If your child is struggling with adolescent obesity, it may be very heartbreaking for you to see them like that. Children are often cruel, and don’t develop proper empathy towards others until they are well into their teens and some don’t get there until they are adults. Teens with weight issues have a harder time with body image and they also feel the sting of people’s opinions about their weight more keenly than adults with the same problem. If your child is struggling with weight issues, you have to do something to help them, even if it means you have to turn your life around too.
There are some medical issues that can contribute to adolescent obesity, but most of the problems come from family genetics and poor diet and exercise programs. Children learn to eat from their parents, so if you have problems with your weight and you feed your children the same foods you are eating, they are going to have problems with adolescent obesity as well.
- If you don’t make them play anything other than video games, they could have problems.
- If your diets are very carbohydrate heavy, you end up in a vicious over-eating cycle that is hard to break, but for the sake of your child, you have to do it.
Instead of putting your child on a diet, which can harm their self esteem, you have to treat adolescent obesity with love and compassion. Never call your child fat or lazy. Remember, the habits they have they learned from you. Instead, concentrate on making more healthy choices for everyone in your home. That means changing what you eat, cooking at home more, and getting out as a family for activities like biking, hiking, and just walking. Don’t single the child out. Just change how things are done to give them a solid base from which to start fighting adolescent obesity.
Along with these lifestyle changes that can benefit the whole family, see your family doctor so that your child can have a full checkup. There could be some medical issues that need to be addressed. Some people develop something called insulin resistance (which is also known as pre-diabetes) that will lead to even more health problems. Adolescent obesity can be a sign of this. You want to continue making healthy changes, but your teen may also need some medical help to get the weight off and to learn how to make sure they keep it off in the long run.
Adolescent obesity is a huge problem in the world today, with the US having one of the biggest epidemics of unhealthy children. This should tell us all that our lifestyle in general is not what it should be.
We have to move away from processed and go for the fresh foods to live longer and healthier lives. If your teen battling with adolescent obesity does not learn now how to change things around, they could be facing a shorter life span than their parents and grandparents. That is not what any of us want for our nations children.