Save Our Children: No more "Obeldickses" - Lifestyle Intervention, Not Rigorous Dieting Key to Solving Childhood Obesity
What is good for adults cannot be bad for children!? Right so in the case of turning a sedentary life upside down: Changing the lifestyle, i.e. eating and exercise habits of overweight children (8 year olds) produced profound and above all persistent (>12 month) i mprovements in body weight, fat mass, waist circumference, and blood pressure ! In a recent report ( Schaefer. 2011 ) on what the German scientists felicitously called the "Obeldicks" program (with reference to the obese Gaul from the famous comic book series), Schaefer et. al. report the results of a large scale intervention program with 76 obese children and their parents . The program was based on three-pillar-strategy: physical activity training, nutrition education, and behavior counseling And the beneficial and more importantly lasting (>12 month follow up) effects it had on the participants should make it pretty clear that in a society, where pathological eating & movement patte...