Are Your Children at Risk for Obesity?

by Christian Goodman

There are a lot of articles written about weight loss and numerous weight loss programs around, but only a few of those address the fact that our children are also overweight.


This is very sad considering that the number of obese children and teenagers has tripled in the last twenty years and those numbers are increasing.
From 4% in 1974, the percentage of overweight children from 6-11 years has risen to 17.5% in 2004. The same is true for teenagers. Overweight teens aging from 12 to 19 have increased from 6% in 1974 to 17% in 2004.
Today, 32% of children are overweight. 16% are obese. And 11% are considered extremely obese.

No program to stick with
and therefore no way to fail!

Children are under even more peer pressure about their weight than most adults can imagine. Adolescent girls, as young as 13 years old, are begging for, and some are actually having, gastric surgeries to reduce their weight quickly. Some see bulimia or anorexia as their only solution.


The biggest threat with childhood and teenage obesity is these children are much more likely to become obese adults. The difference is they’re being affected at a much younger age with the same health issues that plague obese adults.


It has been foreseen that the children of this generation will be the first in history to have a shorter life span than their parents.
It is futile to talk about the reasons why we’ve let our children get fat. We all know the reasons, and we should take responsibility for it as adults, not the children.

…no self-discipline is needed.

We continuously feed them junk food instead of healthy, nutritious meals. Instead of oatmeal for breakfast, we feed them sugar induced cereal.
They eat too many overly processed, nutritionally lacking, calorie-laden snacks instead of fruits and vegetables. There are also too many fast food, too much and too often.


To add to that, we’ve stopped encouraging our children to go outdoors and be active. It’s too easy to let them spend one mind-numbing hour after another in front of a TV screen or a computer monitor.


They’re growing up so sedentary that even playing outside seems like work. What have we done to our children?


If you have a child suffering from obesity, it is time to be accountable for it and step up to the plate. The effect is only on their physical body, but on their emotional state as well.

Imagine How It Would Be
Even Losing Weight While Sleeping!

Children shouldn’t have to suffer with issues like depression and a lack of self-esteem. They shouldn’t have to endure the daily teasing and rude comments from thoughtless classmates that chip away at their self-image.
It is not fair to let your children’s body struggle with the added demands of carrying around excess weight when they are just starting to develop. I am asking all parents and grandparents who have overweight children to do something about it.


Involve your child in physical activities. Make sure that they eat healthier meals and snacks. And use my Weight Loss Breeze Program to reduce your child’s weight to a normal, healthy level. My program is a natural, reasonable approach to weight loss. But most importantly, it works.

I Can’t Begin To Tell You
How Effective These Exercises

Turned Out To Be.

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Christian Goodman is a well known natural health researcher and the creator of the natural health Blog. His most recent work is the Weight Loss Breeze, which is one of the best weight loss exercise program . It has helped thousands reduce weight naturally.

Burn the Fat, Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle,

The See-Food, Reach-Food Diet

 

By Tom Venuto

www.BurnTheFat.com

You’ve heard of the “See-Food” diet haven’t you? No, that’s not the diet where you load up on fish, lobster, crab and mussels. The See-Food Diet is the one that so many of us crack jokes about – it’s the diet where you eat everything in sight! But don’t laugh too hard. Scientists at Cornell University and other research institutions have proven that you actually WILL eat more food if you see food more.

In fact, if you can see it and it’s within arm’s reach, you could eat yourself obese within a few years and not even know what hit you because the eating happens unconsciously.

It should be common sense that when you’re constantly surrounded by food, you tend to eat more.

But one thing that hasn’t been clear until recently was how seeing food (visibility) and having it within reach (proximity) could influence unconscious eating (and how it influences what I call “eating amnesia”).

Developmental psychologists tell us that the more effort or time you invest in a unique activity, the more likely you’ll be to remember it.

In other words, if you have to go out of your way to get food, you’ll remember eating it. If the food is right there within arms reach, you’ll munch away and more easily forget it.

For years, Dr. Brian Wansink of the Food and Brand Laboratory at Cornell University has been conducting fascinating experiments to find out what really makes you eat more food than you need.

Some of his previous studies revealed that taste, palatability, mood, stress, social context, role models (parental influence), visual cues, visibility and convenience can all influence how much you eat (Eating behavior is environmentally and psychologically influenced – appetite is not just biological).

To explore the influence of food proximity and visibility on eating behavior, Wansink set up an experiment using 40 female staff members from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champain. The subjects were not told it was a weight loss or calorie-related study.

They were told that they would be given a free candy dish filled with chocolates (candy “kisses”) and they’d be contacted and surveyed about their candy preferences. They were also told not to share the candies, take them home or move the dish.

Participants were divided into four groups:

1) Proximate and visible (can see and reach)
2) Proximate and non-visible (can reach but not see)
3) Less proximate and visible (can see but can’t reach)
4) Less proximate and non visible (can’t see, and can’t reach)

During each day of the four week study, 30 chocolates were placed in 20 clear containers and 20 opaque containers and delivered to the 40 subjects. The containers were replenished every afternoon. They were kept in the same location for 4 straight business days and then rotated on the following week. Researchers kept a daily record of the number of chocolates eaten from each container and comparisons were made from the data collected.

At the end of each week, each subject was given a questionnaire which asked them how much they thought they had eaten over the entire week and asked them about their perceptions regarding the chocolates (such as “it was difficult to stop eating them,” “I thought of eating the chocolates often,” etc).

When the results were tabulated, here’s what Dr. Wansink and his research team discovered:

The visibility and proximity of the candy dish also influenced the subject’s perceptions. Regardless of whether participants could actually see the chocolates, if the candies were sitting on the desk (as opposed to being a mere 2 meters away), they were rated as more attention-attracting and difficult to resist.Sweets in the clear containers were also rated as more difficult to resist and more attention attracting.

Most interesting of all, this study confirmed that when food is close by and visible, you’ll not only eat more, you’ll also be likely to forget that you ate them and therefore, underestimate how much you’ve eaten (I like to call that “eating amnesia.”)

Is a few extra candies a day really a big deal?

If it becomes habitual it sure is! Over a year, the difference between the candy dish placement would mean 125 calories per day which adds up to 12 extra pounds of body fat over a year.

When given the advice to keep junk food out of the house and office, I often hear complaints that it’s “impossible” to do because the rest of the family would have a fit, or simply not allow it. As for the office, one of the biggest excuses I’ve heard for diet failure is that the temptations are always there and it’s out of your control to change. Invariably someone else brings doughnuts or candy to the office.

Now you know what to do to reduce temptation and successfully stick with your program more effectively:,If you can’t keep it out of your office or house, keep it out of sight and out of arm’s reach. That alone is enough to reduce consumption.

At home, if your significant other or family is not willing to remove all offending foods from the premises, then get their agreement that their food is not to remain in plain sight - it goes in the back of a refrigerator drawer and not on the shelf at eye level, or if non-perishable, it goes inside a cupboard that is exclusively the domain of the other person.

At work, tell your office pals to keep the candy, doughnuts and other temptations off your desk, at a distance and out of sight. If they put any unhealthy snacks on your desk, promptly remove them!

Environmental cues can trigger you to eat impulsively. If you can see it and reach it, you’ll eat more of it, and you’ll forget how much you ate. So get the junk out of your home and office now and if you can’t, then get it out of your sight. If you can’t do that, get it out of arms reach.

Better yet, setup an "environment for success" with a lifestyle program like my Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle system.

Tom Venuto, author of
Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle

Founder & CEO of
Burn The Fat Inner Circle

About the Author:

Tom Venuto is the author of the #1 best seller, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle: Fat Burning Secrets of the World’s Best Bodybuilders and Fitness Models. Tom is a lifetime natural bodybuilder and fat loss expert who achieved an astonishing 3.7% body fat level without drugs or supplements. Discover how to increase your metabolism and burn stubborn body fat, find out which foods burn fat and which foods turn to fat, plus get a free fat loss report and mini course by visiting Tom's site at:www.BurnTheFat.com

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