Eat Less Run More
One in four UK children leave primary school obese. This needs to change.
What is Obesity?
Obesity is a term used to describe somebody who is very overweight, with a lot of body fat.
It's a common problem, estimated to affect around one in every four adults and around one in every five children aged 10 to 11 in the UK.
Why is Obesity bad?
Obesity can lead to a number of serious and potentially life-threatening conditions, such as Type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, some types of cancer, such as breast cancer and bowel cancer and strokes.
Obesity can also affect your quality of life and lead to psychological problems, such as low self-esteem or depression.What causes Obesity
Two of the most important links to obesity are diet and exercise.
Food
Why do we need food? What should we eat?
Food is important
We have to eat enough food to do two really important jobs.
- Food gives us the energy we need for our body to work properly (like putting petrol in a car).
- Food helps our bodies grow, develop and repair (like the bricks, nails and planks needed to build and repair a house).
- If you put too much petrol into a car it spills on the floor. If you eat too much food it turns into useless, waste fat in our bodies.
- If you build a house with bad quality materials, it will fall down. If you eat bad quality food, your body will become unhealthy and fatter.
What should we eat?
Think of wild animals. They are strong, fast, sleek and beautiful. What do they eat? They eat fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, berries, meat and fish. They drink water.
We should do the same.
Man-made, processed food is less good for you. The less natural it looks, the worse it is for your body. Sweets, canned drinks, cakes, biscuits, crisps and sausages are all worse for your body than the natural options that wild animals eat.
It's really important that we eat enough food from a range of different food groups. But the food we eat - our diet - is one of the most important causes of becoming overweight and obese.
Exercise
Why do we need it? What should we do? How much do we need to do?
Exercise is important
Alongside diet, getting enough exercise is really important in overcoming obesity.
To lose weight your body has to burn up more energy than you are putting into your body as food.
What exercise should we do?
The easiest way to do this is anything that gets you hot, sweaty and out of breath. Walking is better than driving. Running is better than walking. Running fast is better than running slowly. Running for a long time is better than a short run.
But it doesn't matter what exercise you choose to do: running, cycling, dancing or playing sports.
Just remember that to lose weight you have to burn more energy than you put into your body.
How much exercise do we need to do?
Doctors say we should do an hour of exercise every day in order to keep healthy.
To lose weight, we need to burn more energy than we eat. If we do not then the excess energy will turn to fat.
- If you eat a Big Mac you need to walk fast for more than two hours to burn off the energy you have just eaten.
- A bag of crisps = 30 minutes of fast running
- A Mars bar = 25 minutes of fast swimming
- A can of Coke = 25 minutes of running
Summary
Here's all you need to understand
Being overweight or obese is bad for your health
- It is important to eat a healthy, balanced diet of natural foods and plenty of water
- It is important to do lots of exercise.
- In order to lose weight you have to burn more energy than you eat
Learn more about obesity and how to live more healthily here.What Next?
Once you are eating healthily, running around lots, and enjoying the feeling of health and fitness, a good next step would be building up your strength. Getting strong is really important for everyone's health - for both boys and girls. Here are five good strength exercises to begin with. You can watch videos on YouTube to teach you how to do them properly.
- Press ups
- Pull ups
- Plank
- Squats
- Lunges
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