by April Wilson

Created on: January 21, 2010

If you want to prevent your child from becoming obese you have to limit his or her options. You are the parent. Act like it.  Don't let your kid get away with everything.  You don't have to buy junk food just because your child wants it.  You don't have to give in to their demands to eat ice cream after dinner or play Xbox all afternoon.  Helping your child not end up obese is going to require some tough love. And it will require you practicing what you preach.

If you are obese, and eating junk and not exercising, you can't expect different from your kids.  There are many medical conditions and medications taken for those conditions that will destroy an individual's metabolism and the ease with which they can get weight off.  The best medicine is prevention.  If your child learns and maintains healthy habits early, they are unlikely to deal with the issues later on down the road that will make weight gain likely, and weight loss more difficult.

Invest in the health of your child now.  The little things you do to spoil your child "because you love him or her" usually displays the opposite. Instant gratification is one of the worst expectations you can instill in your child.  All this rah rah is all fine and good, but how can you directly implement a plan to help safeguard your child from obesity?

After all, obesity is not a contagious illness, it's behaviorally-based.

1. Keep junk out of the house.  Just don't buy it.  People who like little debbie snack cakes and Doritos and Reese cups like them because they have deadened palates and don't know what real food tastes like. That's not real food. It's fake food.  Want something crunchy? How about a vegetable?  Want something salty? Full Circle makes some incredibly good-tasting organic blue corn chips, have them with some black beans and you're getting a little protein and fiber in there.  Want something sweet? Fruit. Cherries, apples, oranges, kiwi, strawberries, pineapples. Apples dipped in all-natural peanut butter (just peanuts and salt, nothing else), is good for a sweet-tooth and healthy to boot.

2. Watch portion sizes. Even with healthy foods, don't just load up a giant plate of food for a kid.  And get rid of the "clean plate rule." You train your kid to eat more than their body wants when you insist they clean their plate, "for dessert."  If you have healthy food for dessert such as fruit, it won't matter if they finish their

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