Peer Bullying Can Increase when Teen Obesity is a Factor
No matter if you’re 50 or 15, male or female, improving your health and dropping pounds is hard. Successful weight loss requires emotional preparation and mental dedication – as well as a diet of primarily raw foods and high amounts of activity. With so much temptation offered at the school cafeteria and while out with friends, changing an unhealthy lifestyle for obese children and teens can be like trying to break through a concrete wall. Chiseling away at an inactive and nutritiously poor lifestyle starts with a parent’s unrelenting support and dedication. This will be a lifestyle change for the entire family; from making over the kitchen to cooking at home instead of eating out.
Smarter Choices
- Help your child learn how to take responsibility for their behaviors; you can’t control every morsel of food that passes through their mouth or force them move off the couch
- Praise your teen for making smart decisions and ask them how they physically and emotionally feel after eating less, eating nutritiously and exercising
- Practice what you preach; the entire family should avoid sugary drinks, sweets, bad carbs and fast food as well as excite over eating lean meats, vegetables and fruit
- Use weight loss tools such as a Mountainside Medical Supplies mini calorie pedometer or Noom Weight Loss App to help your teen stay on track and motivated
To complement less eating and better nutrition, encourage your child or teen to participate in a sport. NYTimes.com featured Keith M. Drake’s study about the influence of sports, physical education and active school commuting on adolescent weight status. Findings suggest obesity rates would plunge 26 percent if adolescents were involved in at least two sports teams a year.
Sometimes we dismiss the serious health risks of teen obesity because it’s easier to see our children as invincible little people, and the future’s not worth worrying about now. If we ignore the long-term health effects of today’s poor nutrition and lack of exercise, then perhaps we need to observe the emotional and social repercussions of teen obesity.
What’s it Going to Take? Emotional Turmoil of Obesity
No one argues that teenage years are the hardest, and some adults never even fully recover from being the target of high school mean girls or a social outcast. As parents, we have been through the trenches of high school and want our children to positively experience high school, rather than merely survive it. Notably, obese teens are more susceptible to bullying.
According to ObesityAction.org, overweight children are especially targeted” as victims of bullying. Dedicated to obesity awareness, the national non-profit organization also states that for high schoolers, 58 percent of boys and 63 percent of girls are teased and bullied every day because of their size. The relationship between bullying and obesity is no different for young children and middle schoolers.
Regardless of socio-economic class, gender or ethnicity, “the child who was obese was simply more likely to be bullied than the child who was not,” stated Dr. Julie C. Lumeng, the lead researcher of the study “Weight Status as a Predictor of Being Bullied in Third Through Sixth Grades.” Perhaps we should note how obesity negatively affects our children, inwardly and outwardly.
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