MoeSzyslak: one small post for man: Because they are terrible parents.

This, nothing more whether they like it or not. If your kid is fat it is your fault. Deal with it.

Having a kid is a huge responsibility. If your not prepared to give up pretty much everything you enjoy to have a baby, then don't have kids.
And parents, we have to stop pushing our choice on our childless friends. Just the opposite, let them know the truth. Having a baby consumes your life; your time, your money, your sleep, and sometimes your sanity. Lets not push our choice on our friends.

one small post for man: Because they are terrible parents.

This, nothing more whether they like it or not. If your kid is fat it is your fault. Deal with it.

Step 1 : Don't eat fast food
Step 2 : Don't eat processed food
Step 3 : Don't eat too much food
Step 4 : Excercize

Steps 5 and 6 should be going organic and cooking for yourself with ingredients produced as close to you as possible.

Profit is the goal of fast food and food giants. They aren't all that concerned with what you eat so long as they money off of you. Have a garden, try to buy from local farmers who don't pump their livestock full of GM fillers and steroids in "increase yield"

/has a friend who complains about her weight constantly, then posts that she had a blue slushy and Moose Tracks ice cream for breakfast.
her timeline reads like this

9:00 I need to start exercsing my clothes are getting tight
9:20 Going to Bojangles for a chicken biscuit anyone wanna roll with me?
9:35 Bogo yeah! I love free food!
11:00 Whats everyone doing for lunch?
1:30 Im thinking Chilis for dinner, anyone interested.
2:45 going to Scheetz for gas and a milkshake! I love their shake machine!
4:00 Heather and Brittany are down for Chilis, we'll be there at 5:30 if you're coming
9:00 Had a great time with my girls, we went to Coldstone Creamery too its sooooo good
10:00 I need to start exercsing my clothes are getting tight.

I eat mostly raw fruits and veggies, and some nuts and seeds for lunch at work. My (obese) boss teases me about it and says my desk looks like a fruit stand, and says that I eat goat food.

Then she eats her gigantic-sized cinnamon roll.

Later she tells me, "I wish I could eat like you."

???Why the hell can't you???

Quick story and then I'll read the thread: I saw a kid the other day riding his bike around the town park. He was kind of chubby, so I thought, Good for you, fat kid. Go ride that bike. Then I noticed that he had something in his hands--a bag from the KFC nearby. He rode his bike to one of the picnic tables, sat down, and chowed on his food. All by himself, sitting in the park and eating. And I"m pretty sure it wasn't because he'd missed lunch.

This was in a very small town--the kids are allowed to run the streets freely, and I'm sure their parents give them money sometimes. What are you going to do when your kid eats a bunch of crap, then comes home and eats the same healthy meal that everyone else does? Psst--they aren't going to tell you. Most kids that are ambulatory have access to crap food all day long. And if you think you're going to keep a person with a food addiction away from crappy food, you've never dealt with a person with an addiction.

If your child is fat, it's all your fault. You are the parent, you are in control of what your child eats when they're at home. I don't care how tired you are or how busy, you need to make the time to prepare healthy food. If you have to, do all your cooking for the week on the weekend, like casseroles and freeze it, then you just have to pop it in the oven on weeknights. And don't offer treats as comfort, that's a big problem. Then the kid comes to equate sweets with comfort and that begins a whole cycle of eating that is hard to stop. Also, just don't buy the crap, don't have it in your house. I know you say "but I like that stuff, I'm an adult", but your kids don't have the willpower yet to not eat it and if they're hungry, they'll eat whatever is handy. Keep your kitchen stocked with fruits, veggies, milk, etc. If they get hungry enough, they'll eat it. I know, I have two children, my husband and I both work full time, and both my kids are thin. Plus, they have almost always walked or rode their bikes everywhere, so they are doing what kids should do - be active, outside!

strangeluck: It's a good question.

I didn't say it, but I wanted to whack her across her face and say "You're the parent, try setting an example for your daughter. Make her exercise, eat right and help her loose weight."

Maybe she needs to teach her how to lose weight instead of trying to convey how tightly or loosely her weight is held together?

006deluxe: Seems like an appropriate thread for this question; Can anyone suggest any healthy snack foods that I can leave at my desk at work that are reasonably cheap? I had been buying a bag of apples to keep at work and snack on throughout the week, but that got a bit old after a few awhile so I want to mix things up a bit.

raw almonds, they are usually 3.99 a pound or so and a small handful is rather filling, just have some water nearby as they will probably make you a little thirsty.

fireclown: jimb213: I disagree. It's much more about how much food you eat. It's really easy to eat 5000 calories in a day, but its really difficult to burn 5000 calories a day. Yes, physical activity plays a role (especially when you consider overall health and fitness), but being not-fat is probably 80% what you eat.

I dunno. 5000 calories is about seven double quarter pounders with cheeseLink. That's a lot 'o eatin.

/I agree with you about not eating like an elephant though.

Yeah, I just pulled some large number out of my butt. But when you add 500 or 1000 calories of soda per day, and maybe a nice piece of cheesecake after dinner, and a bunch of chips between meals, maybe a milkshake at lunch, large fries with each meal... it's really easy to get waaaay too many calories. And to burn a serious amount of calories through exercise, you pretty much have to be an elite athlete and train for hours. 30 minutes or an hour on a treadmill (a fairly typical "trying to lose weight" exercise) will burn the equivalent of a coke or two. To lose weight, it's much more effective to not put those excess calories in your body in the first place. Then use exercise as a tool to improve your strength, endurance, flexibility, and overall fitness.

You have a fat kid & you don't know WHO TO BLAME? Stop taking your precious fat snowflake to McDonald's & start making home cooked healthy meals.

Because modern mothers think that it is beneath them to cook food for their children to eat.

/Dads should cook too
//but they're usually not the ones who screamed and pushed to have a baby in the first place

Your kids are fat because of you and the example you set.

Also add in processed food, large portions and lazy parents.

/parent.
//kid not fat
///cooks everyday because it is time well spent

006deluxe: Can anyone suggest any healthy snack foods that I can leave at my desk at work that are reasonably cheap? I had been buying a bag of apples to keep at work and snack on throughout the week, but that got a bit old after a few awhile so I want to mix things up a bit.

That's actually one way to stay thin. If you're tired of it, then you'll only eat it when you're hungry.

Step 1: Base your diet on items that provide calories, but are nutritionally void (bread, rice, potatoes, pasta)
Step 2: Body craves vitamins, minerals, fats and proteins that it didn't receive in step 1, signals the brain that it is still hungry
Step 3: Go to step 1

The result is that people accumulate more calories than the body can burn, while becoming malnourished. Eat real meat & vegetables, minimally processed.

shakespear: My cousins kid is:

12

5'2"

250

on 2 different blood pressure meds

diabetic


I figure he will be blind by 30, dead by 40

They'll chop off his feet by 25

Stupidity and passing along their own bad habits.

I have a great example in my own family. My first cousin and her husband. They're just stupid. She's a dental assistant, he's a McDonald's manager. Their kid is like 16 or 17 now. They live about 800 miles away from me, but I've seen recent pictures of them. She's probably 220, her husband is huge (like 400 huge, easy,) and their son is easily 300.

From an early age, they refused to actually PARENT and let the kid dictate what was fed to him. As a result, at around seventeen years old, he says vegetables and most "normal" food make him gag. My aunt says he literally can't eat vegetables because they make him gag since he was never acclimated to anything but fast food. He won't even eat things like STEAK or ribs. Which takes us to what he's eaten almost his entire life...

This is a very specific list (all this information was told by my aunt, which tells my mother, then I hear about it. My aunt lives right down the street from these fatasses, and she's also to blame because she also buys this shiat and is fat and diabetic herself.)

Chicken McNuggets
Pizza Hut pizza

There it is...two things. That's literally mostly what this kid has been eating since he was a child. His father would bring him home leftover McNuggets from work. His mother works late as does his dad, and his grandmother (my aunt) would also buy him these things when she was looking after him.

Oh, and on the pizza note, it gets even better than that...my parents went up to visit them one summer, and they all ordered pizza. To be exact, my aunt and uncle ordered the pizza for everyone. The pizza arrives, my parents go to get a piece, the pizzas are all plain cheese. My mom asks my aunt why they didn't get any toppings, and she says "Oh, any other toppings make Jimmy (we'll call him Jimmy) gag."

Un-farking-precedented stupidity, if not criminal child neglect. I don't know if he's on any blood pressure meds or anything yet, but he's f'd for life. He'll never lead a completely normal life as a direct result of his parents.

aintsobad: enderthexenocide: i have a cousin who is about 20 years old now and he must weight 300 pounds. he's enormous. his mother (my aunt) is not the most caring or understanding parent in the world, so i could point to his white trash upbringing as the source of his weight problem. but the thing is, he's not an only child. his sister is about 22 or so and she is thin and healthy, and his younger brother is 18 or so and he's normal size, maybe just a bit overweight. they all have the same mother and father and were raised the same, so why is he so gigantic and his siblings aren't? i don't get it.

The other two are skinny because the fat one eats it all before they get a chance.

I hate to say it, but this is about right. I have 4 kids. The oldest (18) is kinda chubby - but I think we can give her a pass as she has a 4 month old (extremely difficult child - but that's another subject). My 15 yr old son is 140lbs - I was 160 at that age, but I was doing 45lb curls per arm and more active. My 12 yr old daughter is skinny, buy my 9 yr old son is too chubby. He's not technically overweight, but I can see it coming. His older siblings eat Ramen and rice, and he eats multiple hot dogs and all the fixin's. He is active, plays soccer and baseball, but had heart surgery as a baby and has asthma. All the kids know he'll eat anything - which is cool that he doesn't turn his nose up to anything, but I have to constantly remind him before he takes seconds "are you REALLY hungry?"

As a parent it's hard, but one of my good friends has struggled with his weight all his life (hence my lifting weights at 15, it was with him), and my son doesn't look much larger now than my friend did at that age...

Its easy to look at a picture and say that kis is fat, the parents need to do something. It's really hard to look at your own child and tell them they aren't getting another serving because they'll get fat(ter)- the parent gets the heartbreaking look because the child already knows.

enderthexenocide: i have a cousin who is about 20 years old now and he must weight 300 pounds. he's enormous. his mother (my aunt) is not the most caring or understanding parent in the world, so i could point to his white trash upbringing as the source of his weight problem. but the thing is, he's not an only child. his sister is about 22 or so and she is thin and healthy, and his younger brother is 18 or so and he's normal size, maybe just a bit overweight. they all have the same mother and father and were raised the same, so why is he so gigantic and his siblings aren't? i don't get it.

The other two are skinny because the fat one eats it all before they get a chance.

My cousins kid is:

12

5'2"

250

on 2 different blood pressure meds

diabetic


I figure he will be blind by 30, dead by 40

enderthexenocide: i have a cousin who is about 20 years old now and he must weight 300 pounds. he's enormous. his mother (my aunt) is not the most caring or understanding parent in the world, so i could point to his white trash upbringing as the source of his weight problem. but the thing is, he's not an only child. his sister is about 22 or so and she is thin and healthy, and his younger brother is 18 or so and he's normal size, maybe just a bit overweight. they all have the same mother and father and were raised the same, so why is he so gigantic and his siblings aren't? i don't get it.

Genetics does play a part into metabolism.

dragonchild: phillyguy1547: Being sedentary is more of a problem than food intake. If you let your kid sit down in front of a TV or a video game for 5 hours a day they will get fat. If you make them run around and play and be active, I think they are less likely to be fat.

That's a lifestyle correlation. Generally, parents who take an active role in raising their kids raise healthier kids, period. This happens even if "active" is some sort of hyper-religious nuck fugget brainwashing their crotchfruit about the evils of seafood or whatever. Kids can't self-destruct if they're closely supervised. It's actually hard to get a kid fat because they have fast metabolisms and smaller stomachs. The parents who don't give a shiat are the ones who put Mountain Dew in the baby bottle and it's all downhill from there; if the kid's sedentary it's often because they're given nothing to do but that alone doesn't make kids fat.

MoeSzyslak: Unless you're there, you don't know.

Thing is, I've never heard of a case where a kid got fat merely because the parents were lazy or exhausted. In households where the kids get fat, the home itself is a horrific mountain if fail. Sugar is everywhere. The kid is given free, unrestricted access to everything from ice cream to soda, any time of the day. It's not so much that there isn't a single vegetable in the fridge (tho that doesn't help) as it's damn near impossible to find something that isn't junk food. It's all the kid has to eat.

Who said anything about lazy or exhausted? Face it if a kid is fat it's the parents fault. Or are you talking about certain nonwhite kids? Apparently science doesn't apply to them and it's the government's fault, not the parents. I hate it when the government makes certain kids fat.

I'm poor so I'm fat is an American phenomenon.
Forgive me but I don't think lack of food or money is the problem .
I'd say something about priorities and culture but I'd be accused of racism so I won't.
No kid ever got fat eating like they do in certain other countries.

phillyguy1547: Being sedentary is more of a problem than food intake. If you let your kid sit down in front of a TV or a video game for 5 hours a day they will get fat. If you make them run around and play and be active, I think they are less likely to be fat.

That's a lifestyle correlation. Generally, parents who take an active role in raising their kids raise healthier kids, period. This happens even if "active" is some sort of hyper-religious nuck fugget brainwashing their crotchfruit about the evils of seafood or whatever. Kids can't self-destruct if they're closely supervised. It's actually hard to get a kid fat because they have fast metabolisms and smaller stomachs. The parents who don't give a shiat are the ones who put Mountain Dew in the baby bottle and it's all downhill from there; if the kid's sedentary it's often because they're given nothing to do but that alone doesn't make kids fat.

MoeSzyslak: Unless you're there, you don't know.

Thing is, I've never heard of a case where a kid got fat merely because the parents were lazy or exhausted. In households where the kids get fat, the home itself is a horrific mountain if fail. Sugar is everywhere. The kid is given free, unrestricted access to everything from ice cream to soda, any time of the day. It's not so much that there isn't a single vegetable in the fridge (tho that doesn't help) as it's damn near impossible to find something that isn't junk food. It's all the kid has to eat.

Certain foods are an addiction and just like any other addictive substance, can be overcome. If you throw away "conventional wisdom" and get the proper information, permanent weight-loss can happen, along with regaining your health.

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optikeye: And after a hard days work,

I think this is a major factor. There was a 50 year period or so in western civilization where life in our culture wasn't as centered on materialism as it is now. A standard, routine 8-hour workweek used to be the norm, and if it didn't get done in that time, it could wait until the next day; now that idea might be thought of as a pipe dream from halcyon days when the psychological needs of human beings came first before doing what it takes at all costs to make a business consume everything it can. You're viewed as lazy if you're not putting in 10 or 12 productive hours a day in many workplaces. I've heard that very sentiment on an NPR segment, and another on the fact that the standard practice of pure down time for lunch breaks is also waning. Etc. Both mother and father are often working beyond 2500 hours per year. We get home and lower tiers of Maslow's hierarchy need to be met.

I understand what you mean, but it sounds more like an excuse than a reason, Plenty of working moms out there who do what they can to keep their kids healthy.

Sure, the odd gem in the rough can handle it, but as you can see, in general most of us are lacking.

Couple our culture's crazed workaholic tendencies with the recent availability of cheap, abundant processed nasty food, and furthermore with its cheap, abundant unbelievably awesome (compared to just 20 years ago) electronic sedentary entertainment, and voila! Fatness ensues.

The period between WWII and what? The 1990s? That was THE window of time to be a human being in our species' history, in western civilization, so long as you were born in the "right" neighborhood...