Childhood Obesity - How Can You Tell If Your Child Is Obese?
Childhood obesity today is a fully acknowledged problem, and a growing health hazard that threatens to make the next generation's weight problems make our own seem mild by comparison. In the past, obesity was regarded as an "adult" problem, and children were often regarded as safe from the ill effects of being a little "plump".
The general rule most parents seemed to follow was that their children would outgrow any weight problems, and eventually their bodies would become more "normal" once adolescence was reached. To help protect your child from this, you have to be able to diagnose the problem early. Standards of obesity differ from adults to children, so know what to watch out for.
What is Obesity?
Obesity isn't just being overweight. A person can have more body mass than is recommended for his or her height and bone structure yet still be healthy, IF the excess mass is more muscle tissue and healthy internal organs than anything else. Obesity, rather, is when a person's percentage of body fat is much higher than it should be. This usually manifests as being overweight; however, it is actually also possible for a person to have correct physical proportions yet still suffer from mild obesity simply because most of that mass is actually flab. More often than not though, obesity is easy enough to spot because the people suffering from it are flabby and rotund.
Symptoms of Obesity in Children
Obese children are often referred to as "chubby". The best way to determine if your child is suffering from obesity is to call a child-specialist doctor and have him diagnose your child. Now, children actually naturally have higher levels of fat than adults, what is often referred to in layman's terms as "baby fat", and this is perfectly natural. However, obesity is often accompanied by several other factors: chronic hunger, lethargy, and poor physical coordination.
While these are things that people can attribute to almost any child, a kid suffering from obesity will take it to extremes beyond the norm. Yes, kids are naturally always hungry, lazy, and clumsy, but if your kid takes these to extremes and happens to be carrying a lot of extra "baby fat" around, odds are he or she may be suffering from obesity. If you think this is applicable, call a doctor and get your kid a medical check up.
Effects of Obesity
If you think that obesity in children isn't really a major problem, you're wrong. In recent studies conducted in the US alone, 15-25 percent of children in most of the different states were diagnosed with obesity. Of those numbers, around one in every three children actually had a severe enough obesity problem that they were already starting to exhibit the early symptoms of obesity-related sicknesses that traditionally only manifest in adults, like diabetes and heart conditions.
So, this is another set of symptoms you as a parent should watch out for. If your child is already starting to suffer mild chest pains, shortness of breath, and rapid exhaustion which are usually associated with obese adults, you shouldn't hesitate to call a doctor and determine whether it might be time to put your kid on a healthier diet and lifestyle. It's never too early to start - as a matter of fact, the earlier you start the better because those lessons will stay with your child for life.
Common Causes of Obesity
One of the simplest causes of obesity is, ironically, rooted in a parent's misplaced love for their child. No one wants their kids to be undernourished; yet in a mistaken effort to overcompensate, sometimes parents wind up feeding their children a ton of healthy food. The problem here is that children need a certain amount of nutrition every day to grow up healthy; anything beyond this limit is stored in their bodies as excess weight. Another common factor leading to obesity in kids is the sheer amount of unhealthy junk food around the world today. Given their often-busy schedules, parents usually let their children gorge on fast food or take-out. While these comprise meals in the sense that they keep people from starving, these types of meals are loaded with empty calories that children's bodies are unable to fully process and again, wind up storing the excess as fat.
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