By Jim Brown
About three-quarters of American women are now employed. A family practice physician specializing in wellness and weight loss says the trend toward working moms has negatively affected the health of children.
A child's tendency to become overweight or obese starts during infancy — so says Dr. Rallie McAllister, who says working mothers are more likely not to breastfeed their children. In addition, she points out studies have shown a strong positive relationship between breastfeeding and a child growing up to have a normal weight. That's “strike one,” she says.
“Strike two is children of working moms — myself included — typically go to day care [where they] are fed on very rigid schedules. They have to eat maybe at eight and twelve, and then snacks at a certain time,” McAllister says.
She maintains that under such strict scheduling, children may not get to eat when they are really hungry — and then may be pushed to eat when they are not hungry. The result? “Kids don't learn to regulate their own internal cues of fullness and hunger,” the physician says.
McAllister, a syndicated columnist and the author of a new book titled Healthy Lunchbox: The Working Mom's Guide to Keeping You and Your Kids Trim, says most parents do not view their children as being overweight even though they are a little heavy. Consequently, she offers advice on what steps a mother should take if a doctor says her child is overweight or obese.
“The first thing to do is kind of accept it, not panic, and just start making a few healthy changes,” she suggests. “The last thing we want to do is to get really alarmed and put our children on a really low-calorie diet. What we need to do is just start introducing healthy eating behaviors to our children and show them the right way to eat.”
(This article courtesy of Agape Press).
