Dubbed “An Apostle for Fitness” in her profile in the Wall Street Journal, Carole has been a featured guest on more than sixty radio and television shows, including NBC’s Today show, CBS’s Early Show, MSNBC’s Countdown, and CNN News. Carole has been featured in magazines such as American Fitness, Diet & Exercise Magazine, and Today’s Health & Wellness, as well as in newspapers such as the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Tampa Tribune, Sacramento Bee, Baltimore Sun and the Los Angeles Times. Carole’s book, From Fat to Fit, was named a finalist in the health and fitness category of the National Best Books 2007 Awards, sponsored by USA Book News.

An epidemic of supersized kids is worrying both parents and professionals. One bright spot: according to a special report in the June 23, 2008 issue of Time magazine , after rising for several years, the number of overweight kids seems to have stabilized at 32 percent, or one out of three. Still, the current number is frighteningly unacceptable.

The stakes are high for oversize kids. They face an increased risk of heart disease and a host of other chronic diseases, such as liver disease, diabetes, gallstones and deteriorating joints. Even if the diseases don’t shorten the lives of overweight kids, they will certainly diminish the quality of the children’s days and result in avoidable medical expenses.

The extra pounds also become a lifetime legacy. If these kids have overweight parents, the odds are stacked against them, and they are unlikely to ever experience normal weight. By the time a child turns 20, the number of fat cells in the body is set. Weight fluctuations shrink or expand the cells, but the number remains constant.

Setting aside medical issues, overweight children also face teasing, bullying and isolation—pressures that can send children into depression. Drugs—illicit or stolen from the family medicine chest—can easily become a source of comfort and a way to cope.

One of the major contributors to kids’ extra weight is the extraordinary amount of time kids spend before a screen, whether that of a television, computer or video game. The total on average is nearly six hours each day. If we are going to help our kids lose weight, we’ll have to wean them off the screen.

What else can parents do to slim down their overweight child?

Like good doctors, parents must first make sure they do no harm. Obsessing about their child’s weight, forbidding foods, attempting to control their child’s food decisions and criticizing the child’s indulgences are as damaging as denial is.

Both boys and girls are sensitive to cultural pressure to be thin, even as they are surrounded by temptations to indulge. Children between 9 and 15 years old are particularly vulnerable to eating disorders. In one study of girls in Australia, researchers discovered girls as young as 8 years old were suffering from life-threatening anorexia. Sixteen years of research involving hundreds of girls led clinical psychologist Dr. Eric Stice to assert that girls’ attempts to rigidly control their eating led to weight gain.

To succeed, parents must follow Bing Crosby’s musical advice: accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Instead of focusing on weight loss, parents need to create playful situations for the entire family that encourage and reinforce the larger goal of getting and staying fit. Most importantly, this fun-loving promotion of family fitness isn’t something parents should do for their children, but something they must do with their children. As in all areas of parenting, actions speak louder than words.

Here are some ideas for creating family fitness fun:

1. Let’s Get Physical : Buy everyone in the family an inexpensive pedometer ($10) and create teams. Record your steps each day. Set a goal and establish prizes for the winning team. Once a goal has been met, rearrange team players and create a new game. This game teaches math and team-building skills and develops sound fitness habits.

2. Green Exercise : Pick an outdoor project your family can accomplish together. Help restore a trail or pick up trash along a river or walkway. Cleaning up the environment teaches kids the value of contributing to others and respect for our natural resources, and it gives them the opportunity to enjoy outdoor exercise. A healthy body on a healthy planet is an important message for kids to absorb.

3. Chef of the Week : Each week, designate the family’s chef of the week. The chef must introduce one new recipe, one new vegetable and one new fruit into the family diet. Keep notes on the reaction to the newbies. For the toddler too small to cook, place a chair at the kitchen counter to stand on and designate him or her the sous-chef. Exploring new foods and sharing in food preparation is a fun-filled way to teach cooking skills and learn about nutrition. Eating at home and eating together as a family can help slim your kids.

With a little imagination, parents can create dozens of ways—both high- and no-tech to stay active with their children and have fun cooking and eating together. Dance Dance Revolution and Wii Fit are dynamic high-tech exercise games that can help families lose weight and become more active.

On the other hand, kids can probably have as much fun stringing a line across the backyard and playing balloon volleyball. You can use the computer to teach kids about food, nutrition and health by steering them to www.e-learningforkids.org. Or you can pick up some inexpensive used cookbooks and experiment with recipes. As long as it’s fun and you’re participating with your kids, you can’t go wrong.

Kids can be taught to love their bodies, and parents can’t let these special teaching moments pass. The stakes for the small fry are too high.

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Update on Jul 18, 2008 by At Basil & Spice

National Post!

Sphered at Time!   And The Wall Street Journal!