Fitness is very important to us as you can probably imagine with the line of products that PedometersUSA.com provides our customer base with. That being said, it is a concern to us that childhood obesity seems to be gaining rather than to diminish as was thought to be the case based on reports that were presented earlier last year.
New data now shows childhood obesity continues to increase. Across all ages, from a report provided by Duke University Medical Center this past February 26, 2018
The national childhood obesity rate is 18.5 percent. The rate varies among different age groups and rises as children get older: 13.9 percent of 2- to 5-year-olds, 18.4 percent of 6- to 11-year-olds, and 20.6 percent of 12- to 19-year-olds are obese.
Obesity is one of the most serious health challenges facing children and is a predictor for many other future health problems, that follow them as they become adults. Now this data, present the facts, even if we are not happy with them. The paper, however, focuses on the obesity issue rather than on providing solutions. Based on the supplied facts we know that we haven't figured out what will work for the broad population, other than providing the statistics to hopefully make the population aware of the problem.
What we are discovering is that the problem and talking about it, or seeing it being a "News-Bite" on the local or national news-shows, seems to be desensitizing us about the issue as a whole.
We know families can work at getting these numbers down by following a stricter diet and working more physical activity into their daily routines. But it requires that the parents take on a more active role at home, of becoming role models that their children can follow.
We can no longer just preach the way to a healthier lifestyle, we need to lead by example. We know families can avoid beverages that contain large amounts of added sugar and the same goes for snacks and cereal. Families can incorporate vegetables and leaner cuts of protein into their meal plans, while also increasing the amount of physical activity that takes place in the home.
Too often, when we come home from work or the kids from school, even if it’s only day-care schooling we tend to sit back, do our own thing and let the children do theirs’s, which today usually means getting online with their phones, to snap-chat or play video games, by themselves or logging online to play with their friend’s. Neither scenario provides any physical activity to get their ‘s and your hearts pumping and having your muscles working to provide some calorie burning action that will help you all get in better shape!
The schools are starting to do their parts by restructuring their lunch menus to make sure that the children are able to have a nutritious meal, and some are able to offer breakfast and after-school snacks or meals as well. But that alone does not help the children become active.
A program that can be looked at to help with this is the Fit4Ed Pedometer program It is a program designed to make exercise and learning mathematics fun, the Fit4Education fitness education program is a step in the right direction in the fight against childhood obesity.
More and more schools are taking a look at this program, and others like it, to help with a child’s learning mathematical skills while getting the benefit of being motivated to walk more and more while counting their steps and providing that information to the teacher who will incorporate that data into a school lesson plan, that the program provides. And it doesn’t stop there. Once the teacher becomes familiar with the program it can be incorporated into the regular school gym/fitness programs where the children can be put through their regular fitness classes and the provided pedometers can count the steps that are being taken and the calories that are being burned.
Again, this is only an example of a program available, that can help us to get our school-aged children to become more active, while hopefully aid them in staying active as they age and grow into productive adults. Intervention programs such as Fit4Ed can help to solve the childhood obesity crisis and Pedometers seem to be a popular choice to help in making this happen.