Causes of Childhood Obesity
Your child is obese. Is it your fault? It could be, even though you didn’t intentionally make them obese. It may not be your fault at all as well. There are many reasons why your child may be obese. Obesity can occur from overeating, inactivity, from genetics, or from health conditions.
The most common causes of childhood obesity, however, are overeating or not eating healthy foods and inactivity. The combination of those two problems could be lethal for your child from a health standpoint and an emotional standpoint.
The fact is that food isn’t the only culprit. Our children are spending four or more hours a day in front of television or computer screens. They spend approximately eight hours of the day sitting at a desk in a classroom. They sleep for approximately eight hours as well. The other four hours are spent on personal hygiene, meals, snacks, and homework. As you can see, these children are getting little or no physical exercise at all, and are more likely to become obese before they reach their teenage years.
Pediatricians recommend that you not allow your child in front of a television or computer screen for more than one to two hours per day. Do not make the mistake of assuming that children are getting enough physical activity at school or in gym class – because they aren’t. Pediatricians suggest that all children over the age of two years old require at least sixty minutes – or one full hour – of moderate to vigorous physical exercise each and every day in order to stay fit. Most children don’t even get five minutes of such exercise each day.
You also need to be aware of what your child is putting into his or her mouth. These days, microwaves and easy to fix meals and snacks are a huge detriment to our health. You need to plan and prepare meals – from scratch if possible – so that you can determine what is going into the foods that your child is eating.
Again, your child may not be obese because of something that you have done or not done, and it is important to discuss your child’s weight with his or her doctor to determine what the cause is. Remember that genetics do play an important role in whether your child will be overweight or not, but regardless of this, there is something that you can do about childhood obesity.
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