As of this revision, health experts are reporting that nearly 5 million children and teens are severely obese. As a result of so many being severely overweight, many are developing health problems such diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, lever disease and difficulty breathing. The American Academy of Pediatrics is actually recommending weight loss surgery for adolescents as the risk of the surgery is less than the risk of being obese. I consider this recommendation very alarming and drastic. Weight loss surgery has a significant failure rate and people do die of complications of any kind of surgery, but people also die of eating disorders.
Excerpts from 9-18-11 Indy Star: Dr. Paula Gustafson, a Shelbyville pediatrician claims about 15 percent of her patients were obese or overweight at 2 years old. By the time they reached school age, that had soared to 40 percent.
To help parents, Gustafson has devised what she calls the Major Easy Three, three tips for parents: Drink milk with meals; offer water for refreshment and eat only at the table.
While I agree with the good Dr's tips described above, I would like to add 1 tip that I consider to be most important: ROLE MODELING
Back in the year 2000 when my son was a chubby 5 years old, I was concerned about his increased risk of Diabetes as a result of his potential for childhood obesity. I wanted to do something, so the first thing I did was take a look at the man in the mirror. I was a good 65 pounds overweight at the time. When I looked around I noticed that overweight adult parents commonly have overweight children and I was no exception. I did NOT want to be the ROLE MODEL for my childs potentially deadly health hazards, so with the help of God I converted to a healthier lifestyle.
Many experts blame the dramatic increase in Childhood Diabetes on the dramatic increase in Childhood Obesity. Many of these same experts claim that because of the epidemic levels of childhood Obesity and Diabetes, today’s children will be the first generation to average a shorter life expectancy than their parents. Today’s parents will be the first generation of parents likely to bury their own children. Genetics are also listed as a common cause of Diabetes. I realize that I can not do anything about their genetic risk of Diabetes except pray, but I also know that if either of my children contract Diabetes as a result of Obesity, my behavior, my Role Modeling, I would feel very directly responsible. I would feel that my lack of control over my behavior had inflicted my child with a very serious disease.
Thanks and may God bless you for visiting my Web Site.
To learn the complete story about how and why I was able lose and keep off over 65 pounds for over 10 years, I invite you to check out the LOSING WEIGHT page of this Web Site.