While obesity has been there for decades, teenage obesity is more of a recent phenomenon. The trend of teenage obesity started since the 1990’s with more and more teenagers giving preference to junk foods and video games over healthy eating and exercises.

Today, the situation has reached the levels of an epidemic, with almost nine million teens, most of them under the age of 15, being obese. If we don’t put a stop to this trend right now, the number of obese teens would increase by at least 40% within the next decade. So how could we prevent teenage obesity?

When it comes to kids’ health, parents have a key role to play. They can, if they want, teach healthy or unhealthy lifestyle habits. A child’s mind, being influential, would easily emulate the lifestyle of the parents, whether or not they are healthy.

One of the habits I inherited from my father is that of eating a can of soda just before bedtime. This is one habit I haven’t been able to get rid of in spite of several attempts. It is as though it has formed a part of my flesh and blood. This is why it is so important to teach healthy eating habits to your kids right from the start.

1. Be good to yourself: If you are following unhealthy eating habits, you are not only harming yourself but also your kids. You can never force your kids to follow a healthy lifestyle if you don’t follow it yourself. So it is high time that you get rid of your junk food eating habits and focus on eating organic foods instead.

It is time that you stop buying processed fruit juices and start making the fruit juice at home by extracting it from organic fruits. It is time that you get rid of your ‘couch-sitting’ habit and take a walk or run outside.

This is the least you could do to keep yourself healthy. Plus, when you follow healthy habits, your kids would imitate you automatically.

2. Cook meals at home: Health starts at home. Instead of eating at fast food restaurants, start cooking meals at home. With home-cooked meals, you can control the ingredients which go into cooking. For example, when you are baking cookies at home, you can, if you want, use margarine instead of butter. Likewise, when you cook vegetables at home, you can cook them with low-fat oil.

Similarly, when you cook chicken at home, you can cut off its fatty part and keep only the meat; additionally, you can slice the chicken in two halves, so that you eat one half today and keep the other half for tomorrow.

In short, with home cooked meals, you could exercise lot of flexibility and control over what goes into your mouth. In contrast, with restaurant foods, you have no option but to eat whatever you are served. Even if you order only ‘low-calorie’ foods, they would harm you as well. Think about it: you know how much calorie you need per day, but the restaurant doesn’t.

3. Monitor your teen’s health. Even after following all the above steps, if your teen kid still struggles with weight loss, you should immediately put him on a healthy diet plan, as well as some diet pills too. If in doubt, you may want to consult with your doctor about it.

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I hate stats and figures as much as you do. But if I want to portray the enormity of the epidemic called teenage obesity and how it is and will be affecting the American population, I need to mention some scientific figures to prove my point. Studies predict that:

a) If the present trend of teenage obesity continues, almost half of the American population could become obese within the next 25 years. American lifestyle would continue to influence the world in the same way as now and thus, the tragedy of America could well be taken as the tragedy of the world.

b) It is also predicted that depending on their age, obese teenagers are likely to have health issues when they grow into adulthood. For example, young teens are almost 25% likely to have healthy-related problems in adulthood, while for the older teenagers, this figure rises to about 80%.

c) Studies also point out that people who have been obese in their teens are three times more likely to die prematurely than others.

There are three main causes behind teenage obesity:

1. Poor eating habits: Teenagers tend to have influential minds, and the lifestyle they follow is often a result of several kinds of influences, domestic and non-domestic. As far as domestic influence is concerned, a lot of it can well be attributed to their parents. When they see their parents enjoying burgers, chips, biscuits, cakes, pizzas, etc., they follow suit. When they notice their parents gulping down a dozen cans of soda, why would they do drink plain water?

Among non-domestic influences, the prominent influence is peer pressure. If peers are enjoying fast foods, your kid would most likely join them out of fear of being ostracized. If your kid’s classmate says that it is cool to have soft dinks at lunch, he would most probably follow his suggestion.

Only parents can ensure that their kids follow healthy eating habits. As a first step, they should start eating healthy foods themselves. They need to show their kids how much they enjoy eating organic fruits and vegetables. They need to kick off their junk food eating habits.
Believe it or not, the way you lead life influences your teenage kid’s lifestyle habits in a big way. If you follow healthy habits, your kid would surely imitate you.

Parents also need to make sure that their kids always have healthy foods at their reach; this would discourage them from eating junk foods from outside. At breakfast, you should offer your kid a decent-sized meal that would keep him full for a long time. Such a meal should be rich in protein, vitamin, calcium, carbohydrates and fats. You can include eggs, chicken, broccoli, tofu, soy, whole grains, nuts, etc., as part of the breakfast.

Be sure to pack your kid’s launch box with home cooked meals and strictly instruct him to eat only those foods at lunch and nothing else. If he doesn’t obey you, force him to eat his lunch at home before serving the dinner. Just like breakfast, dinner should also consist of only healthy and low-calorie foods.

2. Low activity level: A lot of kids gain weight because they hardly move their bodies. For fitness purposes, a body should always be kept in motion, for when a body moves, it burns fat and calories and makes you lose weight.

So, you should discourage your kids from watching too much television and encourage them to indulge in outdoor sports such as tennis, basketball, or cricket instead. No matter how much they pester you, don’t buy them video games or PSPs. Kids get addicted to video games pretty quickly and that would hinder their active life.

3. Genetic disorders: Some kids gain weight because of hereditary reasons. However if you thought there is no way out for your teenage kid, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Your kid would simply need to work a lot harder than others to keep the weight at bay.