| Isaiah
Scott never had to worry about finding a snack when returning
home from school. His mother stocked the pantry with chips and
made sure a bowl on the kitchen table was always brimming with
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
It was like trick-or-treating
every day for Isaiah — without the exercise.
Little by little, the 12-year-old
who lives in Douglasville got bigger and bigger.
Georgia’s children rank as some
of the heaviest in the country, with about 37 percent of
children ages 10 to 17 overweight or obese, according to a 2009
Robert Wood Johnson study, “F as in Fat.” Nationally, since
the 1980s, the obesity rate for children has tripled, according
to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The extra pounds put youngsters
at risk for obesity-related diseases such as Type 2 diabetes and
heart disease, which used to be seen mainly in adults.
But a growing chorus of parents,
school administrators and fitness gurus are stepping up their
efforts to tackle childhood obesity.
And that’s what Isaiah Scott’s
mother did.
Last year, Mildred Scott listened
to her son as he complained that he was upset about the way he
looked and felt. He said he was tired all the time. The
revelation provided an urgent wake-up call for Mildred Scott.
“I thought he was just a little
bit heavy but perfectly healthy. But when he told me this, I
knew that it just wasn’t right. He was too young to be tired.
He was eating whatever he wanted because I was allowing it,”
she said.
Isaiah participated last summer
in a weeklong “Camp Kick-it” for overweight boys to learn
how to take control of bad food habits. The family banished junk
food from the house. They started eating more whole grains,
fruits and vegetables, and going on walks every night after
dinner.
Isaiah lost 21 pounds and is now
at a healthy weight.
The Scott family made a
successful, seismic-size lifestyle change. It’s a
transformation that must repeat itself across Georgia to stall
— and reverse — soaring rates of obesity.
And there are signs that it’s
beginning to happen.
New farm-to-school programs are
under way to get more locally produced fruits and vegetables in
school cafeterias and help schools build their own gardens.
Parents are creating “nutrition committees” at day cares,
demanding an ax to “fortified” donuts for breakfast and
teddy bear-shaped cookies for afternoon snacks. Bootcamp-style
fitness instructors are launching family exercise classes to get
the whole family moving.
Kennesaw-based CHOICES (the
Center Helping Obesity in Children End Successfully) this year
started an after-school fitness program for overweight girls at
Frederick Douglass High School in Atlanta. The program mixes a
hip-hop exercise class, keeping food journals and eating healthy
snacks such as apple slices when they meet.
“We talk to kids about how
three sodas is not a good idea and we give them basic
information about needing to eat fruits and vegetables,” said
Vanetta Keyes, executive director of CHOICES, which runs the “Kick-it”camp
for boys and one called “Divas” for overweight girls. “And
the one sentence we hear the most is, ‘no one ever told me
this before.’”
First lady Michelle Obama
recently launched her “Let’s Move” campaign calling for
more exercise and slashing fat and salt in school lunches. She
wants to change the way kids eat and play and, ultimately,
reverse the upward trend of childhood obesity. Obama herself has
discussed her struggles in helping her daughters maintain a
healthy weight.
“What we are fighting against
is our society as a whole has become very fast,” Keyes said.
“Most of the foods are processed. Everything is done in bulk
and huge portions. Kids don’t play outside like we used to.
Playing outside nowadays is playing an organized sport.”
Pizza — for breakfast?
About a year ago, Aaron Parks of
Decatur was stunned to see what his preschooler, 4-year-old
Murray, was eating for breakfast at day care.
“Pizza,” he said
disdainfully. “They were serving it for breakfast and calling
it, ‘breakfast pizza.’ ”
He also saw the children nibbling
on donuts and snacking on cookies. He took photos with his
camera phone, complained to school administrators and joined a
newly formed “school nutrition committee.”
He also offered to help change
the food served. He, along with other parents, sold cookbooks
and raised money to plant a garden on a swath of school property
at College Heights Early Childhood Learning Center. And since
the school also must buy food in bulk, he helped the school
order broccoli and other vegetables from Sam’s Club.
“You just can’t take no for
an answer,” he said. “You have to be tenacious.”
Suzanne Kennedy, principal of
College Heights, praised the group of active parents for not
simply pushing the issue but also offering to help.
“We took a look at the menu and
made some changes. We took out the not-so-nutritious things and
replaced them with things like oatmeal for breakfast,” Kennedy
said. “And we started a garden. But with children 4 years and
younger, they need help. And the parents have really jumped in.
They even installed an irrigation system.”
Meanwhile, Laura Laszlo, a mom to
two young children, opened up her own day care about a month ago
after being disappointed by the food choices at her children’s
day care.
“Chicken nuggets, french fries
and juice that really wasn’t juice,” said Laszlo, who opened
up the Norcross center with a longtime teacher. “The more I
talked to parents, I realized this is a concern to a lot of
parents.”
She also didn’t like seeing her
1- and 2-year-old children watching TV when she picked them up.
At her day care, there are no TVs. She serves locally produced
vegetables and is about to plant a garden on site.
On a recent afternoon, lunch
consisted of grilled chicken and squash. For a snack, the
children ate homemade squash muffins.
“A treat is a treat and not a
meal. I think we’ve lost that in society today. You don’t
eat french fries every day for lunch and ice cream every other
day. It’s like in ‘Sesame Street,’ they call them ‘sometimes
foods.’ ”
Young emotional eaters
Dina Zeckhausen, an Atlanta
psychologist who specializes in eating disorders, believes more
children nowadays are “emotional eaters” and are repeating a
pattern, which they see in their parents, of turning to food for
comfort. Children experiencing stress such as their parents’
divorce or a parent losing a job can put them at risk for
gaining excessive weight. What they really need is someone to
talk to, she said.
While child obesity is a serious
problem, she also cautions against parents “freaking out” if
they see their child pack on a few pounds.
“Look at your own genetics. If
the parent got a little chunky as a child before a growth spurt,
there may be no cause for alarm.”
And she said, parents need to
look at how their attitudes toward food have been shaped by
their own parents. If they had a mother who was controlling,
maybe they’ve gone in the other direction and failed to set
limits.
“So many women have a love-hate
relationship with food, they may not know what healthy, normal
eating is,” Zeckhausen said.
The psychologist takes a “Love
Your Body Week” curriculum to schools across metro Atlanta in
an effort to help youngsters listen to their body’s hunger
cues and teach them better ways of dealing with stress than
turning to food.
Eating healthy doesn’t mean
forbidding sweets and fatty foods all the time. They should be
considered treats, according to Zeckhausen.
“Instead of pizza night being
no big deal, make it a treat to have pizza night,” she said.
‘Make that effort’
Tammie Johnson of Mableton
decided early on to set the tone for healthy eating habits.
On a recent Sunday afternoon, her
three kids (Thomas, 6; Tye, 5, and Trevor, 2) went on a
scavenger hunt for carrots and later helped make a strawberry
smoothie made with just three ingredients — milk, honey and
strawberries.
The family was spending their
afternoon at “Eat a Georgia Rainbow,” a new program at
Imagine It! The Children’s Museum of Atlanta.
“There’s a lot of myths
people have about being overweight. I hear people say ‘I am
big-boned,’ and people can get lackadaisical about it. You’ve
got to make that effort.”
It’s a concerted effort the
Scott family now makes every day. Mildred Scott acknowledges
that she used to toss into her grocery cart whatever looked
good. She and her family now plan out their meals. Isaiah Scott
plays football, requests spinach and asparagus and has stopped
eating red meat.
Mildred Scott helps other
children revamp the way they eat and live. She’s a volunteer
coordinator for the hip-hop fitness class at Douglass High
School.
Scott beams as she talks about
the changes she’s seen in her son.
“He looks like he’s happy,”
she said. “One thing I learned through this is that he didn’t
like himself when he was overweight, it was really attacking his
self-esteem.”
And that bowl on the kitchen
table? It’s now overflowing with apples and bananas (with
grapes and cherries in the fridge).
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Ways to be healthier
Tips for a healthy lifestyle from
local pediatrician Jennifer Shu:
1. Make eating healthy and
exercising a family affair. Go grocery shopping together. Cook
and eat together. Take walks together. Read labels. (You may
find those so-called “fruit roll-ups” are more like candy
than fruit.
2. On average, children should
get an hour a day of exercise every day, and children should not
get more screen time than play time and exercise.
3. Provide healthy snacks that
combine more than one food group, such as apple slices and
cheese or raisins and yogurt. Avoid fruit juices because they
can pack a lot of calories and are less filling and nutritious
than actual fruit.
4. Offer no more than one treat a
day and limit it to a maximum of 100 calories. Limit a “junk
food meal” to once a week.
5. Think long term. It’s a
child’s diet and exercise patterns over the course of a week
that count, so don’t stress if your child doesn’t eat
particularly well one day, as long as he or she eats healthy the
rest of the week. The same goes for exercise; skipping one day
is OK.
Source: Jennifer Shu, Atlanta
pediatrician and author of “Food Fights: Winning the
Nutritional Challenge of Parenthood Armed With Insight, Humor
and a Bottle of Ketchup.”
Tips for families
1. Exercise together. Get the
whole family on board for best results. Support each other and
keep each other motivated.
2. Make it fun. You don’t have
to just take walks around the block. Go to a neighborhood park
and play basketball. Throw a Frisbee. Fly a kite.
3. Scrap movie night. Instead of
lounging in a chair with eyes glued to a screen, get up and do
something active such as roller-skating or bowling.
4. Little things add up. Park far
away from the entrance to the store. Take the stairs instead of
the elevators at the mall. For parents: If your child has a
soccer practice, walk around the track a few times.
5. Every minute counts. Even if
you are short on time, a 10-minute brisk walk or dancing around
the house can add up to a big payoff for your health.
Source: Meika Louis-Pierre, owner
of Fit Neighborhood, an Atlanta-based fitness program for adults
and families
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More resources
» For information about Georgia
Organics’ farm-to-school programs, go to www.georgiaorganics.org/living/farm_to_school.php.
» For more information about
CHOICE programs, including their summer camps for overweight
boys and girls, go to www.choicesforkids.org.
» For more information about
Imagine It! The Children’s Museum of Atlanta’s “Eat a
Georgia Rainbow” program, which includes story time, a
scavenger hunt and the making of a healthy food such as a
smoothie, go to www.childrensmuseumatlanta.org.
|
choicesforkids.org
Georgia youths some of heaviest in
U.S.
