Child obesity: As a parent, be aware of these to prevent your child from obesity
Childhood obesity is presently a prevalent issue in our society. According to WHO (1), in 2022 37 million under 5 years old children were overweight globally. Also, over 390 million children between 5-19 years were overweight and over 160 million were affected by obesity.
During childhood, if a child consumes more calories from foods or drinks than requirement, it can turn into overweight or obese. As a result, excess body fat is stored in the body and badly affects a child’s health. Childhood obesity can often turn into overweight or obesity when a child becomes an adult. As a parent, you must take proper care to educate your child properly about food and health.
Monitor your child’s weight:
It is very important to monitor your child’s body weight regularly. You can use the BMI (Body Mass Index) method you get an idea about your child’s ideal body weight with respect to height. To use this method, you must know your child's age, sex, height, and current body weight. You can also use a growth chart to know the status of your child's weight.
Why does a child become overweight or obese?
Poor dietary habits:
One of the most common causes of childhood obesity. Many children in our society are addicted to fast foods, fried foods, chocolates, sugary drinks, etc. As a result, they become an overweight or obese child. Therefore, it is very important to improve your child’s dietary habits.
Lack of physical activities:
For healthy growth and development, it is very important to be physically active. Nowadays, most children spend their free time with electronic gadgets. Therefore, most of the time they are physically inactive, and as a result, they become overweight.
Genetic factor:
Sometimes genetic factor is also the cause of overweight or obesity in a child. If biological parents or siblings have excess weight, a child may have a chance to develop the same.
Psychological factor:
Stress is also a big reason for childhood obesity. A stressful family environment often results in stress and anxiety for children and some children tend to start overeating to overcome the situation.
Health issues:
Some health issues are rarely responsible for childhood obesity like:
Hormonal imbalance,
Hypothyroidism,
Cushing syndrome,
Growth hormone deficiencies, etc.
Some medications (2) also increase the chances of developing overweight or obese in childhood like prednisone, lithium, amitriptyline, paroxetine, gabapentin, and propranolol.
Why should you need to be aware:
According to research, kids who are suffering from childhood obesity may have a good chance of suffering from the following health issues as adults:
- Type-II diabetes,
- High blood pressure,
- High cholesterol level,
- Heart disease,
- joint pain.
Therefore, it is essential to ensure your child grows up healthily.
How to deal with childhood obesity:
As a parent, it is essential to ensure your children’s healthy growth and development. Properly guiding them about food, physical activities, and a healthy lifestyle is important.
Change dietary habits:
For healthy kids, there is no food restriction but make sure the food must be healthy. Many children love to eat fast food, sugary foods, fried foods, etc. which are not good for them. You need to guide them properly.
Try to give them fresh fruits, and vegetables via some variations in their diet. Sometimes, if you serve them the same types of food regularly, it becomes boring to them. Therefore, prepare different types of dishes for your kids. Like if you make noodles or homemade pizza, then put different types of colorful vegetables like carrots, beans, capsicum, tomatoes, onion, etc. into it. Do not forget to garnish the plate. If the dish looks attractive, it helps to make them habituated to homemade foods.
Physical activities:
Always try to engage your child with some physical activities. It is very important not only to avoid obesity but also good for their digestive system and overall growth and development. Encourage them to play with balls, do some exercise, dance, etc. in a fun way. When you are going outside with your kids try to go to a place where they can engage themselves physically.
Eat together:
A very common complaint of parents is that children are very fussy about their meals. If you take at least one meal with your child together, you have a good chance to solve it. This habit helps a lot to improve your child’s food habits. Not only that, eating together, helps your child to know about family food traditions, and how to eat together, and most importantly kids also improve their eating habits gradually.
Try to be a smart parent:
If your child is forcing you to buy chips or chocolate, do not always encourage them. Try to teach them that excessive eating of these foods is not good for their health. Most of the time parents also make a mistake to promise to give their kids chocolates, and chips as a reward for good activities. This is not a good idea and sending a message to kids that these are prized food. You must teach them from the beginning which food is healthy and which is unhealthy.
Nowadays, it isn't easy to keep children away from chocolate, sugary drinks, fast foods, etc. Therefore, we should focus on guiding them properly in choosing the right food. If you do this from the early years of age of your kids, it helps to control their food habits easily.
Reduce screen time:
Excessive screen time is one of the most common causes of childhood obesity. Not only that, screen time also affects mental health. A very common complaint is, that kids are not eating food without watching television or cartoons. If your child watches cartoons or television during every meal, he/she never improves their food habits, they have no idea what they eat and how much they should eat and have a big chance of overeating because they are focusing only on watching cartoons rather than eating. If this situation goes regularly, it affects the child’s digestive system, as well as their body weight.
Not only that, but today, most parents are busy with their own professional lives. They cannot spend much time with their kids, and as a result, kids also spend lots of time with electronic gadgets. Excess screentime may cause delayed speech, sleep disturbance, anxiety, depression, Inability to communicate, lack of physical activities, and obesity. Being a parent, you must take responsibility for fixing the screen time of your child. To solve this matter, you need to spend some quality time with your child playing together, dancing together, eating together, reading together, and trying to avoid electronic gadgets at that moment as much as you can. Try to set an example that the gadgets are mainly used for work not for playing games or watching cartoons.
Foods You should include in your child’s menu plan:
Seasonal vegetables, seasonal fruits, whole grains, lean meat, healthy fat, and low-fat dairy products, etc. Make sure to add some variations in their diet and the plate should be colorful and attractive. It helps your kids to improve their taste buds as well as they also habituated with home-made foods.
Foods you should exclude from the child’s menu plan:
Try to avoid or limit serving of fast foods, junk foods, sugary drinks, chocolates, sweets, chips, etc.
Bottomline:
In most cases, a lack of physical activity, poor dietary habits, and unhealthy lifestyles are the main reasons for childhood obesity. Children can't understand what is good or bad for their health unless trained properly. Therefore, as a parent, it is your responsibility to teach them from the beginning. It helps them to grow positively, sportingly, and in a healthy way.
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