How you can help your children to avoid becoming obese

In scientific terms, obesity occurs when a person consumes more calories than he or she burns. What causes this imbalance between calories in and calories out may differ from one person to another.

Being overweight is not an esteemed quality. Knowing this, how can we help our children to develop a healthy relationship with food and exercise?

Causes of obesity:

Genetic, environmental, psychological, and other factors may all play a part

Illness

Some illnesses including hypothyroidism, Cushing's syndrome and depression can lead to a tendency to gain weight. Also, drugs such as steroids and some antidepressants may cause weight gain. A doctor will be able to tell whether there are underlying medical conditions that are causing weight gain or making weight loss difficult.

Genetic Factors

Obesity tends to run in families, suggesting a genetic cause. Yet families also have similar environmental conditions; diet and lifestyle habits that may contribute to obesity. So what’s the bigger predictor? In one study, adults who were adopted as children were found to have weights closer to their biological parents than to their adoptive parents.

Environmental Factors
Environment includes lifestyle behaviours such as what a person eats and his or her level of physical activity. The typical American tends to eat high-fat foods, and put taste and convenience ahead of nutrition. Also, most do not get enough physical activity. As a result the general population is overweight.

Key environmental factors that mothers should be aware of:

1. Early dietary habits can strongly influence adult eating patterns. Classical psychology points toward the time when infants are weaned from milk to solid food as a crucial window for the later development of obesity.

2.Food insecurity resulting from being deprived of food in infancy(by parents who are worried their child is too heavy for instance) can encourage adult overeating.

3. Worldwide studies have shown that weight gain is linked to inactivity caused by television. But that’s not all. After finding that 75% of Americans make food choices based on what they see on TV, the American Diabetic Association also found that the most advertised product category during children's programs is food, and mostly fast food or sweetened foods! They concluded that the risk of gaining weight is increased through exposure to flawed information about what good food really is, as a result of watching TV ads.

4. Being overweight as a young child is a strong predictor of adult obesity. Unfortunately, while the physical disadvantages to this are obvious, the psychological disadvantages are equally devastating. Even if they reach a normal body weight in adulthood, psychologists

claim that adults who were overweight in their teen years continue to see themselves as fat and ugly.

Psychological Factors

Many people eat in response to negative emotions such as boredom, sadness, or anger. However findings show that overweight people generally have no more psychological problems than people of average weight; unless they have binge eating disorder. A condition that is more common in people who are severely obese.

Binge Eating Disorder

During a binge eating episode, people eat large amounts of food and feel that they cannot control how much they are eating. These people may have more difficulty losing weight and keeping it off than people without binge eating problems. If you think you might have a binge eating disorder, it would be worth your while to seek help from a health professional such as a psychiatrist, psychologist, or clinical social worker.

It’s been said that having an over-involved or under-involved mothercan result in impairment in a child’s ability to self regulate their eating, creating conditions for a child to suffer from eating disorders such as binge eating.  

- Under-involved: The mom who never recognize or acknowledges the efforts of her child. This leads to a state of confusion and suffering in the child’s mind which over time has them doubting that their mother really loves them.
- Over-involved: The mom who is over-possessive and overprotecting or one who sees her child’s achievements only in the light of how they reflect her own ambitions.

In essence food becomes a “tool” invested with the power to relieve anxiety and comfort the child emotionally. More importantly, it’s a tool that can also be controlled, to be used anytime bad feelings threaten to overwhelm the child (and later the adult). And this is the main reason why extreme eating habits develop.

Whereas anorexics reportedly often feel too close to their moms, bulimics tend to feel abandoned by their fathers. Plus many describe their mothers as passive, rejecting and disengaged. (Not blatantly neglectful, they respond to the child’s primary needs, but are emotionally unavailable.)

In Psychologies Magazine September 2009, a serial dieter comments:
“Reading Susie Orbach’s book On Eating (Penguin) was an epiphany. There was no diet, but an explanation about how many of us use food to avoid our emotions; something that despite my psychology background, I’d not considered. The first step to recovery it said was to stop restricting food, eat only when you were hungry and stop when full. The realisation that I was self medicating with food led me slowly to find other ways to feel better after a lifetime spent using food as comfort, chemical hit and friend.”

Steps you can take to protect your children against obesity:

1. Offer a wide range of healthy options to young children and then stand back!

Research shows that young children are predisposed to reject new foods and to learn associations between foods' flavours and the consequences of eating.

Plus (although there are individual differences in preferred energy intake as early as the preschool period) children have the ability to respond to the energy density of their diet. Despite the fact that intake during individual meals could be erratic, children have the innate ability to regulate intake effectively during 24 hour cycles

Unfortunately, parents can and do often affect a child’s eating patterns. This can occur when well-intentioned and concerned parents assume that children need help with deciding what, when and how much to eat. Thereby offering the child little opportunity for self-regulating.

Strict parental controls can:

• Create preferences for only certain foods and limit a child’s acceptance of a wide variety of foods
• Disrupt children's regulation of energy intake by altering natural responses to cues of hunger and satiety.

The consequences of messing with your child’s natural instincts can be devastating for them later in life.
 

2. Remove calorie-rich temptations

Although everything can be enjoyed in moderation, reducing the calorie-rich temptations of high-fat, high-sugar, or salty snacks can also help your children develop healthy eating habits. Only allow your children to eat these sometimes, so that they truly will be treats!

Ideas for healthy, easy-to-prepare, low-fat and low-sugar treats that are 100 calories or less:
- A medium-size apple, banana or a baby cucumber
-1 cup of blueberries, grapes, baby carrots, broccoli florets, or strips of bell peppers 

3. Help your children to stay active

Physical activity is an important part of balancing calories and good weight management.
Besides being fun for children and teens, regular physical activity has many health benefits, including strengthening bones, decreasing blood pressure, reducing stress and anxiety, and increasing self-esteem.

Children and teens should participate in at least 60 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity most days of the week, preferably daily. Remember that children imitate adults. Start adding physical activity to your own daily routine and encourage your child to join you.

Examples of moderate intensity physical activity:

• Brisk walking
• Playing tag
• Jumping rope
• Playing soccer
• Swimming
• Dancing

4. Reduce sedentary time.

Although quiet time for reading and homework is fine, limit the time your children watch television, play video games, or surf the web to no more than 2 hours per day.

Additionally, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) does not recommend television viewing for children age 2 or younger. Instead, find fun activities for your child to do with care-givers, yourself, family members or on their own that involve more activity.

Conclusion

Sue Botes, founder of Wonderful Women made this observation.

My parents left me a priceless legacy because when I was young they demonstrated in word and deed that there are links between diet, health and exercise. And this has helped me to maintain a healthy weight relatively easily throughout my life.

I remember a discussion I had with my mom. I was twelve, mashing potatoes, and begging her to add a lot more butter than she had to the mix. She refused saying, I’m watching my weight and I don’t want your father having a heart attack. So no more butter.
Decades later, I’ve never forgotten her words. And her various other dietary “policies”:
How she would buy oranges and other fruits in bulk and insist that we eat them.
How she always served loads of vegetables but little meat
How she preferred to cook in water rather than fat and . . .
How she very seldom bought home any tempting sodas, cookies and crisps
Smart lady!

Also, even though we only saw our father fortnightly on weekends, whenever he collected us some form of physical exercise always formed part of the outing; like going to the beach for a swim, or playing squash or tennis. Plus he and his second wife were both very much pro health and organic food – before they became mainstream trends. I remember eating brown rice in the 70’s, thinking it was horrid! Yet now I do the same.

Which just goes to show the extent to which our parents can impress either helpful or unhelpful lifestyle habits on us.