Families no longer eat regular meals together. Home cooking is no longer the primary source of meals for many people. Greasy and sugar-laden fast food is cheap, tasty, and available everywhere. Time spent in front of a TV or computer steals time from sports and other activities that burn calories. Manufacturers of snack food and soft drinks advertise their empty calories directly to children. Schools eliminate or cut back physical education classes. Because of concerns about community and neighborhood safety, parents keep their children from participating in informal, spontaneous playground activities.

What is the result of children taking in more calories and being less active than they were a decade ago? Pediatric endocrinologists say, “The children we see today are thirty percent heavier than the ones who were referred to us in 1990.”

Obese children are at risk physically and emotionally. Many become obese teens and then obese adults. They suffer low self-esteem and are candidates for diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, and many cancers. Diabetes alone can lead to damaged blood vessels, kidney failure, blindness, amputations, heart attacks, and strokes.

1. Make all activities to lose weight a family issue. Often, obese children are obese because their parents and siblings follow the same unhealthy diets and exercise habits as they do.  In order to change their habits, the whole family should engage in healthy sports and nutrition.

2. Set Goals. Your child’s goals could be tied to rewards as well. Give your child video game time, but only if they’re able to finish exercising or playing outside for a specified time every day.  Set a weight for you child to aim for; make sure that your child is following nutritional guidelines and exercising in order to reach this weight.

3. Keep an eye on what media they’re “eating.” The types of media your child is consuming also has a bearing on how much weight your child gains.  In order to keep a full watch on their habits, you should cut out any sedentary activities, such as video games or television, from their daily “media diet.” If you child must play interactive games, try encouraging them to play interactive online games that help teach them proper nutrition and exercise.

4. Eat healthy foods and snacks. Salts, fats, and sugars are all common elements of a child’s diet. Though a growing body and mind needs food to grow, improper nutrition won’t provide the benefits that proper vitamins and nutrition do.  Make sure your child’s diet is full of natural sugars from fruits, whole grains, vegetables, and yogurts. Not all fat is bad fat, but your kid should avoid any snack items with trans-fats, which could be especially harmful to their health.

5. Keep moving. Exercise is incredibly important in helping your overweight child lose weight.  Commit your child to a minimum of around 30 minutes of vigorous exercise every day.  These exercises need not be boring; you can encourage your child to join a sport or play interactive games that encourage physical activity. There are a number of fun ways for you child to burn calories!

A fat or overweight child faces increasing risks of hyperlipidemia (too much fat in the blood, including high cholesterol); hypertension (high blood pressure, which can carry over into their adult lives and place great strain on their hearts); gastro-intestinal diseases (these diseases of the digestive tract could be harmful later in life, leading to potential cancer risks as an adult); and type-2 diabetes (more than 85% of people with Type 2 Diabetes are overweight).

Mental Risks for Obese Kids

Along with the physical risks, your child may also suffer from depression and withdrawal from social functions. Children are also more likely to continue bad habits once they become obese – from playing video games too much, to watching television and browsing the Internet instead of exercising or playing sports.

Metabolic syndrome is also an issue for kids who are overweight and obese. Once an obese child begins exercising, the metabolic syndrome could more easily be managed. Metabolic syndrome could be a contributing to other unhealthy conditions in an overweight child, including a five-fold risk for diabetes.

In order to manage all of these conditions, you should encourage your overweight kid to exercise, spend more time outside, do physical chores, or join a sport.

Average Weights for Kids to Measure Obesity

For this reason, it may be more apt to take a look at the average weights and heights for children to get a good overview of how your child matches up with his or her peers. Even if your kid is obese, these guidelines will help set a goal or landmark which will be a good achievement for your child to reach.

By keeping yourself within these weight guidelines, you will at least be in line with the average weights for a child; however, average weights may not always be the best weights, so you should combine these tables with a good analysis of your child’s Body Mass Index (BMI), as well as their activity and nutrition habits and their unique build and metabolism.

In order to gauge your child’s obesity, you should look at these four characteristics.

1. Weight and Height: Measure your child’s weight and height to see if they’re overweight. A child in the 85th percentile of the BMI is considered “at risk for overweight” and a child that falls within the 95th percentile of the BMI is “overweight or obese,” according to the National Institute for Health. There are a number of web calculators that help make the complicated math of calculating your child’s body mass index easier.

2. Skinfold Thickness: Using a caliper on certain portions of your child’s think will provide a basic, rudimentary measurement of their body’s fat content. This measurement will help you in comparing it to the body mass index to see if you have an obese child.

3. Physical Signs and Characteristics: Obese kids, especially, show symptoms of obesity, including early type-2 diabetes, sleep apnea, early puberty, and high blood pressure.

4. Habits:  If your child has a love of junk food, nip it in the bud! If your overweight kid plays video games, or watches television regularly they’re much more likely to become obese.

• Cultivate healthy eating habits as soon as possible. Start vegetables by the age of one. By three years teach the child to eat a healthy breakfast.

• If you are keen on giving a balanced healthy diet for children throughout the day then cut it down into a number of meals and give the fat/carbohydrates during the day. You can browse the net or ask the child’s doctor about daily portions in the diet.

• Children cannot grow up without the right amount of fat. Give it in reduced quantities. Avoid fatty food like butter/cheese/oil/high amount of meat, high quantity of milk during the night.

• Always make it a habit to have an early dinner. At least three hours before. • Do not allow the children to eat in the middle of the night.

• Plan a time when the child can eat fast food. Giving it on a weekly basis or fortnightly is best. And it is also best if it is made at home. This way you can control the amount of junk intake.

• Reduce the amount of pocket money for food so that the child does not indulge in unnecessary eating.

• A very important cause for overweight kids is lack of physical activity. Parents make their children couch potatoes by allowing them to watch too much TV. The best way for a child to grow into a healthy person physically and mentally is physical activity. If you are physically active the child will follow you. Enroll the child for physical activities that he/she has an interest it.

By just following the above steps you can see a difference in your child. Believe me once the child has a routine set it is not at all difficult to tackle obesity.

The number of children who are overweight is on a steady increase. Latest figures show that about one in four children could be considered overweight or obese. For these children, often exercise can be a relatively negative experience- often they have poor motor skills, or are the ones who frequently come last.

For many, exercising with their peers is difficult. It is frequently uncomfortable. Sometimes they are teased. As a result, many overweight children start to avoid exercise, but the inactivity generally worsens the weight issues and widens the gap in the development of their motor skills.

Overweight – Obesity

Overweight can be the entry point to obesity if you are not doing anything against it and in time to change this condition. Obesity is defined as the massive deposition of fat tissue under the skin and organs, is distinguishing between the sexes: In women, the proportion of fat from around a quarter of the body weight in men fifteen percent. Overweight and obesity beginning in most cases arises from disproportionate food intake, stress factors or glandular disorders. In rare cases it is hereditary.

Everyone can calculate his own BMI (body mass index). This is determined by calculating one’s own weight by the size of the square. A BMI of 20-24 is generally considered healthy, everything over 24 is harmful. When the body absorbs too much food, and these calories are not burned, fat is stored. This leads to obesity and accompanied with it there comes a high health risk.

Vulnerability of our children

Particularly vulnerable are our children, as the number of overweight and obese children has increased alarmingly in recent years. For example, in Germany alone, 1.9 million children and adolescents are overweight, 800,000 of them obese. Especially children from disadvantaged families or families are involved with migration background. Together with the Robert Koch Institute, the Federal Ministry of Health, a nationwide study of children and young people aged from zero to 17 years has started. So those appalling figures became apparent. The main reason for this is usually malnutrition, that means that the children do not eat enough fruits and vegetables and take instead fat, calories and sugar which are contained in soft drinks, fast food and sweets. All this comes in combination with too little movement by hours of sitting at the computer or simple boredom.