Childhood Obesity Prevention (Part 2)

In our last post we shared with you 10 tips to help drive down childhood obesity rates.
As adults and guardians, we all need to take responsibility for the fact that in 2008 16% of children in England & Wales were obese. The figures may be coming down but they are still way too high.
As I know this is a major concern for many of you, I wanted to share 10 more tips with you to help you tackle the issues:-

1. Ensure that as a family you're active. Going to the park, cycling, swimming, playing football - it's good for you and good for them.
2. Walk or cycle to school if at all possible - kids these days are pretty passionate about the environment so use that as your reason!
3. Encourage your children to become involved in lots of different activities. Talking to a friend of mine last night her 15 year old boy is into fishing, pheasant beating and motor mechanics. What a wonderful array of interests.
4. Keep them mentally stimulated. Talk to them, play with them, read to them. Take them to play groups, museums, art galleries, the theatre. Stimulate all their senses. A lot of over-eating is boredom - as you well know!
5. Keep an eye out on how much they're snacking in between meals. Kids often need snacks when they're growing, but those calories can really stack up.
6. Seek to make snacks as healthy as possible eg. fruit, raw veg sticks, crackers, wholegrain cereals, baked beans etc
7. Keep unhealthy snacks eg. crisps, sweets, chocolate, cakes etc to a minimum. Don't ban them though. Forbidden foods hold much more sway!
8. If you have unhealthy snacks in the house, keep them out of reach so that you control them.
9. Ensure they don't see you revelling in some sticky "treat!" You need to walk the talk!
10. Build up your own self-esteem and self-worth - they need to learn that liking yourself is good!

In summary, keep your children both physically and mentally active - a lot of eating is driven by boredom. Be wary of snacks, keep an eye on quality and quantity and stay in control! Last but not least, walk the talk in both your relationship with food and your relationship with yourself.
Use these ten top tips and together we can help drive down childhood obesity.

Theresa Coligan created http://thinkingthin.co.uk/ to help people solve one of the biggest and most challenging issues in their lives - how to lose weight and keep it off. Thinking Thin focusses on the missing link in weight loss - mindset change. Change your mindset and you easily change your behaviour; change your behaviour and you easily lose weight.
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