Whether you live on the west coast or the east coast, the silent killer called obesity is aggressively moving through our communities. More than likely, if you are not directly affected, the chances are that you have friends or family members who are loosing control of their weight.

In all honesty, we can not totally place the blame for this on the individuals themselves. Several studies have shown that for a number of people, their chemical and genetic makeup aide in their body’s ability to process certain fats. Sure being 100 plus pounds over weight might have been good in the Ice Age but today this is simply not the case.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in looking at childhood obesity and nutrition. Nutritionists estimate that for every point of body mass index a child is overweight by before puberty, the adult that child will grow into will be three points overweight by the time they’re thirty. Type II diabetes, where body stress from overeating builds up resistance to insulin, is becoming more prevalent in teenagers.

This is troubling because young people are most impressionable during their teenage years. Think about it, going through puberty was hard enough when you were approaching puberty at a normal weight. Just imagine how difficult it must be for kids these days that now carry an additional 45 to 70 pounds around. What is really startling is the enormous growth taking place within the dieting industry. Teens are quickly become the best potential customer bases before they are able to vote.

The good news is that this trend can be stopped. In fact, you may be surprised at the simple solution.

Remember when you were a kid? You know, before video games like the Nintendo Wii. You actually had friends who played outside with you. You had energy and used it.

If you felt tired or felt dehydrated, you immediately reached for a glass of water or milk. Sweets were a treat for good behavior rather than your main course. Snacks did not come prepackaged but rather apples, oranges and bananas were your choice.

While the fast food outlets might not want you to know this, many parents are successfully teaching their kids to make healthy eating decisions. Today however, water too many of our youth is like the library, they’ve heard about it but never fully experienced it. Listen up parents. Sodas, juices or energy drinks are not a substitute for water. When properly hydrated, hunger pangs were shown to decrease significantly compared to those individuals who consumed no water.

When they have snacks, give them fruits and vegetables, or baked goods that are also low in sugar. Make sure that you have a dedicated family meal every evening, where everyone talks about what they did during the day – these reinforce that meal times are an important social occasion, not a pit stop between bouts with the Game Cube or Wii.

Staying physically active is an absolute necessity. Children are usually mirror images of their parents. If you as a parent live a sedentary life, the chances of your child duplicating your example are very high. If you have little league teams in your town, encourage your children to participate. Not all kids are athletic but all kids need to be active. In addition, set aside at least one day in the week where the entire family is physically active together. It could be a walk in the park or playing tag in the backyard.

The key to providing life long health for your kids is inculcating these habits early in life, so they become habits. Explain why you’re doing it when they ask, but don’t preach. Your kids will adopt the behaviors they see you doing – you’re their parent, their role model, and these are the habits they’ll stick with as they get older.

If your teen is obese, what options do you have? Author Dorthy Weatherbush has taken the guess work out of determining if your teen would benefit from a doctor recommended meal replacement diet. Read more about her suggestions at http://www.StephensonandCompany.com

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How I Stopped Compulsive Overeating: I became a Certified Nutritionist, Holistic Health Practitioner and Specialist in Eating Disorders. I wrote and published a 400 plus page treatment program for compulsive overeating based on everything I had learned.

What You Can Do: The first and foremost thing I advise my clients to do is to stop criticizing themselves. Criticizing oneself does nothing more than add insult to injury and it only manifests into greater feelings of negativity. When you stop criticizing yourself your body and brain will begin to realize that you are on their side and they do not need to be at such war with each other.

Second thing is to understand what is happening to you and your brain when you binge eating. There is an internal war going on within you and understanding what is happening to you is important. I’m sure you feel the tug of war with one side of you saying Stop binge eating right now! and the other half is saying I want to eat everything in sight because I am so stressed out. Keep a journal so you can write down your thoughts.

The third step we cover is finding the root cause of why you overeat. Do you really know what happened to you to make you feel like you need to self comfort yourself with food? Food is not the issue but rather the stress and feelings that you are just not good enough are what contribute to binge eating. You will want to get to the bottom of why you feel the way you do in order to face the future.

The fourth step we talk about is the types of binges that a person can have. There is no one set binge. In fact there are a few of them. You may begin to binge to hide a problem and then the binge turns into an Opportunity Binge where you simply binge because you are alone and have found it a great opportunity to do so. Again, one side of you thinks it is still a good idea to binge so it will find ways to do so.

The fifth step is to reduce your daily stress. Stress is probably the number one contributor to compulsive overeating. People are stressed out so they turn for comfort. When they don’t get it from people they look to food because there are plenty of “comfort foods” out there. By learning relaxation or meditation, getting organized, and using assertive techniques to handle difficult situations you can greatly reduce stress and your need for outside comfort factors.

The sixth process is to begin setting small goals that you can achieve without your mind and body resiting. We do this successfully by using “chunks”. You can set small goals so achievable that your mind will be thrilled to continue as you reward yourself for each completed goal. Let’s take for instance a goal of drinking 8 glasses of water a day. You would take that goal and break it down into the smallest, most achievable goal to you and do that for 4 days. So what that means is you could say “I’ll drink 1 glass of water each day for the next 4 days.” After the four days are done if you have completed that goal you can then add a little bit more to it and work on the next tiny goal. “I’ll drink 2 glasses of water each day for the next 4 days” and so on until you reach your goal.

The seventh step has received a lot of hype lately from the movie The Secret because it involves using the Law of Attraction. The law of attraction has been around forever but the movie certainly brought about the awareness of it to plenty of folks which I supposed is a good thing. The concept is to focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want. By focusing on what you want you are sending a frequency of thoughts that can attract like thoughts. You get more of what you focus on. If you focus on good health and happiness you’ll attract more of that. If you focus on constantly overeating you’ll attract more of that so be sure you set your thoughts to what you want not on what you don’t want.

And lastly I want to assure you that compulsive overeating can be fully cured. You have the power within you to make the changes your brain and body need to make together in order to make life lasting achievements.

You can do it!

Nadine Ann, author of The BreakAway Program, has been helping individuals stop their compulsive overeating with an online treatment program. Join today for only $47.00 and get the exclusive members area and support you need. Visit The BreakAway Program to stop Compulsive Overeating Now.

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