“If you have a gut, you are probably overweight.”
– Luke Beno, M.D., Pediatrician
Due in part to the awareness created by First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign, childhood obesity is fast becoming one of the most pressing concerns facing kids across the country. Sometimes it’s genetics… and sometimes obesity is a family affair.
Families tend to have similar eating patterns, levels of physical activity, and adopt the same attitudes toward being overweight. Studies have shown that a child’s risk of obesity greatly increases if one or more parent is overweight or obese.
Pansy wanted to help her son, Brian, lose weight. According to Pansy, Brian has been overweight since birth.
“People tell you that its baby fat and he’ll lose it,” says Pansy, “but he just kept going. And he was always a big eater from day one.”
“I ate a lot of chicken, fried chicken, and steak,” says Brian, who’s now 16 years old.
Brian’s doctor enrolled him in Operation Zero, a program for overweight kids run by the health care provider Kaiser Permanente. But there was a catch. His parents had to join too.
“And at first it took me a minute,” says Pansy, “because I was like, ‘everybody’s got to do this?'”
“I was used to eating fried foods all my life,” says Brian’s dad, George. “Everything – collard greens, chicken, pork chops – everything was fried.”
Every week, the family attended a class where they learned a new style of cooking.
“Do not expect that the child that is overweight is going to eat a salad, while everyone else is eating steak,” says pediatrician Dr. Luke Beno. “That doesn’t make sense.”
He says often it can be hard to get parents – especially fathers – to change their eating habits, but not for this family.
“When we first started the program, the only person that seemed to be enthusiastic about it was me,” says George. “And so I would do everything the program said, and I lost a lot of weight.”
Eventually, Brian’s mom got excited too. She lost two dress sizes.
“It seemed like it was going to be difficult at first,” says Pansy, “but if the food still tastes good, that’s fine. And it still does.”
Brian says it helped to have his parents’ support.
“If they didn’t go through the program,” he says, “they probably would have kept buying all that food, and I probably would have kept eating for it more and more.”
What We Need To Know
Exercise research has shown the following:
- Over 60 percent of American adults are not regularly active.
- Twenty-five percent of adults are not active at all.
- Only 19 percent of high school students are active for 20 minutes or more per day.
- Men are more active than women.
- Physical activity declines with age.
- Ethnic minorities are less active.
- Higher education and income are associated with more leisure-time activity.
- Obese people are usually less active than non-obese persons.
The Surgeon General’s report on physical activity endorses a moderate amount of physical activity that can be obtained by doing any of the following:
- Thirty minutes of brisk walking
- Thirty minutes of lawn mowing
- Thirty minutes of leaf raking
- Fifteen minutes of running
- Forty-five minutes of volleyball
Not only does exercise keep bodies healthy and help to prevent diseases, it is also important because it can help keep minds sharp and healthy. Experts at KidsHealth have developed the following list of the benefits of exercising.
- Exercise Makes Your Heart Happy – Your heart is one hardworking part, pumping blood every day of your life. The heart is a muscle, and it’s the strongest muscle in your body, but it’s always looking to become even stronger! Since lifting weights won’t help it get stronger, it relies on you to do aerobic exercise. It’s a good idea for kids to do some kind of aerobic exercise two or three times a week, for 20 to 30 minutes at a time. Some excellent aerobic activities are swimming, basketball, ice or roller hockey, jogging (or walking quickly), rollerblading, soccer, cross-country skiing, biking and rowing. Even dancing, skipping, jumping rope and playing hopscotch are aerobic activities!
- Exercise Makes Muscles – All the muscles in your body do a fine job when you use them for easy stuff, like picking up a book or walking down the stairs. But what about using them for harder stuff, like taking long bike rides or climbing a tree? That’s where exercise comes in. It makes your muscles stronger and sometimes larger. As your muscles get stronger, you can do more active things for longer periods of time. And strong muscles also help protect you from injuries when you exercise, because they give better support to your joints. Building up all different types of muscles is easy to do. For arm strength, try push-ups, pull-ups, tug-of-war or twirling a baton. Rowing in a rowboat or canoeing is great for building strong arm muscles as well. For strong leg muscles, try running, blading, skating and bike riding. And for strong stomach muscles, try sit-ups, bike riding, or even twirling a hula hoop around your waist.
- Exercise Makes You Flexible – Can you touch your toes easily? Most kids are pretty flexible, which means that they can bend and stretch their bodies without too much trouble. But as people get older they tend to get less flexible, so that’s why it’s important to exercise when you’re a kid – so you can stay flexible. Plus, when you’re flexible, you can be more active without having to worry about getting sprains and strained muscles. It’s easy to find things to do for good flexibility. Tumbling and gymnastics are great ways to become more flexible. Yoga and dancing, especially ballet, also increase flexibility. Karate, tae kwon do and other martial arts are great for flexibility, too.
- Exercise Keeps You at a Healthy Weight – Every time you eat food, your body does the same thing: it uses some of the nutrients in the food as fuel. It burns these nutrients to give us energy or calories. You need calories for all of your body’s functions, whether it’s things you think about doing, like brushing your teeth, or things you never think about doing, like breathing. So it’s important for kids to get all the calories they need from the foods they eat. But if the body isn’t able to use all the calories that are coming from food, it stores them away as fat. And that’s why exercise helps keep a child at a weight that’s right for his/her height, by burning up extra calories. When you exercise, your body uses that extra fuel to keep you going strong.
- Exercise Makes You Feel Good – Exercising is a most excellent way to feel happy, whether you’re exercising on your own or with a group. If you’ve had a tough day at school, a fight with your friend or just feel kind of blue, exercising can help you feel better. That’s because when you exercise, your body can release endorphins, which are chemicals that create a happy feeling in your brain. Plus, when you’re breathing deeply during exercise and bringing more air into your lungs, your brain appreciates the extra oxygen. And when you’re active and running around, sometimes it’s hard to think about just what was bothering you. Exercise can make you feel better about yourself, too. When you are stronger and more capable of doing things, you can feel pretty proud – whether you scored the winning goal or hula-hooped for an hour straight!
Resources
- Let’s Move
- American Heart Association Resources for Parents and Families
- KidsHealth
- Centers For Disease Control and Prevention
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