From Your Health Journal…..”I had to promote an article by Angela Mollard in the Telegraph from Australia entitled Love the key to beating deadly child obesity epidemic. Childhood obesity is not just a problem in the United States, but all over the world. We are worried this could be the first generation of children whose life expectancy may be shorter than their parents. Obesity related illness such as heart disease, asthma, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and weaker joints are all on the rise. Changes is needed, education of families on healthy lifestyle is critical. The author points out how things have changed for children, as they even need their tonsils removed to breathe, as the states that ‘fat is the new normal’ in her article. She states that the love of our children should be the driving force to keep them healthy – getting them involved in sport, making sure they reduce sedentary lifestyle and technology, get them an hour of physical activity each day, and promote healthy eating. Please take the time to visit the Telegraph web site (link provided below) to read this full article. It is well written, honest, and direct! I found her article refreshing and sincere.”
From the article…..
Not much makes me cry but tears of quiet despair roll as I write.
Our children are so fat they’re having their tonsils removed just to breathe. Hips – once the curse of the elderly – are being replaced, worn out under the sheer weight of these kids’ bodies.
We are supposed to protect children. Instead, we’ve shackled them with this hideous, life-destroying condition we seemingly have no power to halt. We are flailing with obesity, unable to turn the tide because, fat, frankly, is the new normal.
And who wants to hear from a woman who isn’t?
But if we don’t talk about it – and God knows I’m tiptoeing here – then we might as well close the door on everything that is awkward and confronting: sexual abuse, immigration, domestic violence. We owe our children solutions to this crisis but in the absence of any we should at least be having a conversation. Only through the kernels of shared thoughts will come answers.
People are not fat by choice.
Something within them aches; something so private and – in many cases – undetectable that food is the only thing that soothes. Bread becomes a pillow, butter a blanket to wrap yourself in against the sharp edges of life.
I know because friends have been brave enough to tell me.
One eats to stave off the hunger of childlessness; another numbs her rotten childhood with the warmth of doughnuts and the unquestioning hug that is cake.
Overeating, as author Caitlin Moran points out, is the addiction of choice of carers and, therefore, women. Unlike drink or drugs, food abuse allows you to function.
“Fat people aren’t indulging in the ‘luxury’ of their addiction making them useless, chaotic or a burden,” she writes. “Instead, they are slowly self-destructing in a way that doesn’t inconvenience anyone.”
To read the complete article…..Click here