As a parent, you are responsible for making sure your children are happy and healthy. This also means you need to learn about the ways to prevent childhood obesity. To do that, you have to bring balance into your life. Your children should have a balance between the calories they consume, and the ones they use through activities.

Understanding the Ways to Prevent Childhood Obesity:

The first thing you have to know is that if your children are already overweight, putting them on a weight reduction diet is not the way forward. This is because it will stop their regular growth and development. Instead, it is about making sure that you help them to develop the right habits in terms of both eating and doing exercises.

Some of the key facts around ways to prevent childhood obesity are:

– Encouraging a healthy lifestyle by making small but important changes, such as making sure you always have fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Remove full fat dairy products and opt for lean meats. Make sure portion size is controlled and get rid of as many products as possible that are high in saturated fats, salt, or sugar.

– Making sure your children's favorite dishes become healthy by adapting the recipe.

– Getting rid of temptations that are high in calories, and replacing them with things, such as hummus, bell peppers, broccoli, carrots, grapes, blueberries, bananas, and apples.

– Join your children in being physically active, and explain why that is beneficial for all of you. Benefits include weight loss, more self-esteem, less stress, lower blood pressure, and stronger bones. You should aim for an hour of moderate activity every day, and options include dancing, swimming, playing a sport, jumping rope, playing tag, or brisk walking.

– Don't allow your kids to get bored. A bit of quiet time is fine, but they should not spend the majority of their day sitting behind a screen, doing nothing physical. In fact, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children under the age of two should not be exposed to television at all. Instead, try to find family activities that everybody can enjoy.

Reaching and Maintaining a Healthy Weight:

Once you have looked at the ways to prevent childhood obesity and you have implemented some changes at home, you should see a difference almost straightaway. But you need to learn to maintain this as well. This is often the harder part, not in the least because the children's appropriate weights are hard to determine since they are still growing. Usually, it means that they should not put any weight on at all, even when they grow. Some ways to achieve that have been to ensure parents are involved in the program, that the children have a very strong social network, and that they are encouraged to join physical activity groups and clubs.

It is vital that these efforts become part of children's overall lifestyle. It usually takes six weeks to get rid of an old habit and form a new one. Those six weeks are hard, but they are worth it.