Childhood Obesity - Do you have an overweight child? We offer tips to help your child lose weight and get fit!

If you want to lose weight, or are trying to help your overweight child achieve a healthier weight, keep the diet plan simple. This advice is consistent with the conclusions reached by researchers with Indiana University and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.

• Researchers assigned 390 overweight women to the Brigitte or the Weight Watchers diet plans.
  
• Brigitte is a simple diet in which participants get a shopping list and then follow a simple meal plan.
  
• Weight Watchers is more complicated and requires dieters to weigh and measure foods, assign points to each food, and keep under a certain number of points every day.
  
• The women on the more complicated plan tended to get discouraged and give up.

The researchers noted that there are both physical diet environments and mental ones. The optimal physical environment involves keeping sugary, high fat foods unavailable, installing exercise equipment, etc. An optimal "cognitive environment" should be simple.

"For people on a more complex diet that involves keeping track of quantities and items eaten, their subjective impression of the difficulty of the diet can lead them to give up on it," said Peter Todd, a professor in Indiana University's department of psychology and brain sciences.

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The percentage of Americans who are overweight or obese appears to have leveled off at 68 percent, according to a new survey from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

• This rate has remained the same between 2007 and 2008, when the last data was collected.
• The exception to the leveling off was boys ages 6 to 19 years old. In this group, the percentage of overweight has risen.
• More than one third of American adults are obese.

A CDC spokesperson said that one key to a recovery from the obesity epidemic is stopping childhood obesity. About 80 percent of children who are overweight grow up to become overweight adults.

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The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has recommended that doctors screen children for obesity and give them treatment if they need it.

Treatment would be once or twice a week for at least six months, and include diet, activity and behavior counseling. Just five years ago, the task force said there were few benefits in treating overweight children because most treatment plans do not work. Insurance companies often will not pay for pediatric obesity treatments for the same reason.

However, the Task Forces new guidelines indicate that even slight progress  such as not gaining more weight or losing a few pounds can be extremely beneficial to children.

• For example, just losing two pounds can move a very young child out of the "overweight"category and into "normal."
• About 32 percent of American children are overweight
• About 20 percent of American children are obese.
• The panel did not recommend that doctors prescribe diet drugs to children.
  

This report appeared in the journal Pediatrics.

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One in every five American teenagers has abnormal cholesterol readings, according to a new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The problem is particularly acute among overweight and obese youth:

• Among obese teens, the abnormal cholesterol rate is 43 percent.
• Among the overweight teens, it is 22 percent.
• Among teens of normal weight, the percentage is 14 percent.
  
• Boys were at greater risk than girls, with 24 percent of boys having abnormal readings, compared to 16 percent of girls.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that people under 18 years old should be screened for cholesterol if they have family histories of heart disease or high blood cholesterol, if they smoke, have high blood pressure or diabetes, or if they are overweight.

The new study was published in the Center for Disease Control's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Researchers used data on 3125 young people enrolled in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, conducted every other year

Labels: obese teens, cholesterol, overweight children

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A new study from Finland has found an association in boys between having mental health problems as children and becoming obese an adults.

• The Finnish researchers studied 2946 boys who were eight years old in 1989, and then looked at data from their military examinations when they were between the ages of 18 and 23 years old.
  
• Underweight boys (182) were not included, leaving 2,209 participants.
  
• The males who were overweight or in the top percentile for mental health problems were the ones most likely to be obese as adults.
  
• The mental health problems included in the study were depression, conduct problems, and emotional problems, but not hyperactivity.

"Future studies should address the potential for interventions to reduce obesity risk in young adulthood for boys who manifest conduct problems early in life," the research team wrote in its report in the journal Pediatrics.

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New devices are available to help children lose weight, and are now being used in scientific studies of childhood obesity.

The mandometer is a computerized scale that shows a child how fast he is eating and at the same time, provides him with an ideal rate of eating. The computer tells him when to slow down.

• Researchers at a children's hospital in Bristol, Great Britain, asked 106 obese children ages 9 to 17 years old to follow a diet and exercise program.
  
• Half of them were given mandometers.
  
• After a year, the children who use the device had lost more weight and were maintaining a slower speed of eating.
  
• The study appears in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

Having children wear body sensors provides a more accurate measure of their activity levels. These devices even "ping" if a child is too inactive.

• A study involving 1,892 British children using body sensors found that parents were overestimating their children's activity levels.
  
• Accurate measures from body sensors found that 39 percent of the girls and 18 percent of the boys were inactive, even though 80 percent of their parents mistakenly believed their children were getting enough exercise.

Finally, researchers at Pennington Biological Research Center in Louisiana had participants in an ongoing study use Blackberry Curves to take pictures of their food and leftovers. These study participants are also using body sensors to measure their activity levels.

These devices may even become more accurate and easier to use in the future. A University of Pittsburgh engineer, Mingui Sun, has invented a necklace with a video camera that to take pictures of food on your plate.

Labels: weight_loss

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The United States Preventative Task Force (USPTF) has recommended that children who are obese enter into intensive weight loss programs, citing studies which have proven the programs are effective. In response to these recommendations, the Obesity Action Coalition released a statement asking employers and insurers to begin paying for such programs.

"The U.S. Preventative Task Force recommendations are an important step in sending a message to insurers and the public that we must both prevent and treat obesity. The fact that the vast majority of parents do not have the ability to seek help for their childrens obesity in programs like the Task Force recommends, because their insurance excludes it, has always been a major gap in efforts to address obesity." [Source: PR.com]

Healthy weight loss programs such as the ones outlined in the USPTF's recommendations could significantly reduce instances of Type 2 diabetes and other weight-related conditions in children.

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New research with laboratory animals indicates that a "hunger" hormone can make people keep eating even after they are full.

"What we found is there may be situations where we are driven to seek out and eat very rewarding foods even if we're full, for no other reason than our brain tells us to do so, " said Dr. Jeffrey Zigman, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Utah and lead author of the new study.

• Dr. Zigman and his colleagues administered a hormone called ghrelin to one group of mice and no hormones to another group of mice. T
• he mice who had ghrelin preferred a room where they had previously received high-fat food over one that just offered regular food.
  
• The mice that did not have the hormone showed no preference.
  
• The mice who had the hormone were more likely to continue to forage for pellets of food, whereas the other group of mice gave up foraging more easily.

The study appears in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

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Posting calorie counts on restaurant menus may motivate people to eat less , according to a new study from the Rudd Center for Food Policy at Yale University.

• Researchers divided 300 people into three groups.
  
• Group 1 had menus with the calories listed for the entrees only.
  
• Group 2 had calories listed for entrees, as well as the notice that the recommended calorie intake for the average adult is 2000 calories a day.
  
• Group 3 used menus that had no calorie references on them.
• The group that had the 2000 calorie reference and the calorie labels ate about 250 calories less at dinner than the other groups. (That group ate 1380 calories at dinner as opposed to 1630 for the other groups.)
  

Author Christina Roberto said that calorie savings like this would add up over time and could favorably affect people's weights.

The study appeared in the American Journal of Public Health.

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Waiting too long to have surgery for obesity may mean that a severely obese teenager will not achieve normal weight, according to a new study from the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

• Dr. Thomas Inge and his colleagues studied 61 teenagers a year after they had gastric bypass surgery, an operation that involves stapling the upper portion of the stomach to create a small pouch that restricts the amount of food a person can eat at one time.
• The group that was the most overweight managed to lose nearly 40 percent of their body mass index (BMI), but that did not mean they achieved a medically-recommended weight.
  
• The ones who had the lowest BMIs going into surgery had the lowest BMIs a year after the surgery.
  

Having the weight loss surgery did help the teenagers reduce their blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and triglycerides.

The study appeared in the Journal of Pediatrics.

Labels: obese teens, weight loss surgery, gastric bypass

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A five-year study of more than 2000 teenagers found no link between drinking sugar-sweetened sodas and becoming overweight.

• The researchers found that teens who drank milk tended to be slimmer, and those who consumed no-calorie drinks were more likely to be overweight.
• Researchers at Project EAT (Eating among Teens) surveyed 2294 teenagers in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area about their beverage habits over a five-year period.
  
• The teens who were drinking low-calorie soft drinks had general dietary behaviors and weight concerns, which could explain their weight gain.

The study appeared in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

An earlier study from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) linked drinking sugar-sweetened sodas to being overweight in teenagers.

Labels: sodas, causes of childhood obesity, obese teens, teens

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A new, interactive weighing device could help kids track how much food their eating, and how quickly its being consumed. The device could help prevent kids from overeating, thereby preventing excessive weight gain.

"Known as the Mandometer, the medical gadget weighs a plate of food at the beginning of a meal and then measures and tracks the rate at which the food is being consumed, giving voice signals to slow down if the child is scarfing down his food too quickly." [Source: RedOrbit]

A 12-month study of the device found that eating speed decreased by 11 percent, and children who used the Mandometer also ate smaller portions. The device works by comparing actual consumption rates with an ideal rate thats programmed into the machine by a nutritionist.

Labels: prevention, eating-habits

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South Dakota needed a program to help children deal with weight issues. Aaron Maguire couldnt find a program that addressed the need, so he created one of his own.

South Dakota's Argus-Leader newspaper provided the following details about Maguire's efforts:

Beginning this month, Dakota Kids Inc. will help overweight and obese children through a 12-week healthy kids program.

Meeting once a week for about an hour, participants  from kindergartners through high school seniors  will learn about nutrition and theyll exercise. Theyll go through body composition and strength tests and be sent home with tip sheets to share with their families.

A recent South Dakota survey found that 33.6 percent of the kids are overweight or obese. Maguire hopes his Dakota Kids program will help significantly reduce that number.

Labels: prevention, awareness

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A study of 40,000 people found that those who drank one sugared beverage per day were 27 times more likely to be overweight than those who did not drink such beverages as frequently.

This study, from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) also concluded that drinking one soda a day for a year adds up to 39 pounds of sugar.

"We drink soda like water," said Harold Goldstein, a researcher who participated in the study. "But unlike water, soda serves up a whopping 17 teaspoons of sugar in every 20 ounce serving."

Labels: sodas, weight_gain

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