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Thursday, May 10, 2018

Obesity in America by Steven Monarres



When having a new born baby, the parents want nothing more but for him to come out healthy and strong.  At the very beginning of a child's life, he is weighed to make sure he or she is healthy and strong.  Some may be genetically underweight or over weight depending on the parents.  However, in the United States as the children grow up, we start to see a high percentage of the kids are dealing with obesity.  Many factors play a role in this uprising epidemic. The side effects of obesity are terrifying for anyone to go through child or adult, which is why we as parents and individuals need to take care of our own heath condition and life style to help prevent this epidemic.  
While growing up kids are all brought up differently, whether it be wealthy or poor, no one is raised the exact same. Parenting is a domino effect, it is passed on down to each generation. Parents would often say, "Well, that’s how I was raised…" or "When I was growing up, I had to do this…" to justify their type of parenting that they do with their children. Some parents raise their child in sports harder than they would with academics or vice versa. Another big factor that plays a role in causing obesity is the type of food a family eats. At a young age, kid’s minds are like a sponge, so if you begin creating bad habits or routines a child would believe that those decisions that are being done are fine and nothing is wrong with it. For example, some parents smoke or drink and to them it is an everyday thing, and when a child growing up sees it they would be more likely to continue that effect. Therefore, that is how obesity has become the norm for people, and they overlook it.  In a study, it was shown that, “more than one in three adults were considered to be overweight” (National Institute of Diabetes).
As a young child growing up, I was raised in a lower middle-class family. My mother was a fulltime student and had two jobs, so she was never home much. Most of my time was spent with my grandmother, whether it be reading books or playing outside. The only type of electronic devices in our house were a computer, TV, and a little Game Boy that would only be able allowed to use for about only an hour or two out of the day. My grandmother never liked it when I would spend time on electronics. She had believed that the less I watch TV the more room left in my head to store knowledge. Once a week, we would go to the park to go fishing, riding bikes, or even just to walk. Over time, after constantly going to the park and outside, it had become something normal to me, so much so that after getting home from school going outside and playing was the highlight of my day.  
My whole family was raised around sports; therefore, sports was heavily pushed on me at a young age. Most people, especially in nowadays, would have thought that pushing me so hard would ultimately make me lose interest. However, it only wanted me to get better to impress my family. Since I had always done some type of physical activity, sports had come easy to me. The only thing that I had to work on was the fundamentals of each sport.  
 Since I was involved in so many physical activities, obesity was never an issue or even a thought in my mid. At the age of ten, my brother John was born, and he was brought up complete differently. When he was born, everything was slowly beginning to change differently from the schools, house, cars, and vacations. John had received pretty much almost whatever he wanted. For Christmas, he was given an iPad tablet as a gift. After that, he was so used to getting instant gratification that after a while of doing this he would lose attention on anything that wouldn’t satisfy him instantly. This really affected his life tremendously, and he became lazy. This led to a bad health style, and we have noticed he was putting on a couple pounds because of it. Getting him to play football was extremely hard, and we would have to almost force him to go. As years began to press on, we as a family saw that over time John would be able to break this habit of instant gratification and into learn how to work hard for a better life style.  

Now, there are multiple steps that you could take to help lessen the chances of you or your children being obese. One way is to always stay physically active as much as you can. At the beginning set yourself up with reachable goals that you can work towards to achieve (How to do cardio for fat loss). For instance walking or running a certain amount of a distance every time you run. It’s also always a good habit to create a schedule for yourself to follow. On a calendar you could put what days out of the week you are going to run and how far you are going to run each of those days. Walking and running are one of the best ways to work out for losing weight (1). While walking your body is using just about every single one of your muscles. This allows your body to burn as much fat off as it can during each work out.


Another good thing to do is to go to your local gym and sign up. However, if you have never really knew how to work out properly you should get a trainer to help guide you or just research the information yourself on how to work out properly. If you don’t do the necessary step during a workout chance are you are going to injure yourself. Also, with a private trainer, he or she is there to help you to achieve your overall personal goal. They are willing to sit down and talk with you to find out what days out of the week they can get you into the gym and for how long (The Education of a Personal Trainer). They do this in order to figure out how to brake the work out into levels and will help guide you through each step of the way. The people who train have a well-known amount of knowledge to answer any questions you may have, and if they do not know it, they would research it to come up with answer (1).   After a couple of weeks of this, you should begin to see a difference in how much easier each day of walking and working out will get. When you are able to reach your daily go of walking, you should set new ones for you to achieve (1). Next never settle; always strive to become better than what you were last week or last month. A reminder that it isn’t going to be easy; everyone is different and might take longer for others to achieve their goals. Another good tip to keep in mind is don’t worry about how everyone else looks or how well they are doing, only worry about you and your goals. Everyone had to start somewhere, you can’t run before you walk trust the process.  
Now, working out and walking a couple days out of the week will help and is a good start to begin. However, one of the biggest role into losing weight is the type of food you eat as well (Fat Burning Foods for Weight Loss). When eating “foods that contain high amounts of fat and sugar, causes your body to develop more fat tissue” (1). Maybe, if your younger and worked out while eating fast foods and still had a good body. Now, if you are older right now, you know that isn’t the case anymore. If you want to achieve weight loss you have to have self-control and determination to eat right.
 When going grocery shopping, always look at the back of the product you are buying and see how many calories, sugars, cholesterol, and the amount of sodium are inside the food. If you haven’t been looking are this before you will be surprised how many calories you are taking in with all the foods you get. Some people believe that eating fruit is a good thing to do when on a diet, although not all fruits are good for you to eat. Many of the fruits contain too much sugar almost as much as chocolate (“Dr. Oz Explains How Some Fruit Could Be Bad for You”). Apricots are quite heavy; if you were to eat too many it could lead to acid reflux (1). The unhealthiest part about the fruit is the core. It contains amygdalin, which forms cyanide in the stomach (1). This is a potent poison that may cause nausea or dizziness if consumed to many. A good fruit to eat is strawberry’s, they contain fibers, vitamin C, lots of water and very little sugar which helps fight cellulite. Also as melons and watermelons, are high in water and low in sugar. Pears are not good for you; they can disrupt the work of your insistence because of their powerful constipating effect. Avocados have 227 Kcal in each serving, they can be compared as the something as butter.
 Try to stick with whole meats like fish, white chicken meat, and egg whites, things of that such to eat. In addition, you want to add in some greens into your meals (1). Any type of vegetables would help with your digestive system. One step to help you out a lot with these meals is meal prepping. Before the week begins start making all of the meals you are going to eat for lunch or dinner. All you would have to do is warm it up, and it’s good to go. Starting a diet like this is extremely hard and takes a lot of self-control, but after you start to get the first couple of weeks out the way it will start to get easier as you go along.
            This life style can get pretty overwhelming at times with all the dates to work out and keeping up with all the calorie intake. It is not made for everyone; it’s pretty much your second job. Five days out of the week you are working hard to stay on track with all your goals to maintain at the end of the week and maybe on the weekend you can have a cheat day, plus on top of your regular everyday life. When you go out with friends to go have fun, you need to stay on top of what you’re eating and drinking. You no longer have a typical American life style by going out eating whatever you want whenever you want.  If you think that one little piece of cake wouldn’t hurt me your wrong. It most definitely can, but your body runs off of what you feed it and what you put in is what you are going to get in return.
            Today, in America, we are faced with a huge problem with obesity in young and old ages. As we look at today’s kids in America, they feel entitled to everything they see on TV. This development of instant gratification has crippled them from being able to develop a drive to work hard for what they get. leading them to laziness and an unhealthy life style. So, start you kids of right with any type of physical activate and healthy habits instead of just putting a tablet in front of them to self-entertain. Get up and move and help this nation fight against obesity.


Worked Cited

Dr. Oz Explains How Some Fruit Could Be Bad for You”. Youtube. Feb 4, 2015.

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