Monday, October 15, 2007

Weight Loss and Kids

Two happenings came together last week with shades of the past and many memories. First the good: I was on a panel with Travis Jones, a chef and the CEO of Green Kidz. This new and exciting company is developing, distributing and manufacturing natural and organic prepared foods for children, in order to provide our younger generation a healthy future. Second the not so good. The story of the young girl who got a note sent home because her weight to height ratio landed her in the overweight range of the body mass index. How did these two events create shades of the past?

First…the mother of the girl did not want to face the facts that she was partially responsible for her child being overweight and to make matters worse she gave herself and her child an out or excuse to keep eating, by saying that her daughter was ‘big boned’. I can’t tell you how many times I heard that from my parents and teachers and doctors. On Pleeeze! Most kids do not fall into the ‘big boned’ category.

Second…currently we, as a nation, are feeding our kids the cheapest nutritional deficient and chemically laden foods in our country…why…because it is easy and quick. Today, we seem to be busier than past generations and the food industry have made it easier with “quick meals” in boxes and cans. With most of the packages loaded with sugar, fat and lots of chemicals. Most of the time our bodies don’t know what to do with all the chemicals so it turns most of it to glucose and stores it; the body does know what to do with sugar…it turns it to glucose and stores it. That storage we call FAT!

Currently Green Kidz is trying in a small way to help the busy mothers with the hardest meal of the day. Lunch! Giving the kids the boxes from the store, is easy, but…it is just giving them the sugar, fat and chemicals; and what does the body do even at that young age…stores it! Giving them a boxed lunch without the junk is just as easy and much better for the child.
The shades of the past: I can remember hearing all the excuses from everyone why I was FAT. The only thing that happened was I continued to get fatter and fatter till I weighted 308 lbs. My Mother, bless her, was a great cook. I was never at a want for good home cooking. But, even in those days sugar, fat, and white flour were used a lot in home cooked meals. Today we really do know better and are cooking lighter and better at home. In the past us kids played outside a lot. I also had dancing as a passion. Lots of exercise! Today we are a sedimentary society. One reason is because of what I am using right now…a computer.

Okay, so how does this all fit together? We should be smarter now with all the information that is out there. Excuses don’t work! Never have and never will. That mother should stop giving her daughter excuses and start taking an interest in what her child eats and how much exercise she gets. Teaching her the right way to eat and what is good for the body. Green Kidz has a great idea for mothers. Great meals without all the junk, that gets stored. We must learn the ratio of how much intake of food we can have to the amount of exercise the body gets. We are no longer plowing fields or doing the energy using every day events or the past. Smaller meals that are more balanced to today’s health and exercise standards are necessary. Why? Because we are teaching are children to be fat adults. 69% of the nation is overweight or obese; and that number is rising. Good for Green Kidz for giving us an option.

Making choices for health and weight balance is an option that can be learned, even by children.

Amazingly Yours,
Dr. Marlene


You can learn more about my weight loss of 170 lbs. and the mental methods that I used in my book: The Thinking Side to Thin: available at Amazon or under links to my sites.

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