Early intervention, family lifestyle changes can put children on path to lifelong health
By Carolyn Snyder, Special to the Town Crier
 |
I was a fat kid with fat parents, decades before fast food and French fries were daily fare. At 10, I weighed 160 pounds - the exception, not the norm, in those days.
Today, it’s just the opposite as childhood obesity rates skyrocket. Now I would be right at home with my peers. A case in point: Since the early 1970s, the obesity rate has doubled among American toddlers and tripled among children ages 6 to 11.
“The rise of fast food and soda consumption the last 25 to 30 years has been astronomical, and so has the rise of obesity that accompanies it,” said Eric Schlosser, author of “Fast Food Nation” (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) and “Chew on This” (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), in a recent program presented by the Commonwealth Club of California.
One in every five American toddlers eats French fries every day, and soda consumption, especially among children, has tripled, according to Schlosser. Couple this with the inactivity associated with watching television and using electronic media, and childhood obesity assumes major proportions.
“This is a disaster, because if you are obese by the age of 13, the odds are overwhelming that you are going to be obese for the rest of your life,” Schlosser said.
Fortunately for me, my parents sought a physician’s help when I entered sixth grade. A combination of diet, exercise and parental support helped me lose weight. Along the way, I learned new eating habits.
This is the approach taken by Dr. Wynnyee Tom of Los Altos, a pediatrician at Kaiser Permanente in Fremont, who focuses on helping her young patients and their families establish “healthy habits” to combat obesity. Eating together as a family, eating healthier foods and getting into an exercise routine are a few simple ways to get started, she said.
“Know what is healthy for your child,” she said in reference to exercise and diet. “I tell them not to worry about losing weight. The important thing is not to gain.”
According to Tom, one in every five of her patients is overweight or at risk of becoming overweight. On a national level, one in three children 6-11 is over-
weight, and 15 percent obese, according to the American Obesity Association.
These children are at risk of developing serious health conditions, Tom said, such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma and orthopedic problems. In addition, the psychosocial effects and stigma of being overweight can lead to eating disorders.
“It is not uncommon to see hip problems develop at a young age,” Tom said, “and high cholesterol.”
All her well-child visits include calculation of Body Mass Index (BMI), which is a tool for identifying whether a young person’s weight is healthful or not. In fact, Kaiser starts measuring BMI at all routine health-care visits starting at age 2.
A healthful weight for children is somewhere between the 5th and 85th percentile on the BMI-for-age chart, Tom explained. Children with BMIs in the 85th to 95th percentile are at risk of being overweight. Those above are considered overweight. (To calculate your child’s BMI, see the box on Page 32.)
So how do children end up at the top of the BMI chart? Poor nutrition and inactivity are the chief culprits. Following are some tidbits from a Kaiser Permanente report on childhood obesity.
• Each day about one-third of American children eat fast food. On days when fast food is eaten, a child consumes on average about 187 more calories than a child not eating fast food. This equates to an extra six pounds of weight per year.
• Children spend on average 5.5 hours per day using electronic media, more time than they spend doing anything else except sleeping. Even preschoolers spend as much time with screen media as they do playing outside.
• Sixty-two percent of children ages 9-13 do not spend any time outside of school hours in organized physical activity, such as sports. And 23 percent report no physical activity at all during their free time.
• Many children are driven almost everywhere they go, so few walk or ride bikes to school or other activities.
So, what’s a mother, or father, to do?
If a youngster is overweight, Tom looks at family history and lifestyle and suggests simple changes that involve the entire family. It stands to reason that you can’t expect a child to adhere to a diet while the rest of the family is eating Big Macs.
“Eating together as a family is important,” Tom said, “and eating healthier: brown rice instead of white rice, whole-wheat instead of white bread, more fiber, smaller portion sizes.”
Large portions mean too many calories. A snack for a typical adult may be a carton of yogurt, but for a preschooler, 2 to 3 tablespoons of yogurt is about right.
According to Tom, a child is a prisoner of his or her parents’ diet. Stock the house with the right foods for a child to nibble on and for mealtime. And beware of sweetened drinks. Sodas and sports drinks are high in calories, and too much juice - even with its healthful vitamins - can quickly add too many calories to a child’s diet.
Getting your child started on an exercise routine is paramount. The El Camino YMCA in Mountain View has a youth fitness program for ages 10 to 14 that helps achieve cardiovascular benefits, muscular strength, endurance and flexibility. Not only that, a Y fitness trainer can make it fun.
Focus on reducing sedentary behavior. You might consider persuading your child to use a pedometer every day. Health advocates say it’s important to get outside and away from food.
Here are more tips from Kaiser Permanente, Tom and other health professionals:
• Remove TV from child’s bedroom.
• Walk, run and play with your child.
• Be a good role model. Children should see their parents eating fruits, veggies and being active.
• Don’t make food a moral issue (”I was good” or “I was bad”).
• Encourage and empathize rather than criticize.
• Don’t reward a child with food because it gives food too much importance. Use hugs, stickers and small toys.
• Instead of letting kids watch TV or play video games while you cook dinner, have them help prepare the meal. This will also teach children about food.
• After dinner, go for a family walk. In addition to the exercise, it gives you quality family time.
• Remember, small steps count. Park a little farther from the supermarket. Walk instead of drive whenever possible.
There are a number of programs to help children lose weight, but the goal should be to help them keep it off, Tom said. It’s important to see healthier eating as a permanent lifestyle change, not as a short-term diet.
According to Tom, the focus should be on total health, not simply weight loss.
It worked for me, although at age 66 I could lose a few
pounds.
