I was at the Y yesterday and as I walked in I noticed a dozen or so people standing outside in various groups talking, walking in, walking out. Of them every single one was from overweight to obese. The sad part, they were ALL children. It is encouraging that they were at the YMCA, but how sad.

Yesterday I was out running and ran past an elementary class outside doing PE. They were running around the track. The sad part, most of the kids were overweight. It made me realize that among the older elementary/middle school aged kids I've seen lately (I'm on Spring break so I'm seeing a lot of kids as they're getting out of school), it's rare to see a group where most aren't overweight. Most of the kids were walking, although a few saw me running and "raced" me for awhile which was fun.

I was in the restroom in Costco on Monday. A mother was in there with her two little girls. She said "What do you want for lunch? TWO pieces of pizza???" She was "bribing" them to behave while shopping with two pieces of pizza. Each slice of Costco pizza is about 600 calories. That's 1200 calories PLUS soda for little girls who don't need that kind of fat and sugar as a "bribe." What are we teaching our children when we bribe them with food to behave the way they're supposed to behave anyhow? Why we're teaching them to "treat" themselves with food, aren't we?

As I walked out of Costco I saw a woman feeding a little boy a Costco hot dog. He kept turning his face away (I'd say he was about 18 months old) and she was trying to get him to eat. She had one herself, so this hot dog was for her child. That's 530 calories with 46 grams of fat, 14 of them saturated. I wanted to shake her and say "The child has more sense than you do! He's saying 'No mom! Don't feed me fatty junk food! I'm not hungry!'" Again, what are we teaching children when we force feed them food they don't want to eat? To keep eating even if you don't like it or you're not hungry. (I was literally force fed as a child. Mouth forced open, food shoved in, mouth held shut. It actually DID teach me to eat even if I wasn't hungry because we were required to clean our plates or we couldn't leave the table and I wasn't as stubborn as my sister who WOULD sit there for hours refusing to eat. I just ate and ended up with food issues. She refused and has never had a weight problem. I guess she's smarter than I am.)

I was reading a message board this morning and one woman, who is being very successful with her own weight loss, was sharing that she had to bribe her son with a breakfast biscuit from a fast food joint to get him going in the morning. Um, how is it that as women we can care about our OWN health, and then feed our children junk food? I see that all the TIME! "I have to have cookies in the house for the children!" and "My children aren't fat, so they can eat fast food a few times a week." Well "not fat" doesn't equal healthy. I'm not saying never feed a child a cookie, but you don't "NEED" to have them around for the children. Many of my healthy friends (who never had a weight issue) don't keep sweets for the kids in the house. They'll treat them when they're out on rare occasion, but it's not part of the daily diet because it's never been part of THEIR daily diet. Children learn from their parents and grow up doing the things they learned at home.

What are we doing to our children in this society!?

I heard yesterday that they have found "adult onset diabetes" in children as young as 7 years old. That the youngest bariatric surgery patient, thus far, was 9. NINE! In fact they are no longer calling Type II diabetes "Adult Onset" because they are seeing it so much in OUR children. It isn't "their" children, it is OUR children.

Who pays for this lack of attention paid to the health of our children? The kids do. Many of us can look back at pictures from when we were kids and see that we were normal weight, even if we thought we were overweight. And yet after we got out of school we packed on the pounds. (That was my experience. I was on the high end of normal, and thought I was fat. Got out of school and packed on the pounds.) What is going to happen to our kids who are already overweight when THEY get out of school!?

Who is going to bear the financial burden of these health issues? WE ARE! When we are hitting our older age and in great need of healthy young adults to care for us, what are we going to do? Will there BE healthy young adults to care for us? Or will they be in nursing homes right alongside us because their life expectancy is now LOWER than previous generations? (That is true. The life expectancy for this generation is now lower than previous generations due to health issues related to obesity.)

That scary thing is, THIS IS ALL COMPLETELY AND 100% AVOIDABLE! And yet I see evidence that many people what...don't care enough about their children to help them eat healthy, live healthy? I can't believe that! Are we too busy to care? Too tired to fight? I know I don't have children and I know how judgmental this sounds, but honestly we HAVE to do something! Part of my own hard work for good health is because I am truly concerned about who will care for me in my old age, so as I age I'd better age gracefully and healthfully! Because I don't have the right to burden others with my own self destructive habits, and I can't DEPEND that someone else will be there for me. After all, if society keeps going in the direction it is, I'll just be one more older woman in line behind a bunch of younger men and women who didn't take care of themselves and are suffering the consequences.