Without Dash

I am a great fan of weight loss shows as The Biggest Loser, but also the ones with children in it, like Shaq’s Family Challenge, or Ian Wright’s Unfit Kids and even documentaries as the Half Ton Mum. It is just very hard to understand that we are living in a world in which one of the main dangers is overeating. Eating too much has become a cause of many deaths and the figures are still rising.

Current discussions are on whether obese teenagers should have a gastric bypass or banding surgery or not. Personally, I think that the question itself is by far worse than any answer could be. Because the question raises so many other questions. If you are resorting to gastric bypass surgery, that means you must have really tried everything else already. When did you try that if you are now only thirteen or fifteen years old? Dieting at the age of 8 or 9… wow… I don’t think you ever need a diet at the age of 8 or 9 to lose some pounds. You need to get a healthy lifestyle. Parents! Where are you? What are you doing? A crash diet or weight loss camp at this age, just to gain it back in a month again…?

I really believe that at this age you still can do enough to teach your children a healthy lifestyle, even if they are overweight already. Turning to diets and surgeries are only going to make your child have a totally wrong perspective on food, eating habits and health.

Alright, I tried to find a few teenagers online who had a gastric bypass or banding surgery. I did not search very long. Two out of the first three teenagers that I read about made a similar statement. They said that they feel happy now. They still can eat anything they want. They can eat hamburgers and French fries, but just feel full quicker. Is that a solution to obesity? Having a surgery and keep on eating hamburgers?

Why do I personally enrage myself of childhood obesity? My husband and I own a gym and every school holiday the place is crowded with teenagers sent by their parents to try to lose a few pounds. These teenagers whine, they cry, they vomit after 3.5 minutes jogging and they lie about meters run, calories burnt and meals eaten. The worst thing is that these kids are not even to blame for this situation. It are the parents who turned them into these overweight whining spoilt children and a crash diet or gastric bypass surgery are not going to help these kids a bit in growing up and becoming the next generation to run the world.

I can enrage myself over these facts, and I really wish I could do something about it. I would like to be a certified nutritionist and help our little customers on a more direct basis, or start an awareness show on TV to help people living a healthier lifestyle. I have thought about this more often, but the course takes time and money and both are little hard to find at the moment.

So, I just have to start small with some Quick facts on Losing Weight and adopting a healthy life style, right here on Without Dash:

• Statistically only five to ten percent of dieting people succeed in keeping the weight off permanently. All others will gain the weight back on after they stop dieting.
  A temporary solution will never last a life long. Losing weight is never a temporary action and should not be seen as a fight against your body, but a cooperation with your body. Being healthy is a lifestyle.
• So, you have set a goal weight. What does that number mean to you? What do you expect from your life when you have reached that number on the scale? To be more beautiful? Or healthy? Or more self-esteem? There are many more goals to reach than that number on the scale. If you focus more on the other goals, you will have more chance of succeeding than just aiming for the number.
• The scale is not telling anything more than the number of kilos/pounds/stones that you weigh, and nothing else. It doesn’t tell you your percentage of body fat, or muscle or water. Weight loss can mean many things, but only the scale cannot give you all the answers.
• Late in the afternoon we get these cravings. Why is that and what can we do about it? It simply means that we are hungry. If we get this same feeling around 12.30 pm, we do not call it a craving, but we are hungry and eat lunch. At 4.30 pm it is the same thing. We haven’t eaten for a few hours and are hungry again. The best thing to do about it is eating. Eat some soup, a piece of toast, leftovers from yesterday’s dinner, it is all ok as long as you do not fill up on a bag of crisps, a large milkshake, or anything else that you would not take for dinner either.
• Some diets promise to be easy and should give you a weight loss of a few kilos per week. If you know that a kilo fat is about the same as 8000 kcal, you will realize that without extreme workouts to burn the calories it is going to be an impossible diet if you want to eat several times 8000 kcal less than usual. A diet that does help you accomplish a few kilo’s in a week without heavy exercising is called a crash diet and mostly makes you lose water and muscle tissue, but leaves the fat where it is. It is unhealthy and not even to speak of permanent weight loss.
• You need to eat when you are hungry, but we are also eating when we are not hungry at all. Especially women are good at emotional eating. Do you eat because there is a hole to fill which is not in your stomach? Some people smoke, some shop, and some eat to fill emotional holes. Losing weight is not a cure to all problems, but it does take a lot of courage to confront yourself with the why of your overweight.
• It is very hard to adopt a new life style if you do not really want it. Losing weight is like quit smoking or saving money for some. People who take the responsibility of their own life and happiness will succeed easily, but people who do not really want to change for any other reason that that others say they should, will find it very difficult indeed to change their lives.

It is imaginable that you do not feel that you are worth taking care of yourself. It is a problem, but it is your problem. Not taking care of your children because you love them so much and do not want to deny them anything is not just your problem. It is far worse for your children and you cannot leave the responsibility with your children or at the nearest fitness center.

Instead of putting your kid on a restrictive diet, or sending him to a weight loss camp during summer holidays or dumping him at a fitness center every day after school, it is time that you take the responsibility of your kid’s obesity. Things that you should do is spend more time with your children in physical activities rather than let them spend the average 24 hours per week in front of TV or game computer; walk, dance, bike, swim together more often, be a role model and show your kids that sports are fun. Cook healthy food and eat meals together at a table. You do not need to restrict sweets or fast foods, but eat with a healthy limit like fast food only once a week. Do not eat in front of the TV, but make eating a pleasant family time.

Parents, be a positive role model! Think about your own life style. Are you giving wrong messages to your children? Are you encouraging daily physical activity and healthy eating habits? Think about that before giving the responsibility of your child’s weight problem to trainers and doctors.

Tags: dieting, Health, losing weight