Eating Habits and Exercise Behaviors

Eating Habits and Exercise Behaviors in Children
Children have many transitions that they to go through every year toward becoming an adult. Each child goes through different phases as they change. However, some children have a tough time transitioning. Different children have different eating habits, good and bad. Exercise habits are usually parallel with a Childs eating habits. Children are characterized by their eating habits, how they exercise and their sleeping pattern.
Newborns eat healthy when they are receiving breast milk or formula. As children transition every year, they go through different phases that can change each child. Preschoolers are eating better and exercising more than teenagers. Preschoolers are constantly engaged in healthy activities. Preschool-aged children only met two dietary recommendations as fruits and low-fat dairy intake, for the duration of a research study that was performed (Poor eating habits set in early: study, 2009). Adolescent are not drinking a lot of sweetened drinks, but are eating salty and sweets snacks, and instead drinking low-fat drinks (Sciences, 2009). They are frequently being watched by parents and schools. Parents are not going out to eat at frequently to at fast food restaurants to feed their children anymore. Parents also only allow so much time to watch television to keep their children active. However, older children tend to watch significantly more television during the week and weekends. Preschool children had very good eating habits and have higher physical activity levels; however, school-aged children had less healthy diets and fewer activities. Preschool-aged children compared to older children have more servings per day of low-fat dairy, fewer servings per day of sweetened drinks, consumed less salty snacks daily, ate less sweet snacks daily and regularly ate dinner with parents more often (Poor eating habits set in early: study, 2009). Most parents tend to have their children clean their plates at dinner time before they can get up from the table.
Watching hours of television can lead to childhood obesity. Children watch an average of 20 to 30 hours of television a week (TV & Children:). A child that watches more than five hours of television per day has a fifty percent chance of becoming obese. This is an excellent method to become a "couch potato" and can become a target of laughter from the other students at school. Children who have had too much television in the early years have been connected to at least six problems. They are the following: first is having poor performance during school. Second, they are not having enough usage of their imagination. Third, they will not be able to tell different between the television and the real world. Fourth, they will have problems focusing. Fifth, they will develop poor skills in their planning and judging process. And the final one is they will have a tendency towards violence, instead of solving their problems when they do occur (TV & Children:). Currently, the most popular activities among children are watching television and playing video games (Luepker1, 1999). A 1994 study of pre-school children found that over the course of the previous two decades more four and five-year-old children are overweight. One suggested reason for this finding is the number of hours that young children are spending watching television, instead of moving, running and exploring their environments. (Cynthia L. Ogden, Richard P. Troiano, Ronette R. Briefel, Robert J. Kuczmarski, Katherine M. Flegal, and Clifford L. Johnson , 1997)
Some children tend to have a need to exercise, to help them let go of their anger, in particular, overweight children (Exercise helps overweight children reduce anger expression, 2008). According to Dr. Catherine Davis, one of the clinical health psychologists at the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine, "Exercise has had a significant impact on anger expression in children. This finding indicates that aerobic exercise may be an effective strategy to help overweight kids reduce anger expression and aggressive behavior" (Exercise helps overweight children reduce anger expression, 2008). According to a study that was performed in the UK, "Their results showed that more than two-thirds of children remain onto physical activity guideline of accumulating at least sixty minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each day, but that their daily consumption of fruit or of vegetables was only reported by 56.8% and 49.9% of the children, respectively" (UK study shows kids are active but not eating their '5-a-day', 2008). Children, who are having problems in their lives, tend to keep their problems to themselves and this is where they continue to keep their eating habits in a poor selection and not taking care of their selves correctly.
When children are in high school, they tend to eat out with friends instead of eating with their family. They tend to not eat healthy food and to eat junk food that is not good for them. They learn this when the parents are not around and have to defend on their own. Children who do not have the attention that keep them doing right instead of wrong tend to have their eating habits change over a period of time. This direct to, when the children becomes adults, they tend to continue that eating habit and have problems when they are older. They can be obese and by the time they become obese, they are frustrated and wondered “How did I become this way?” As adults, they have a lot of stress that help cause them to want to not take care of their selves.
Children spend most of their time outside of school and they need to develop a life of normal physical activity that will carry into adulthood. On the other hand, one must also look at the level of physical activity and, in societies where the youth are progressively more inactive, and are in need of increase exercises in their lives, seeing that children in today world are likely to have less physical activity than they did at the same age in a different generation before their time. Today, the school bus picks up the children in front of the house, instead of having to walk down the block to the bus stop. Teenagers, at driving age, have a car or acquire rides from friends, so they do not even walk to the bus or walk to school. Majority suggest that children today are exercising less than they were ten to twenty years ago and this attributed with increasing weight in children. In contrast, children only spend fourteen minutes a day engaged in any physical activities (Making the Healthy Choice). There are a number of factors known to be associated with exercise and fitness among youth including; Developmental factors; Psychological factors; Social and cultural factors and Physical and environmental factors (Luepker1, 1999). Developmental factors include issues of coordination and muscle development which are associated with age and gender. Psychological factors associated with physical activity in youth have also been well studied. Social and cultural factors are important in physical activity among youth. Poor diet and lack of exercise cause a child to become obese.
According to Nanci Hellmich of the USA Today, a study that she used on her research, was released in 2004, that scientists showed having sleep deprivation does enhance the levels of the hunger hormones, in which, that the hormones level would be decreased when a person is feeling full (Hellmich, 2004). Also, the researchers are saying that if a person is not getting enough sleep, this factor for weight management is critical. A person needs to have good nutrition, a schedule sleep pattern usual, able to cut calories as well, and increase the exercise for the day. According to Eve Cauter, the significant of the obesity epidemic is due because of overeating, could be the reason that “We are sleep-deprived and incapable of curbing the appetites” on a daily basis. However, sleep seems to be one of the important pieces of having a weight control problem (Hellmich, 2004). The regular amount of sleep that an adult get is seven hours a night and an estimate of sixty-three percent are not receiving the recommended eight hours of sleep a night (Hellmich, 2004).