Understanding and Tackling Obesity

A Whole-School Guide

Ruth MacConville

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000154009
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

From an early age children are bombarded by the media with messages promoting foods high in saturated fats, sugars and salt. One of the greatest changes for children in the last 50 years is the decrease in exercise and the increase in 'screen' time. This programme is not about dieting or weight control, instead it has been designed to be realistic and non-discriminatory, aiming to enable children from an early age to recognise and resist unhealthy pressures, maintain body-esteem and know how to make skilled choices that will ensure their health and wellbeing. 'When we shift the focus from fat and weight to healthy choices leading to nutritional health and fitness we sacrifice nothing and gain an approach that enhances the wellbeing of all.' (Kater, 2005). The 12 sessions cover topics including: what to eat; how to understand food labels; media messages; get moving; and TV turnoff. There are full facilitator notes with all the necessary resources to run an interactive programme that will engage children. Supporting the class activities there are 'take home' activities that will keep parents aware of what is being covered in the programme as well as a weekly log, where children record trying new foods and physical activities. The book contains background information about the increase in obesity, the effect of media messages as well as the philosophy and approach taken in the programme. The package includes a CD-ROM which has all the copiable resources and a PowerPoint for staff training.

Part One: Setting the Scene

Introduction

Introduction

Welcome to this book. For those readers who want to start to find out immediately about delivering the programme that forms the backbone of this book, please turn to Part Three. For those readers who want to know more about the theory behind the programme and the context of this book, read on.

In England, more than 60 per cent of adults and 30 per cent of children are either overweight or obese. We are now officially the fattest nation in Europe (Malholtra, 2011). Almost daily, headlines in the national press draw our attention to debilitating eating disorders and a rise in childhood obesity. These problems are triggered by society’s preoccupation with the thin ideal and the multiple, conflicting messages that promote unhealthy attitudes and behaviours. From a very early age, children are bombarded with messages from food manufacturers to consume their products that are often full of saturated fats, sugars and salt. These messages have an especially negative effect as children experience the natural reshaping of their bodies during puberty. Skilful advertising makes these ‘foods’ seem fun, cool, delicious and even empowering and seeks to engage the young person’s sense of self-esteem. Excessive consumption of these products, however, inevitably leads to poor health as they are often addictive and by the time children reach the age at which they can reasonably be expected to make their own choices, many of them are already hooked. Body image, eating, fitness, nutrition and weight problems are pervasive in our culture and many children today are reported to be worried about their size, shape and weight. These concerns diminish children’s self-esteem and confidence as well as demanding the attention and energy that should be available for more important developmental tasks. It is well documented that body-angst, eating, fitness and weight problems are very difficult to reverse once they are established. Early interventions are, therefore, needed to target the context within which the variety of body image, eating, nutrition, fitness and weight problems multiply. This book explores a strengths approach to enabling children to develop positive living skills. The most fundamental way in which we can do this, is by demonstrating a positive, healthy outlook on life ourselves and by committing ourselves to discovering our own strengths and the strengths of others.

The programme, ‘Happy, Healthy You’, which is presented in Part Three of this book has been designed to proactively teach children that health, not size or shape, is a reliable reward for healthy choices and that self-respect, body esteem as well as nutritional health and physical fitness are achievable for all children at every size. It focuses on expanding pupils’ self-identity and sense of self-worth, thus decreasing the emphasis and importance of physical appearance. A strong message of the programme is that everybody’s different and nobody is perfect. This approach to health is realistic and non-discriminatory and aims to enable children, from an early age, to recognise and resist unhealthy pressures, maintain body esteem and know how to make skilled choices that will ensure their health and wellbeing.

Using this Book

This book is written in four parts that interlock like a jigsaw. Following this opening, the next section contains an introduction to the ideas on which the programme is based. Teachers are advised to read this section to become familiar with the concepts that the programme teaches and also in order to understand its approach. This background section should be made available to all staff to ensure that there is a consistent set of messages about positive living skills throughout the school.

The second part of the book contains a PowerPoint presentation that can be used to introduce the programme to staff. It contains background information on positive living skills and an overview of the sessions. This is followed by a section that offers practical guidance on how to deliver the programme.

The third part contains the facilitator notes and the 12 sessions.

The book ends with suggestions for further reading and a list of useful websites.

About the Programme

Happy, Healthy You is a stand-alone programme that aims to increase children’s wellbeing by equipping them with the knowledge and skills that they need to lead healthy and happy lives. The programme focuses on positive living skills that will not only help pupils to be healthier and happier right now, but will also provide the knowledge and skills that they need for lifelong health. Healthy living encompasses more than just eating a nutritious and balanced diet. It involves getting the exercise and rest our bodies need to stay healthy, as well as engaging in activities that we enjoy and that enhance our mental and social wellbeing.

Throughout the programme a range of self-reflection activities have been designed to enable pupils to develop healthy eating habits, increase their physical activity and limit screen time while at the same time building skills in personal, health and social domains. The programme encourages pupils to think about how healthy living and wellness makes everything else, including learning and making friends, happen. Spending time with friends can provide support for the many challenges we face in life, as well as provide companions for physical activity. The key to healthy living is a balance of all aspects of life to include the physical, intellectual, social and emotional.

The programme aims to teach pupils the practical skills that they can use to make their lives go better through a developmental programme of action. The sessions are interactive and largely based on group discussions and partner work to ensure that pupils learn more about themselves and others. They should be delivered with a sense of fun in order to engage and inspire all learners.

The programme uses an interactive approach to teaching and learning. This approach emphasises that individuals learn best when they actively construct meaning for themselves. Pupils come to school with a diverse range of knowledge and experiences and it is important that this knowledge is celebrated. The programme has been designed to encourage teachers to create learning environments that recognise and build on this diversity in a way that is active, inquiry based, and pupil centred.

The programme consists of 12 sessions. Each session starts by activating and reviewing pupils’ prior knowledge. Sessions continue with inquiry-based activities that aim to engage children in critical thinking in addition to building new skills. Every session provides ideas for whole-class discussions and suggestions for small group and partner work to enable pupils to explore health-related issues. Social development is enhanced throughout the programme by the opportunities that children have to work cooperatively with each other.

The programme is suitable for pupils throughout the primary phase, with the expectation that teachers will adapt it to suit the range of abilities and learning styles. Its content has been found to be highly appealing to pupils with a range of abilities, learning styles and personalities. The sessions have been designed to be delivered in sequence to maximise and reinforce learning.

Pupils are encouraged to practise the skills and ideas that are introduced in the sessions in their day-to-day lives with home practice in the form of ‘take away’ activities that are a core element of the programme.

Throughout the programme, pupils are taught how to initiate change in their lives in order to become healthier and more resilient. Samuel Smiles, father of the modern self-help movement (quoted in Ben-Shahar, 2007), wrote:

Every youth should be made to feel that his well doing in life must necessarily rely mainly on himself and the exercise of his own energies, rather than upon the help and patronage of others.

Understanding Obesity

Do we say overweight, obese or fat?

‘Obese’ from the Latin word ‘obesus’ means ‘grown fat by eating’. The term’s origin suggests that overeating is a major cause of the obesity epidemic. Teaching overweight children to eat less is essential. However, modifying behaviour is no simple task and eating too much is not the sole cause of obesity. Other factors play a role and must be understood in order to reverse the epidemic and produce healthier generations of children.

Sharron Dalton (2004) writes that health professionals and the media have been doing ‘an interesting dance’ around the term ‘obesity’. They use it freely in the abstract and in reference to the general population, but they apply it with caution when describing individuals, especially children. ‘Overweight’ has developed into a more acceptable and sensitive synonym for ‘obese’. In the UK both of the ‘O’ words, however, are considered more acceptable and more polite than the F-word, fat. A notable exception to this rule recently hit the headlines when Georgia Davis, a 17 year old from South Wales, was described as ‘Britain’s fattest teenager’ weighing 40 stone and 6lb (The Sunday Times, 27.2.11).

Fat Studies

In the US where obesity in both children and adults is even more prevalent than in the UK, there is agreement in the radical, new academic field of Fat Studies that the ‘O’ words are neither neutral or kind. There is support for reclaiming the word ‘fat’ as a neutral adjective and as the preferred term of political identity. Rothblum and Solovay (2009) emphasise that the term fat is simply a descriptive term. Weight, like height, they suggest is a human characteristic that varies across any population like a bell curve. There have always been people of different heights and there will always be people of different weights. Fat Studies offer no opposition to what they regard as this simple fact of weight diversity. Throughout this book I use both terms ‘overweight’ and ‘obese’ interchangeably, as they are found in scientific and popular literature. In terms of working with individuals, I agree with Dalton (2004) that it is important to emphasise a ‘healthy weight for you’ as a positive way to talk about body size and health.

Prevalence

The Association for the Study of Obesity (2011) confirms that childhood obesity is a serious problem with profound health and social consequences. It has received substantial media attention recently, partly due to the rapid increase in occurrence across the UK, as well as internationally. This rise began to occur in the UK in the mid 1980s with a rapid increase most noticeably over the following ten years. The Health Survey for England (2007) reported that in the UK, obesity rose from 11 per cent of boys and 12 per cent of girls in 1995 to 17 per cent of boys and 16per cent of girls in 2007. Prevalence of obesity is even higher than that of the general population in some sub-groups of children including:

• survivors of many childhood cancers

• those living in socio-economically deprived families

• children from some minority ethnic groups

• children who are looked after

• those with at least one obese parent

• children and adolescents with learning difficulties.

(NCB, 2011)

Current statistics suggest that the trend in obesity now appears to be flattening out. However, it will be important to continue to monitor the trends in future to confirm that this is a continuing pattern, or a plateau within a longer-term trend that is gradually increasing.

How Do We Know if a Child is Overweight or Obese?

Just looking at a child is not enough to determine whether they are overweight or obese. Smith (2008) writes that judgements made by teachers, parents and health professionals are often incorrect. Many adults don’t recognise when there’s a problem because so many children are now overweight and as a result what’s considered to be the norm has changed. It is important, therefore, that a child’s weight, in relation to their growth, is measured and interpreted appropriately. Childhood overweight and obesity can be diagnosed using the body mass index (BMI), but interpreting BMI in children is more complex than in adults. As children grow, BMI changes with age and there are differences between girls and boys, so it isn’t possible to use single cut off points to denote overweight and obesity as they can for adults. Gender specific BMI charts are available from www.healthforallchildren.co.uk and can be used to determine and interpret BMI in children. The charts give...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Use of the CD-ROM
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Part One: Setting the Scene
• Part Two: Staff Preparation
• Part Three: Happy, Healthy You Programme
• Part Four