|
Childhood Obesity
Mini-Articles
Parents are Key to Healthy Eating Lifestyle
Should Fast Foods Carry Warning Labels?
The "Skinny" on Childhood Obesity
Childhood Obesity
Parent Lifestyle is Key to Healthy Eating/Obesity in Kids
1. The more weight conscious our society becomes, the more overweight and obese our children are becoming. It's not as though parents don't care. The harder they try to prevent overweight, the more likely American kids are to developing unhealthy eating habits and lifestyles. There appears to be an inverse correlation between the use of low fat and fat- free foods, encouraging kids to diet, skip meals and/or rely on meal substitutes like Power Bars, and overweight kids. Did you know that overweight and dieting children are more likely to become overweight adults?
2. Though obesity is in part genetically based and has been proven to be the cause of many childhood diseases, there is a great deal parents can do to prevent it, outright. The formula is, oddly, non-formulaic. Very simply, the answer lies in healthy eating alongside a healthy exercise lifestyle; as a society, we appear to have forgotten what healthy eating and exercise is all about.
It is time to bust the myths about what healthy eating is, such as fat-free eating is healthy eating; what is healthy eating for parents defines what is healthy eating for their kids. It is time to cook for and eat with our kids, saving lives and preventing suffering.
Should Fast Foods Carry Warning Signs?
The government does well to support community education about a condition that is rampant in society today and that kills; its citizens gain a recognition and consciousness of issues that can save lives and improve life quality, even while the food industry has nothing to fear. As an expert in the field of eating, my belief is that truly healthy eating includes ALL kinds of food, even fried foods, fast foods, and those that contain fat and sugar, typically seen as "off limits" to dieters and the overweight. No foods should be off limits.
What needs to be off limits for weight management is dieting. Food restriction and dieting (the solutions most frequently of choice) are unhealthy. Obese people need not eat less, but instead must learn to eat differently. The way to eat healthfully so as to become and remain thin is to eat the right foods, in the right combinations, at the right times...healthy eating is balanced eating, including varied and nutritionally dense food choices, in combination with exercise and physical activity.
People are obese because of heredity, emotionality, as well as eating life style. To date, heredity cannot be altered. Dealing with underlying emotional issues that drive overeating and learning ho w to accomplish a healthy eating lifestyle can be. There are no bad foods. What is bad is immoderate and unbalanced eating.
The "Skinny" on Childhood Obesity
As I see it, childhood obestiy comes of genetic predispositions that are triggered and exacerbated by a dysfunctional lifestyle and parental attitudes about food and eating. Any of these factors alone will not lead to obestiy. All of them together put a child at high risk.
Why now?
- Parents are less at home these days, leaving kids to fend for themselves for snacks and meals. Only 50% of American families eat dinners together anymore.
- What is more, we are a nation of convenience eaters, of fast -food eaters, with the latter becoming increasingly available and affordable.
- We are an immoderate society, where extreme and imbalanced eating has become the norm.
- We are a society which has forgotten what truly healthy eating actually is.
We are a dieting society. Diets are the worst way to lose weight. In 95% of cases, the total amount of weight lost is regained and then some, 1-5 years post -diet. Kids who restrict food, are more likely to become obese adults.
There's nothing wrong with a child being a little overweight, particularly if it is not a hazard to their health.
- What is wrong is the faulty eating and activity lifestyles, attitudes and patterns that cause obesity and that get carried from childhood into adulthood.
- What is wrong is how an obese and out of control child thinks and feels about food, and about himself.
- What is wrong is when a child turns to food and eating to somehow effect or camouflage feelings and resolve emotional problems. In such cases, eating patterns become pseudo-solutions for real problems, creating more problems, not less.
If parents feel concerned about a child's eating lifestyle or weight, it is best to consult a physician initially, to rule out organically based precipitants. Following that,
- It is for parents to step in to encourage their child to recognize, define and resolve underlying emotional issues that may be driving the dysfunctional behaviors in an effort to resolve problems at their source.
- It is for parents to supply healthful meals regularly for the child, and then to sit down to eat these meals together with the child, listening to thoughts and feelings, at the same time as observing eating behaviors.
- It is for parents to role model a healthy eating and exercise lifestyle for the child.
- Beyond that, parents should engage with their child in activities, sports, and healthful exercise. Positive parental attention creates positive self-esteem. Obesity and good self-esteem are an unlikely duo.
About Abigail H. Natenshon
Abigail H. Natenshon, MA LCSW has been a psychotherapist in private practice specializing in the treatment of eating disordered individuals and their families for the past 28 years. She is co-founder and director of Eating Disorder Specialists of Illinois; A Clinic without Walls, and the author of When Your Child Has an Eating Disorder: A Step-by-Step Workbook for Parents and Other Caregivers (Jossey Bass, San Francisco, October, 1999). Visit her web sites at www.empoweredparents.com and www.empoweredkidZ.com
CONTACT:
Abigail Natenshon, MA, LCSW
Telephone 847-432-1795
Fax: 847-266-9233
Highland Park, Illinois 60035
Contact Me
|
