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Avoiding childhood obesity is a lot easy to talk about than lead by leading by example. We have five children and our youngest did not shed his weight like our other children. Once we discovered the health problems that result from being overweight, my spouse and I made a conscious decision in avoiding childhood obesity in our youngest boy that I am going to share with you here!

Being the parents we had both worked out as a lifestyle when we were younger, but fell into a sedentary lifestyle once we started our family and focused on our careers. It is so easy to get caught up in the everyday stress of life and forget what is most important…the quality of life and enjoying it!

We first started with adding exercise by taking a walk after school to spend time chatting together. Listen to your child very closely like we did and probe till you find a physical activity that is of interest to them. This way you can encourage them, while their interest provides the motivation!

For our family we took up tennis at the local park with in walking distance and table top tennis during the raining days. You might think table top tennis doesn’t burn that many calories, but give it a try first before making that conclusion, loll.

The whole idea behind trying out different physical activities, was to find those interests that benefited everyone and it brought us closer in the end. I would find out my kids had homework and would share with them that I had work on my computer to do. Then Empower them by asking them, if they thought it would be a good idea to perform a physical activity and shower so we could then focus on our work before bedtime! Give it a try and encourage them by using their suggestions from time to time.

Once we made the decision to get active with our family in avoiding childhood obesity, it had so many rewards and then we slowly began making changes in our diets, but did it slowly. We would share how many calories were in Soda Pop and substituted flavored water in place of it or nature juices.

Health InFocus: Childhood Obesity from InFocus Christian News on Vimeo.

Just take your time in slowly making changes, it usually takes about 21 days before it becomes routine. If you have too many changes it is so easy to just stop everything and fall back into your routine. We did the adjustments for our benefit, but the kids did very little objecting when we made suggestions.

We did several things we will not cover here, but the main one was making fast food a one time a month reward, instead of the easy to fall back on that we are busy tonight thingy. It has been several years now and our kids, especially our youngest are doing their own thing and physically fit. We are so round of them and we have them to thank in us being able to reclaim our youthfulness. Both my spouse and I have more energy, are closer than ever and taking up Golfing lessons, give it a try!

Avoiding Childhood Obesity is the main issue for families today, at just over 60% in the United States. If you want to understanding childhood obesity and how to prevent childhood obesity, I strongly recommend this e-book at: http://www.avoidingchildhoodobesity.com.