7 Ways to Decrease Childhood Obesity Statistics

Childhood obesity is on the rise. Statistics show that overweight children are becoming the norm for American families and the current trend has no end. This alarming statistic has everyone looking for ways to curb children's weight gain.

New diets are being born every hour along with medical procedures promising expensive surgery as the answer. No wonder parents and kids are confused and don't know what to do. This article takes a practical approach to lowering the dreadful childhood obesity statistic and shed some common sense ideas for parents to explore. A book titled "Underage and Overweight" by Frances M. Berg, MS, LN gives 7 steps to reversing childhood obesity.

She advocates living healthy in 4 major areas of life: living actively, eating well, feeling good about yourself and feeling good about others. Her goal is for lasting changes in families of obesity and to discard any quick fixes that may come your way.

Her 7 steps are as follows:

1. Normalize activity
2. Normalize eating
3. Balance sound nutrition
4. Feel good about yourself
5. Communicate feelings
6. Feel good about others
7. Balance the dimensions of wellness

Focusing on negatives such as weight loss and dieting does more harm than it does good and a parents real intentions should be directed to healthy lifestyle programs instead of diets

Ms Berg states very accurately that changing lifestyles takes time and involves not only the physical body, but the conscious and subconscious mind as well. This she adds does not happen overnight.

She advocates that your child will progress most easily when you break new health habits into small steps, each appropriate to age level and building on the one before. This common sense method is similar to how your child learned to talk. At first cooing and babbling until words begin to form. Moms and dads encouraged baby to all along the way by praising and repeating the words over and over until it became permanent.

To sum up Ms Berg states "instead of encouraging large kids to lose weight or restrict food, it is better to help them build self esteem and become more active." These words are profound and if applied properly can decrease childhood statistics everywhere, even in your own home.