Obesity is a problem more and more families are facing today. The number of children, particularly in the USA, diagnosed with being overweight or obese has grown alarmingly in the past couple of decades. Overweight and obese children may have a harder time with certain physical activities or be short of breath compared to other children. They are likely to have low self-esteem because of their appearance, and may be subject to teasing or bullying from their peers. But even more importantly, their health is at risk with an increased likelihood of developing cardiovascular disease, like high cholesterol or high blood pressure. For parents and families with obese or overweight children, the situation can be distressing, and it may be hard to objectively come up with a workable solution. If your child is struggling with weight problems, join me for this short read, and by the end of it, you will learn everything you need to know about childhood obesity and how to encourage your child to partake in responsible food and lifestyle choices for improved health. Included are pointers to remember when talking to your child and answering any weight-related questions he or she might have. This book will help you come up with an action plan, together with your child, to lead your entire family towards a healthier lifestyle.

Childhood obesity in the United States has tripled in a generation. But while debates continue over the content of school lunches and the dangers of fast food, we are just beginning to recognize the full extent of the long-term physical, psychological, and social problems that overweight children will endure throughout their lives. Most dramatically, children today have a shorter life expectancy than their parents, something never before seen in the course of human history. They will face more chronic illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes that will further burden our healthcare system. Here, authors Jacob Warren and K. Bryant Smalley examine the full effects of childhood obesity and offer the provocative message that being overweight in youth is not a disease but the result of poor lifestyle choices. Theirs is a clarion call for parents to have "the talk" with their kids, which medical professionals say is a harder topic to address than sex or drugs. Urgent, timely, and authoritative, Always the Fat Kid delivers a message our society can no longer ignore.

The experts at America's 'Hospital of the Future' provide a comprehensive approach to helping parents control their children's weight while developing a healthy, active lifestyle. Studies show that as many as one in four American children is overweight, and childhood obesity rates have doubled since the late 1970s. Medical problems that doctors once saw only in adults aged 50 or older are now striking individuals in their 20s and younger, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, colorectal cancer, high blood pressure, asthma, joint problems, and arthritis. In this essential new book, a pediatric endocrinologist and a respected dietician present a step-by-step, medically sound, and achievable weight-control program that will benefit the whole family. Poor diet and sedentary lifestyles-as well as a lack of parental guidance-are at the root of this child obesity epidemic. Studies show that approximately 40 % of obese children will grow up to be obese adults. This book seeks to break this alarming pattern.

Understanding the relationship between energy balance and obesity is essential to develop effective prevention programs and policies. The International Agency for Research on Cancer convened a Working Group of world-leading experts in December 2015 to review the evidence regarding energy balance and obesity, with a focus on low- and middle-income countries, and to consider the following scientific questions: (i) Are the drivers of the obesity epidemic related only to energy excess and/or do specific foods or nutrients play a major role in this epidemic? (ii) What are the factors that modulate these associations? (iii) Which types of data and/or studies will further improve our understanding? This book provides summaries of the evidence from the literature as well as the Working Group's conclusions and recommendations to tackle the global epidemic of obesity.

Children's health has made tremendous strides over the past century. In general, life expectancy has increased by more than thirty years since 1900 and much of this improvement is due to the reduction of infant and early childhood mortality. Given this trajectory toward a healthier childhood, we begin the 21st-century with a shocking developmentâ€"an epidemic of obesity in children and youth. The increased number of obese children throughout the U.S. during the past 25 years has led policymakers to rank it as one of the most critical public health threats of the 21st-century. Preventing Childhood Obesity provides a broad-based examination of the nature, extent, and consequences of obesity in U.S. children and youth, including the social, environmental, medical, and dietary factors responsible for its increased prevalence. The book also offers a prevention-oriented action plan that identifies the most promising array of short-term and longer-term interventions, as well as recommendations for the roles and responsibilities of numerous stakeholders in various sectors of society to reduce its future occurrence. Preventing Childhood Obesity explores the underlying causes of this serious health problem and the actions needed to initiate, support, and sustain the societal and lifestyle changes that can reverse the trend among our children and youth.

The Definitive Program for Maintaining Healthy Weight for Children Obesity Prevention for Children is the definitive guide for parents and caregivers to put their children on the path to a happy and a healthy life, protected against childhood and adult obesity. Written by Dr. Alvin N. Eden, a well-known pediatrician and authority on childhood nutrition and obesity together with expertly crafted recipes and meal plans provided by Sari Greaves, Obesity Prevention for Children is a practical and authoritative resource for parents and caregivers. A child’s early years are critical. Both in terms of forming lifelong healthy habits and proactive mindsets, the decisions that parents make for their children today will continue to shape them for the rest of their lives. By focusing on these early years, Obesity Prevention for Children puts the knowledge in your hands—the power to positively affect your children’s health and well-being for years to come.

Childhood obesity is a serious health problem that has adverse and long-lasting consequences for individuals, families, and communities. The magnitude of the problem has increased dramatically during the last three decades and, despite some indications of a plateau in this growth, the numbers remain stubbornly high. Efforts to prevent childhood obesity to date have focused largely on school-aged children, with relatively little attention to children under age 5. However, there is a growing awareness that efforts to prevent childhood obesity must begin before children ever enter the school system. Early Childhood Obesity Prevention Policies reviews factors related to overweight and obese children from birth to age 5, with a focus on nutrition, physical activity, and sedentary behavior, and recommends policies that can alter children's environments to promote the maintenance of healthy weight. Because the first years of life are important to health and well-being throughout the life span, preventing obesity in infants and young children can contribute to reversing the epidemic of obesity in children and adults. The book recommends that health care providers make parents aware of their child's excess weight early. It also suggests that parents and child care providers keep children active throughout the day, provide them with healthy diets, limit screen time, and ensure children get adequate sleep. In addition to providing comprehensive solutions to tackle the problem of obesity in infants and young children, Early Childhood Obesity Prevention Policies identifies potential actions that could be taken to implement those recommendations. The recommendations can inform the decisions of state and local child care regulators, child care providers, health care providers, directors of federal and local child care and nutrition programs, and government officials at all levels.

Childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United States and continues to increase in prevalence in almost all countries in which it has been studied, including developed and developing countries around the globe. The causes of obesity are complex and multi-factorial. Childhood obesity becomes a life-long problem in most cases and is associated with long term chronic disease risk for a variety of diseases including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, as well as psychosocial as issues and obesity seems to affect almost every organ system in the body. In recent years there has been tremendous progress in the understanding of this problem and in strategies for prevention and treatment in the pediatric years. Childhood Obesity: Causes, Consequences, and Intervention Approaches presents current reviews on the complex problem of obesity from the multi-level causes throughout early life before adulthood and the implications for this for long-term disease risk. It reviews numerous types of strategies that have been used to address this issue from conventional clinical management to global policy strategies attempting to modify the global landscape of food, nutrition, and physical activity. Each chapter is written by a global authority in his or her respective field with a focus on reviewing the current status and recent developments. The book features information on contributing factors to obesity, including developmental origins, social/family, birth cohort studies, influence of ethnicity, and global perspectives. It takes a life-course approach to the subject matter and includes exhaustive treatment of contributing factors to childhood obesity, such as assessment, environmental factors, nutrition and dietary factors, host factors, interventions and treatment, consequences, and further action for future prevention. This broad range of topics relevant to the rapidly changing field of childhood obesity is suitable for students, health care professionals, physicians, and researchers.