids aren’t in school and performing to the best of their ability, then they can’t learn and flourish.
6. The risk for heart disease jumps: Cardiovascular Disease technically refers to any disease involving the heart or blood vessels. However, generally the term is used to refer to atherosclerosis, which is a condition that develops when plaque builds up in the walls of the arteries. This buildup inhibits blood flow, potentially causing heart attack or stroke. Now you’re thinking, “wait, weren’t we talking about child obesity here?” Most people consider stroke and heart attack adult concerns. However, in a population-based sample of children ages 5 to 17, 70% of obese youth had at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease. High levels of cholesterol and high blood pressure are two of the main risk factors for the development of heart disease. Most obese children have high cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, or both. The primary way to manage cardiovascular disease is with diet and lifestyle intervention.
7. Half of diabetic children are overweight: Type-2 Diabetes is also termed “adult onset diabetes” because originally, only adults were afflicted with it. This, however, is quickly changing. There is an alarming increase in the number of children and adolescents developing Type-2 Diabetes throughout the world due to being overweight. According to The American Diabetes Association, 45% of children diagnosed with diabetes have Type-2 Diabetes due to being obese or overweight. Moreover, between the years 2005 and 2008, the number of children with Type-2 Diabetes doubled in America (if this rate continues that number will have doubled again this year in 2011). In some countries, type-2 diabetes has become the most common form of disease in children and in North America at least one in every 100 youth has been diagnosed with some form of diabetes.
8. Sleep apnea is a growing threat: As defined by the Mayo Clinic, sleep apnea is a condition where one’s breathing repeatedly stops and starts throughout the night. A study preformed in 2009 suggests that sleep apnea is the most severe problem faced by obese children. There are two types of sleep apnea: central sleep apnea, which occurs when the brain doesn’t send the proper signals, and obstructive sleep apnea, which occurs when throat muscles relax too much and the airway collapses. Obese children are at a greater risk of developing obstructive sleep apnea because their tonsils are so large that it can interfere with the ability of the chest and abdomen to fully expand during breathing. Sleep apnea is associated with decreased quality of life. Sufferers may also experience behavioral, neurocognitive, cardiovascular, metabolic, endocrine, and psychiatric complications.
9. Health care costs are triple what they are for healthier children: The cost of obesity for both the national health care system and the individual has sky rocketed in the past few years as obesity quickly becomes an epidemic. In an examination of the cost of obesity for Americans, researchers report that Americans spend 9% of their total medical costs on obesity-related illnesses and that the national cost of obesity is approximately $45 billion per year. Moreover, children treated for obesity are roughly three times more expensive for the health care system than children of normal weight. To put this statistic into perspective, this means that children who are being treated for obesity and obesity related illnesses spend more on health care than smokers. The indirect cost of obesity, including missed work and future earnings losses, has been estimated at %56 billion dollars per year. As if the cost of your health and happiness weren’t enough, obesity also costs your bank account and the national health system a huge amount of money.
10. Obese children will live shorter lives than their parents: Perhaps the most frightening facts concerned with childhood obesity are the projections being made about an obese child’s life expectancy. We know that heart disease and type-2 diabetes shorten a person’s lifespan, but what happens when we talk about children under the age of 10 with these “adult” conditions? A study performed in 2005 projected that if obesity among children continues to increase, the current generation of children will live shorter lives than their parents. Let’s hear this just one more time: if childhood obesity trends continue, children born now may die before their parents. This is an utterly terrifying thought. This projection means that obesity is not only more expensive, but also, more dangerous to a person’s health than smoking cigarettes. With obese youth being 80% more likely to become overweight or obese adults and, therefore, more at risk of developing heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, cancer, and osteoarthritis, it’s not too difficult to see that shorter lifespan could become a problem. Childhood obesity is a dire issue. These 10 facts underscore the necessity for a healthy diet and active lifestyle at all ages, but especially for children.

Special Contributor:  Corrine Smith

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Overweight Teens, Teen Obesity and Teen Help

Girls and boys enjoy feeling better by healthy eating

Over the past 20 years, clinical obesity among children and adolescents (defined as 95+ percentile body mass index on a growth chart) has skyrocketed from 6% to 15%. This makes overweight teens and teen obesity the most common chronic illness in pediatrics. To provide a sense of the magnitude of the opportunity, the prevalence of eating disorders is only 0.3%.

Although pediatric and adolescent obesity is most common in lower socio-economic groups, it is prevalent at all income levels, including in upper-income families. In 1995, 2.9% of households in the top 5% of income had obese children or adolescents. The number has certainly risen over the past 8 years.
The cause of this epidemic is entirely behavioral: high-calorie diets and insufficient exercise.

The direct effects of pediatric and adolescent obesity are clear and well established:

• Type 2 diabetes mellitus (formerly adult onset diabetes)
• Hypertension and predisposition for cardiac disease
• Sleep apnea
• Asthma
• Gallbladder disease
• Kidney disease
• Pancreatitis
• Eye diseases
• Nerve damage
• Various gastrointestinal disorders
• Various skeletal and orthopedic problems
• 80% increase in incidence of obesity in adulthood
• Obesity in adulthood likely to be more severe with earlier onset of co-morbidities

Source:  Overweight Teen

Wellspring Florida

Wellspring Florida is the first and only scientifically-based summer fitness and weight loss camp in St. Petersburg Florida, and one of the most effective weight loss programs in the world.
MTV just launched their new show, "I Used to Be Fat". The show will follow teens during the summer after high school as they work to lose weight and transform themselves before entering college.  As with many of today's reality shows, this is a topic that can be sensitive, difficult, however extremely necessary to talk about and address.

Be an educated parent, you will have healthier teens.


Watch the video on to learn more about Wellspring summer for your overweight teens.

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Overweight Teens: Support for Parent with Teens That are Being Bullied

Bullying is one of today's growing and serious trends in our country today.  Whether a student has a sexual preference that you don't agree with, or a child that is overweight, bullying is becoming a way to harass and harm kids.  School violence is being used as kids are being hurt.

Promoting health, wellness and good eating habits is sometimes difficult for busy parents.  According to a recent Harris Interactive poll, 30% of us who are overweight or obese think that we are just fine, thanks, and 70% of us who are obese think that we are merely overweight.  Our self-esteem, in other words, hasn't skipped a beat.  Some have even surmised that "fat is the new norm," our perceptions gradually adapting to the sight of our heavier friends, neighbors, and acquaintances around us.

Weight discrimination has increased a whopping 66% over the past decade, and is "comparable to rates of racial discrimination, especially among women."  Weight bias affects the workplace, media, healthcare, schools, and yes, family life.  A recent study reveals that parents discriminate againsttheir own overweight kids by being less willing to help pay for college or buy them a car.

Sadly, weight bias is no joke, but like any form of bullying, a potentially deadly affair.  Overweight kids and teens are often physically bullied, taunted, and excluded by peers, family members, teachers, and other authority figures.  Not only does criticism and public pressure about one's weight tend to increase eating disorders, comfort-eating, reduced physical activity, and weight gain, but it contributes to depression, damaged self-esteem, poor body image, and even suicidality.

So what can parents do?  Get educated.  Watch three fantastic videos on weight bias and kids from Yale University's Rudd Center and share them with your family, your PTO or PTA, your school principal, your friends.  Read posts on Fitsmi from a teen who was bullied for her weight; a girl who suffered drive-by insults; a teen teased by her brother and his friend; a Mom reflecting on the importance of praising a daughter's beauty, at any size.  Increase sensitivity to weight bias in your home, raise awareness at your local schools, and make sure that in a tough world, your child at least has one person he or she can turn to:  you.

Visit FitsmiForMoms.com for more valuable and educational information.  Watch video on sidebar to learn more about how Fitsmi can fit into your parenting!

Source: Fitsmi.com

Be an educated parent, you will have healthier teens.

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Teen Obesity: Is your teen a member of COAK?

The Coalition of Angry Kids (COAK) is speaking out and it is time for parents to get unplugged, get up and listen!

September is National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, and people are saying that 1 in 3 of children are overweight or obese. What about the parents?

An open letter from COAK:


Who are you calling obese?
We heard that September is National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month.

And people are saying that 1 in 3 of us are overweight or obese. They even use that weird word—EPIDEMIC—when they’re talking about us kids.

“Eat healthy.” “Go run around outside.” “Turn off the screens.” We hear those things a lot, too. Well, Mom and Dad, can you help us out here? We need more than reminders and threats. We need good examples.
We’re in this together, so let’s fix it together.

If you want us to eat less junk food, then let’s eat better together. If you want us to play an hour a day, then come out and play with us.

That sounds like a healthy solution to us. How about you?

Sincerely,
Coalition of Angry Kids
(Could your child's name be here?)

Have you stopped to check out the school menu? 10 Shocking Facts About School Cafeteria Food.

Visit COAK to learn more!

Be an educated parent, you will have healthier teens.


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Sue Scheff: Teen Obesity - Childhood Obesity - Let's Move Campaign

First Lady Michelle Obama has made it her mission to create awareness on obesity in our country, especially among our children.

Recently she visited Falcon Cove Middle School in Weston, Florida. Falcon Cove Middle School students Lauren Shatanof, Rachel Shatanof and Taylor Duarte were summoned to the principal’s office Wednesday to speak to First Lady Michelle Obama.

“Can you have junk food everyday? No, you just can’t,” said Obama during a meeting in Washington.

The First Lady spoke to the trio from the White House, where she held a town hall meeting with an audience of other students about her Let’s Move anti-childhood obesity campaign. “You don’t have the ability to walk. You’re in your parents car or you’re on a bus, and then you get to school, and there’s no physical education programs,” said Obama.

The First Lady said her Let’s Move initiative is about promoting an active lifestyle and not focusing on appearances. She’s encouraging children to think about the choices they make in their own lives and to take responsibility for their own futures. – WSVN

Helping parents make healthy family choices is part of educating families on healthier eating habits. Obesity threatens the healthy future of one third of all American children. Obesity rates have tripled in the past 30 years.

According to the CDC, children need 60 minutes of active and vigorous play every day to grow up to a healthy weight. Let’s Move to increase opportunities for kids to be physically active, both in and out of school and create new opportunities for families to be moving together.

Be an educated parent, you will have healthier children! Stay active and eat healthy as a family!

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Sue Scheff: Teen Obesity

IU2U.org - It’s Up to You….

What a great informational website on child obesity, eating healthy, and learning about how to make healthy changes in your family’s diet.

Live a Healthy Lifestyle by Dr. Oz Mehmet offers great advice on this fantastic website as well as other experts and professionals.

KNOW THE FACTS - Today teens are eating more and participating less in physical activity than the healthy amounts experts recommend.

What are kids eating - Kids’ Food has Excessive Sugar, Fat and Salt - learn more details here: http://iu2u.org/kids_food_trends.php

Effects of Obesity - It’s not just a “weight problem.” Learn the many ways becoming obese at a young age can affect a child now and in the future. Click on the figure below to see the effects of childhood obesity.

It’s Up 2 U!

12.5 million American children are obese. By 2010, this number will increase by 20%. Isn’t it time we make a change?

Get on board with the Fit Kids Act today at http://iu2u.org/sign.php

Then, check out the four-week Chiquita Family Challenge complete with menus, daily fitness and activity charts , kid-friendly recipes from Chef Robert Rainford and lifestyle tips from Dr. Oz’s HealthCorps at http://iu2u.org/change_family_habits.php.

Learn more at http://iu2u.org/index.php and join their FaceBook group at http://apps.facebook.com/causes/271974

(Teen Obesity) Small Changes Prevent Obesity by Connect with Kids

“As long as we concentrate on exercise, eating right, cutting out the sugar, I think we’ll be okay.”

– Tina Scott-Morgan, mother

For kids and adults, losing weight seems like an endless and insurmountable task: flavorless diet foods, gym memberships, hours of sweating and pain. But a new pediatric study reports that it really doesn’t have to be that hard.

To improve her daughter’s health and weight, Tina stopped buying carbonated drinks.

“We don’t drink sodas in this house,” says Tina Scott-Morgan, mother.

“They have too much sugar in them,” says her daughter, Marissa, 9.

Too much sugar and empty calories. According to a study in the journal, Pediatrics, children who walked an extra mile a day and cut out 100 calories daily showed a significant drop in their BMI (Body Mass Index) – an indicator used to determine healthy weight. One hundred calories equals one can of soda.

“When we cut that out and replaced it with water and milk, I could tell that there’s a significant difference in Marissa’s weight,” says Morgan.

“The fact is that you’re adding extra calories into your system that your body technically doesn’t need,” says Beth Passehl, Fit Kids coordinator, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

Experts say it’s all about small changes.

“Cut back gradually, cut back by 10 percent each day, cut back by one serving a day, and you may find that starts to make a difference. It’s small gradual steps that lead to life-long habits,” says Passehl.

Step-by-step, Marissa is working her way to a healthier life.

“As long as we concentrate on exercise, eating right, cutting out the sugar, I think we’ll be okay,” says her mom.

Tips for Parents

Eating breakfast is important for weight management. Research shows most people who have lost more than 60 pounds and kept it off for six years do eat breakfast. (Dr. Luke Beno, pediatrician)

Make a rule that no one in the family can eat while watching television. It’s hard for kids to realize how much they are eating when they’re absorbed in a television program. (Dr. Luke Beno, pediatrician)

Find ways to get the entire family more active. Have everyone in the family wear a pedometer, and compete to see who can take the most steps during the day. If the child wins, reward him/her with a fun activity. If the child loses, assign him/her an active chore. (Dr. Luke Beno, pediatrician)

Do not make your family give up foods they love. Instead, find healthier ways to prepare these foods. For example, frozen French fries can be baked instead of fried. Cheesecake or macaroni and cheese can be made with a low-fat cheese. Take a cooking class to get your family excited about healthy recipes. (Dr. Luke Beno, pediatrician)

Teach kids to use portion control when eating out. Since most portions at restaurants are double what they should be, encourage kids to take half home, or to share with another person. (Dr. Lonny Horowitz, bariatric specialist)

Calories are calories. It doesn’t matter where they come from. Keep portion size in mind, regardless of whether you’re eating a salad or junk food. (Dr. Lonny Horowitz, bariatric specialist)

According to The American Heart Association (AHA), healthy physical activity is defined as regular participation in activities that increase your heart rate above its resting level. However, physical activity doesn’t have to be strenuous to be beneficial. An active child plays sports, participates in PE class, does household chores, spends time outdoors and regularly travels by foot or bicycle.

The AHA offers the following guidelines:

Encourage your kids to regularly walk, bike, play outside and interact with other children.

Allow no more than two hours per day for sedentary activities – TV, computers, video games.

Promote weekly participation in age-appropriate sports or sandlot games.

Ensure your child participates in a daily school PE class that includes at least 20 minutes of coordinated large-muscle exercise.

Make sure your child has access to school/community facilities that enable safe participation in physical activities.

Provide opportunities for physical activities that are fun, increase confidence and involve friends.
Organize regular family outings that involve walking, cycling, swimming or other recreational activities.

Be a positive role model for a physically active lifestyle.

References

Dr. Lonny Horowitz, bariatric specialist
The American Heart Association (AHA)