Isaiah Scott never had to worry about finding a snack when returning home from school. His mother stocked the pantry with chips and made sure a bowl on the kitchen table was always brimming with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
It was like trick-or-treating every day for Isaiah — without the exercise.
Little by little, the 12-year-old who lives in Douglasville got bigger and bigger.
Georgia’s children rank as some of the heaviest in the country, with about 37 percent of children ages 10 to 17 overweight or obese, according to a 2009 Robert Wood Johnson study, “F as in Fat.” Nationally, since the 1980s, the obesity rate for children has tripled, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The extra pounds put youngsters at risk for obesity-related diseases such as Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, which used to be seen mainly in adults.
But a growing chorus of parents, school administrators and fitness gurus are stepping up their efforts to tackle childhood obesity.
And that’s what Isaiah Scott’s mother did.
Last year, Mildred Scott listened to her son as he complained that he was upset about the way he looked and felt. He said he was tired all the time. The revelation provided an urgent wake-up call for Mildred Scott.
“I thought he was just a little bit heavy but perfectly healthy. But when he told me this, I knew that it just wasn’t right. He was too young to be tired. He was eating whatever he wanted because I was allowing it,” she said.
Isaiah participated last summer in a weeklong “Camp Kick-it” for overweight boys to learn how to take control of bad food habits. The family banished junk food from the house. They started eating more whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and going on walks every night after dinner.
Isaiah lost 21 pounds and is now at a healthy weight.
The Scott family made a successful, seismic-size lifestyle change. It’s a transformation that must repeat itself across Georgia to stall — and reverse — soaring rates of obesity.
And there are signs that it’s beginning to happen.
New farm-to-school programs are under way to get more locally produced fruits and vegetables in school cafeterias and help schools build their own gardens. Parents are creating “nutrition committees” at day cares, demanding an ax to “fortified” donuts for breakfast and teddy bear-shaped cookies for afternoon snacks. Bootcamp-style fitness instructors are launching family exercise classes to get the whole family moving.
Kennesaw-based CHOICES (the Center Helping Obesity in Children End Successfully) this year started an after-school fitness program for overweight girls at Frederick Douglass High School in Atlanta. The program mixes a hip-hop exercise class, keeping food journals and eating healthy snacks such as apple slices when they meet.
“We talk to kids about how three sodas is not a good idea and we give them basic information about needing to eat fruits and vegetables,” said Vanetta Keyes, executive director of CHOICES, which runs the “Kick-it”camp for boys and one called “Divas” for overweight girls. “And the one sentence we hear the most is, ‘no one ever told me this before.’”
First lady Michelle Obama recently launched her “Let’s Move” campaign calling for more exercise and slashing fat and salt in school lunches. She wants to change the way kids eat and play and, ultimately, reverse the upward trend of childhood obesity. Obama herself has discussed her struggles in helping her daughters maintain a healthy weight.
“What we are fighting against is our society as a whole has become very fast,” Keyes said. “Most of the foods are processed. Everything is done in bulk and huge portions. Kids don’t play outside like we used to. Playing outside nowadays is playing an organized sport.”
Pizza — for breakfast?
About a year ago, Aaron Parks of Decatur was stunned to see what his preschooler, 4-year-old Murray, was eating for breakfast at day care.
“Pizza,” he said disdainfully. “They were serving it for breakfast and calling it, ‘breakfast pizza.’ ”
He also saw the children nibbling on donuts and snacking on cookies. He took photos with his camera phone, complained to school administrators and joined a newly formed “school nutrition committee.”
He also offered to help change the food served. He, along with other parents, sold cookbooks and raised money to plant a garden on a swath of school property at College Heights Early Childhood Learning Center. And since the school also must buy food in bulk, he helped the school order broccoli and other vegetables from Sam’s Club.
“You just can’t take no for an answer,” he said. “You have to be tenacious.”
Suzanne Kennedy, principal of College Heights, praised the group of active parents for not simply pushing the issue but also offering to help.
“We took a look at the menu and made some changes. We took out the not-so-nutritious things and replaced them with things like oatmeal for breakfast,” Kennedy said. “And we started a garden. But with children 4 years and younger, they need help. And the parents have really jumped in. They even installed an irrigation system.”
Meanwhile, Laura Laszlo, a mom to two young children, opened up her own day care about a month ago after being disappointed by the food choices at her children’s day care.
“Chicken nuggets, french fries and juice that really wasn’t juice,” said Laszlo, who opened up the Norcross center with a longtime teacher. “The more I talked to parents, I realized this is a concern to a lot of parents.”
She also didn’t like seeing her 1- and 2-year-old children watching TV when she picked them up. At her day care, there are no TVs. She serves locally produced vegetables and is about to plant a garden on site.
On a recent afternoon, lunch consisted of grilled chicken and squash. For a snack, the children ate homemade squash muffins.
“A treat is a treat and not a meal. I think we’ve lost that in society today. You don’t eat french fries every day for lunch and ice cream every other day. It’s like in ‘Sesame Street,’ they call them ‘sometimes foods.’ ”
Young emotional eaters
Dina Zeckhausen, an Atlanta psychologist who specializes in eating disorders, believes more children nowadays are “emotional eaters” and are repeating a pattern, which they see in their parents, of turning to food for comfort. Children experiencing stress such as their parents’ divorce or a parent losing a job can put them at risk for gaining excessive weight. What they really need is someone to talk to, she said.
While child obesity is a serious problem, she also cautions against parents “freaking out” if they see their child pack on a few pounds.
“Look at your own genetics. If the parent got a little chunky as a child before a growth spurt, there may be no cause for alarm.”
And she said, parents need to look at how their attitudes toward food have been shaped by their own parents. If they had a mother who was controlling, maybe they’ve gone in the other direction and failed to set limits.
“So many women have a love-hate relationship with food, they may not know what healthy, normal eating is,” Zeckhausen said.
The psychologist takes a “Love Your Body Week” curriculum to schools across metro Atlanta in an effort to help youngsters listen to their body’s hunger cues and teach them better ways of dealing with stress than turning to food.
Eating healthy doesn’t mean forbidding sweets and fatty foods all the time. They should be considered treats, according to Zeckhausen.
“Instead of pizza night being no big deal, make it a treat to have pizza night,” she said.
‘Make that effort’
Tammie Johnson of Mableton decided early on to set the tone for healthy eating habits.
On a recent Sunday afternoon, her three kids (Thomas, 6; Tye, 5, and Trevor, 2) went on a scavenger hunt for carrots and later helped make a strawberry smoothie made with just three ingredients — milk, honey and strawberries.
The family was spending their afternoon at “Eat a Georgia Rainbow,” a new program at Imagine It! The Children’s Museum of Atlanta.
“There’s a lot of myths people have about being overweight. I hear people say ‘I am big-boned,’ and people can get lackadaisical about it. You’ve got to make that effort.”
It’s a concerted effort the Scott family now makes every day. Mildred Scott acknowledges that she used to toss into her grocery cart whatever looked good. She and her family now plan out their meals. Isaiah Scott plays football, requests spinach and asparagus and has stopped eating red meat.
Mildred Scott helps other children revamp the way they eat and live. She’s a volunteer coordinator for the hip-hop fitness class at Douglass High School.
Scott beams as she talks about the changes she’s seen in her son.
“He looks like he’s happy,” she said. “One thing I learned through this is that he didn’t like himself when he was overweight, it was really attacking his self-esteem.”
And that bowl on the kitchen table? It’s now overflowing with apples and bananas (with grapes and cherries in the fridge).
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Ways to be healthier
Tips for a healthy lifestyle from local pediatrician Jennifer Shu:
1. Make eating healthy and exercising a family affair. Go grocery shopping together. Cook and eat together. Take walks together. Read labels. (You may find those so-called “fruit roll-ups” are more like candy than fruit.
2. On average, children should get an hour a day of exercise every day, and children should not get more screen time than play time and exercise.
3. Provide healthy snacks that combine more than one food group, such as apple slices and cheese or raisins and yogurt. Avoid fruit juices because they can pack a lot of calories and are less filling and nutritious than actual fruit.
4. Offer no more than one treat a day and limit it to a maximum of 100 calories. Limit a “junk food meal” to once a week.
5. Think long term. It’s a child’s diet and exercise patterns over the course of a week that count, so don’t stress if your child doesn’t eat particularly well one day, as long as he or she eats healthy the rest of the week. The same goes for exercise; skipping one day is OK.
Source: Jennifer Shu, Atlanta pediatrician and author of “Food Fights: Winning the Nutritional Challenge of Parenthood Armed With Insight, Humor and a Bottle of Ketchup.”
Tips for families
1. Exercise together. Get the whole family on board for best results. Support each other and keep each other motivated.
2. Make it fun. You don’t have to just take walks around the block. Go to a neighborhood park and play basketball. Throw a Frisbee. Fly a kite.
3. Scrap movie night. Instead of lounging in a chair with eyes glued to a screen, get up and do something active such as roller-skating or bowling.
4. Little things add up. Park far away from the entrance to the store. Take the stairs instead of the elevators at the mall. For parents: If your child has a soccer practice, walk around the track a few times.
5. Every minute counts. Even if you are short on time, a 10-minute brisk walk or dancing around the house can add up to a big payoff for your health.
Source: Meika Louis-Pierre, owner of Fit Neighborhood, an Atlanta-based fitness program for adults and families
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More resources
» For information about Georgia Organics’ farm-to-school programs, go to www.georgiaorganics.org/living/farm_to_school.php.
» For more information about CHOICE programs, including their summer camps for overweight boys and girls, go to www.choicesforkids.org.
» For more information about Imagine It! The Children’s Museum of Atlanta’s “Eat a Georgia Rainbow” program, which includes story time, a scavenger hunt and the making of a healthy food such as a smoothie, go to www.childrensmuseumatlanta.org.
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