Is THIN going extinct? Nearly a third of our children
are overweight or obese. And the numbers
continue to rise. Childhood Obesity is
a serious epidemic. We're at
risk of raising "supersized" kids who
may live sicker and die younger than the
generation before them. Because at younger
and younger ages we're starting to see children
with significant medical complications related
to being obese. Type-2 Diabetes, hypertension,
elevated cholesterol. These are illnesses
that we had not seen under the age of 20 before. With so many of us being overweight these days,
sometimes being fat looks, well, "normal, "but it is
not, and it is dangerous. An overweight child usually
grows up to be an obese adult. We're in the
midst of an epidemic of obesity in this country,
between fast foods, greasy foods, and
sugary drinks. If we don't change what we do we will be a society of obese people, and I don't thing
anybody wants that. It's very scary and it's very
real. That's why we need to do something about it
now. ♪ ♪ Is it "baby fat" or what? How do you know if
your child is a healthy weight? This is the
Cordero Family. Ten year old Elijah has always
been a big boy. I always thought he was bigger,
but I didn't really think that there was a problem. We didn't have much
food growing up. I figured
if they had a full belly they'd be happy you know. I guess I always thought he was big boned. I just
thought, you know, he is eating every meal, it's
good. <i> "Here's his growth chart"</i> A doctor's visit told a
different story. Elijah's Body Mass Index, or BMI, showed his weight
was growing faster than his height. A BMI is a
simple height-to-weight ratio that provides a
useful snapshot of whether a child is overweight
for his or her age. I was shocked. I guess I didn't realize
what we were doing to him. A BMI above the
85 percentile indicates a child is overweight. It
means the child weighs more than 85% of their
peers. Above 95% means the child is obese. The
borderline diabetes is what scared me the most.
And I just thought, you know, I don't want him to
have to give himself shots every day you can't go
back and fix it. The Cordero's are not alone.
Most parents don't realize their child is overweight
or how serious it is. Sometimes the "chubby" kid
may not stand out in our overweight society.
And it's kind of hard to accept that more than half
the people that we meet everyday are either
overweight or obese. Many parents think
their child will grow into the extra weight. Sometimes that's
true, but 75% of the time it is not. Two out of
three overweight 10 year olds will grow up to be
obese adults. In the past people would think, "Oh
they'll just grow out of it." But what we're seeing
now is that kids don't grow out of it. They
become obese adolescents, they become obese young
adults, they become obese adults. What we need to
realize is that it didn't happen in one, two, three,
or even five years. It started when the kids were
2, 3 years old. And that's the urgency. ♪ ♪ Did you know our
genes are not our Destiny? Nine year old Anna Ota
loves Guinea Pigs and doing crafts with her Mom.
But life hasn't always been so happy. Two years
ago Anna was very upset about her weight. She
would come home and cry because kids would
have called her fat. This little girl told Anna that
she was too heavy to sit on Santa's lap. A visit to
the doctor confirmed her fears. Anna was overweight
and a borderline diabetic. Her dad has diabetes,her
grandpa has diabetes, and my mom has diabetes. I was
really worried, because if she was that big at that
age, how much bigger is she going to get? How many
more health problems is she going to have? Anna
was lucky because they caught her weight problem
early, while she was still growing. Prevention is
key, because if we can catch these children when
they are in the category of being overweight, catch
them early and really enforce that the
principles of healthy eating and exercise, food
portions, then most of these children still have
lots of time to grow. The goal is to slow down the
weight gain and let the height catch up as the
child grows. While Anna is younger
and still growing, nature is working
right along with her. It's much more difficult
after puberty. It's critical
that we address these issues at as young an
age as possible and we are working with the bodies
physiology. Many obese adolescents
were obese children. If you go back and
look at their growth charts, you can see that
they were already above the 96 percentile
when they were 2 or 3. They've
already had a decade of obesity. ♪ Yesenia Torres is
a single mother of five. She knows that her Latino
heritage puts her family at greater risk for obesity
and its associated problems. A lot of people from
our culture is overweight. We eat too much, and we eat big portions of food. An expression of
love is feeding the kids whenever
they ask for food. Its not loving them. I
realize that, that's not loving them, which I used to
do that. With David especially. Nowhere is the
Childhood Obesity crisis more pronounced than in
low-income communities of color. Across the country,
more than 35 percent of African American children
and nearly 40 percent of Latino children are obese
or overweight, compared with about 29 percent of
white children. And one in every two African American
and Latina girls are at risk of developing
diabetes during their lifetimes-a far higher
percentage than white girls. ♪ Yesenia's oldest
daughter, Nathaly, is one of those statistics.
She was diagnosed with diabetes at age 15. I felt
like there was something wrong with my body, I
already knew at 12 or 13 because of all the
headaches and how i felt. Because when my blood sugar goes down, my
legs get shakey, I can't pick up anything and it
gets really hot, it's really bad. ♪ When Yesenia's
ten-year-old son David, began gaining excess
weight, she got scared. My son, David, was
overweight, and he was close to the obese line.
She did a cholesterol test, it was high; his
blood sugar, he was on the borderline for diabetes,
and that's why it concerned me more. I
already have a daughter with diabetes, so I didn't
want David to get to that point. It's very hard to
accept the fact that our children are overweight.
Because where do the children get their food
from. They are getting it from us. Where are they
learning their habits. They're learning it from
us. So it's very emotional to think, Gosh, my habits
and my lifestyle has caused my child to have
health issues and that's hard to accept. I felt really bad. I
didn't know what I was doing wrong. I wanted to learn
What else can I do to be better? To feed David
better. So he wasn't overweight. The good news is things
can change. New innovative
programs are showing promise in fighting
Childhood Obesity. Group Health's Countdown to
Healthy Living pilot program is one example.
The program works with the entire family to make
healthy changes. We work with them and
help them identify their barriers to changing
their lifestyles and encouraging more
physical activity in their home, changing some of their
dietary nutrition habits in the home, and doing
it together as a family. Kids of these ages they are not in charge.
They don't buy the food, don't control the screen
time. They're not in charge. So if you don't
involve the whole family, then the likelihood of
long term success is limited. Well, you can't
just have one person do it. You all have to jump
on board. You all have to be willing to make the
changes. And if he sees us making the changes, he
will. Making healthy
changes as a family makes all the difference. We used to serve ourselves
the large plate, now we serve the small plate.
Even my mother. We don't call it
loosing weight. We don't call it dieting.It's
a change in eating style. It's making healthier choices. Instead of that
candy bar, how about an apple or orange. I feel the success rate for children depends on the parents.
So, if parents are onboard for making changes, I
find that the children are very successful. This is 12 year old
Caleb Helm. He loves playing sports, scouting and playing
music. Today Caleb looks and feels great, but it
wasn't always that way. About eight he started to
have a little poochy belly on him. I figured oh, he's
probably just going to have a growth spurt really
soon. Caleb did not grow out of it. By age 10, kids
at school were teasing him and calling him fat. Caleb
was a 10 year old kid with the weight of a 13 year
old kid. He was kind of off the charts. Caleb's mom was also
an overweight child. She knows
first-hand what it can do to your self-esteem. I really felt
isolated. Felt like I couldn't do something
because I was conscious about my
body. The psychosocial and
emotional factors associated with a child
being overweight are just as significant
as the medical complications
actually. Most obese children do have low
self-esteem, they have problems with being
bullied at school, they're being teased, which
causes some of them to be introverts; it can be very
devastating to them as individuals. Everyday he
asks, does it look like I'm loosing weight.
Everyday he asks. So I know he cares about it. They have no peer
support because the may not have alot of friends, and so what
makes them feel good is to eat food. So it's kind of
vicious circle. ♪ Small changes can make
a BIG difference in your health. We used to eat out all
the time. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, Oh hey, let's
go get ice cream, you know. Got rid
of the pop, that was the first. We'd go through a
case of pop a day easy. Eating out, the McDonald's
every morning. Three sausage McMuffins on
his way to school. (Five. Five. He'd eat five easy) I used to just be
happy that they ate breakfast.
I wouldn't care what they ate for breakfast,as long
as it was breakfast. So, a plate of nachos was
perfectly acceptable as long as he was eating.
Come home after school and grab some chips and a pop.
Sit down and watch TV on the couch. So I brought
five pounds of fat, and I want everybody to touch
it, to look at it. I'm going to pass it around
the table. Those days are long gone. The
Countdown for Healthy Living classes were
a real eye opener. that's when I got more scared
about what we were eating. I saw the junk! I went home that night,
after the first group meeting, and I cleared my
whole kitchen out. by the time we were done, we had
two garbage bag fulls. So this one is a hamburger.
It's 410 calories. I find most of it is people are
just not educated in how to be healthy.
They haven't had the information on how
to provide a healthy lifestyle for themselves
or for families. Keeping a food
journal is a great way to get started. Once you started seeing on
paper, written down what you're doing it really
started kicking in. They would have us measure out
all the food. All the food intake that he was eating
down to calories, portions and ounces. On the peanut
butter you put on the sandwich and the slice
of bread. Once you start writing it all down,
it's just amazing how much you're putting in your
mouth. It taught us a lot lot we didn't even know
we were doing. Not just to him, to ourselves, you
know. ♪ Food gives our body the energy it needs to do
the activities we love. To maintain a healthy weight,
we need to balance the amount of energy or
calories we take in in the form of food with energy
we use by being active. Unfortunately, most of us suffer
from portion distortion. We're just eating way
too much. Big portions. Especially once
we start seeing how big the portions really are
supposed to be. I was times-ing them by six
easy. Big big portions. Food portion sizes have
really grown over the last 20 years. And, not just in
restaurants, at home too. Many times our plate
arrives with enough food on it for two or even
three people. Hamburgers have expanded by 23
percent; a plate of Mexican food is 27 percent
bigger; Soft drinks have increased in size by 52
percent; Snacks are 60 percent larger. So it's
not surprising that our kids are getting larger
too. Studies show, if it is there, we eat it,
whether we are full or not. So what is a normal
portion size anyway? A portion size for meat,
chicken or fish is roughly the size of a deck of
cards. For potatoes, rice or pasta it's roughly the
size of the palm of your hand, or one cup.
Vegetables, however are pretty much all you can
eat. But, it's not only that we eat too much, It
is what we're eating. They had all these different
displays. Just the fat content in the meat,
sugar in sodas. how much oil was in each snack. And you can see
it and feel it. You could touch it. We wanted to wring
our bodies out. Today, 23% of
our grocery dollars goes toward processed packaged
foods. That has more than doubled in the last 20
years. It's fast, easy and inexpensive. But it comes
at a price. Most processed packaged foods are full
of added sugars, fats, and salt. It was so scary,
really scary it was like Oh My God, I'm feeding
my kids that! But equally troubling is what has been
removed from our food. Processed foods are often
stripped of nutrients and fiber designed by nature
to protect your body and keep you healthy.<i> 13.</i> Okay
there was 13 teaspoons in this bottle. What kids are
drinking is also part of the problem. Most Kids
consume over 100 pounds of sugar a year. Much of it
in sugary drinks and soda. An enormous amount of
sugar. They showed it granulated so you actually
could see how much sugar you're putting in your
body. ♪ Our bodies need to move. Run,
jump, bend, and play. At least 60 minutes every day. When we were kids we used
to play, kick the can, that sort of
thing. We learned that from other people in our
neighborhood. These days there is a lot of
electronic gadgetry kids don't play as
much as they used to. Mounting research shows
that the amount of time a child spends watching TV
and using other media is linked to their body
weight. Too much "screen time" translates into less
exercise time and bigger waistlines. Studies
show that Kids with TVs in their bedrooms are twice
as likely to be obese. Plus, The American Academy
of Pediatrics' recently reported that our
children," watch too much TV, don't get enough
exercise, see too many junk food ads and don't
get enough sleep." It's no wonder our kids our
overweight. ♪ Moving more as a
family is key. But it's not necessarily
about getting a health club membership or joining
a sports team. We focused
on physical activity as a family. So whether that
meant walking in the park, doing jazzercise in your
home. What we wanted was the family, as a unit,
to just move more. We discovered that it was
important to have the parents involved. We
didn't for the first session. The parents
didn't do the physical activity with us. And we
discovered if we re-taught them how to play, allowed
them to be silly with their kids that seemed
to break down a lot of barriers and get them more
active in the time they weren't here with us. Role modeling is
key. As a parent you have to be
willing to participate and model the behavior that
you want your child to pick up. ♪ Snacks are
important because we don't want to be so hungry
at dinnertime that we overeat. Caleb got to be
around other kids that were experiencing the same
type of things that he was experiencing. He got to
talk about what it was like to feel excluded,
teased, and know that he's not the only one. Some of
these kids have changed schools many times because
of bullying. Some of them have never felt like they
fit in or that others paid much attention to them in
a positive way so this is an environment where they
did feel like they fit in, they got to do everything
that everyone else was doing. ♪ At 15, Michelle
James was overweight. Everything revolved around
food, whether it was, because I was sad or
because I was happy, you know. It was all about the
food. Now, at 32, Michelle can still remember
the pain of growing up overweight. I didn't
really dwell on the fact that I was overweight
because it was too hard. I would never joke about my
weight. I was not one of those people that would
just make light of it because it really did bug
me. Michelle was the only heavy one in her family. I
wasn't the pretty one. I wasn't the skinny
one. That was my sister. Looking back, Michelle
can pinpoint a string of tragic events that
coincide with her ballooning weight. I have
had a lot of loss. I love people with my whole
heart. But then when they're gone, it's like my
whole heart hurts. To ease the pain, Michelle began
to over eat. I didn't know what to do, with the
feelings of loss and of grief and the hurt and
pain. I didn't really have anyone to talk to, so you
just eat. And it just kind of makes everything go
away for a period of time. There are some kids who've
had a normal weight, or maybe slightly higher
weight their whole lives. And then something
happens. And it can be a significant life event.
It could be a car accident involving a family member
or it could be a loss in the family, a divorce.
Some major life event. For some kids it can happen
very quickly. You can see 8-10 pounds in a
month. Being an overweight
teenager affected Michelle's self-confidence.
It was hard to make friends and easy to
fall in with the wrong crowd. She made some poor choices. Especially
when it came to dating boys. I ended up pregnant
at 17, my senior year of high school. I just think
a lot of it had to do with my weight, because I was
overweight and struggled with self-confidence. I
chose to date someone who, you know, wasn't really
concerned about me. Two weeks after Michelle
graduated from high school, she made the tough
decision to give her baby up for adoption. It was
one more loss to deal with. That was a major
loss at 18. And what do you do with that as an 18
year old. You just eat. I ate. ♪ <i> Elmo's off to school...</i> Three years ago,
Michelle had had enough I looked in the mirror, and
I had become a person I didn't recognize. And I
thought this is not the person I want to be, and
it started with working through my feelings and
realizing how I had been eating myself into a hole.
Michelle is married now with a beautiful daughter
and another child on the way. With the help of a
church group, a nutrition plan and lots of exercise
Michelle has lost over 80 pounds over the last 3
years. She is dedicated to living a healthy lifestyle
and being fit. I don't feel like my life is
controlled by my next meal. There's a freedom
in being able to say No to certain foods. And there's
a freedom that comes in being able to go out and
run a mile, that's freeing to feel like your body
works the way it was created to work. It's
freedom. After two years, David, Anna, Caleb and
Elijah are also seeing positive results. I see a
big result on David. He lost about 15 pounds. He
is a different kid. He didn't used to fit in a
lot of clothes. Now, he's so excited it's loose on
him. And then I noticed
she's loosing weight and her doctor did too.
And I'm like it's working you know,
this is great. So, it's really improved
her self-esteem. It's not going to happen over
night. But if you start making the changes, and
he sees you making the changes then he will
eventually make the changes . These kids are the lucky
ones. Their parents are dedicated to role modeling
a healthy life style. That's where
it starts. I see it, I hear it, I taste it, I do
it, I live it. And if we can start with moms and,
and dads when the kids are young, to role model those
behaviors, that's where we start. And I asked him,
how you feel. I feel good mom. Look I'm so Skinny! I'm
getting a six-pack. He started cross
country, and then he did Bloomsday training, and
then he wanted to play basketball, and I think
that he doesn't really view himself as a
fat kid anymore. ♪ ♪
This excerpt around the 25-minute mark got me:
Really sad...fat adults raising fat kids. While the kids lost weight the parents didn't.
It's pretty disheartening though that the vast majority of those professionals trying to help these kids are overweight or obese themselves...
I'm finding the tone of this video really weird.
It's presented like it's for kids. Cartoons with silly analogies and bloopy sounds effects and that simple patronising voice over... but they address an adult audience ("we're raising" etc., talking to adults).