“Giving up some of the foods we really liked, that was tough,”
Omar Williams said, recalling roast beef sandwiches and curly
fries. “Yeah. That was tough.” He paused, sifting through the
changes he and his grandmother have made in the past year to
their diet, their habits and their bodies. “But I’ve gotten used
to the food we eat now, and it’s not so hard anymore. I do feel
better, you know?” Accompanied by his grandmother, Teresa, Omar
set off last February to change the way he was living a life
just 9 years in the making. His pediatrician had told him and
his family that he was overweight and risked setting up a
lifetime battle against obesity and the quagmire of health
problems researchers now know it leads to: heart disease, joint
deterioration, sleep apnea. Although the words hypertension,
diabetes, arthritis and metabolic syndrome aren’t usually in a
child’s vocabulary, they are words that too often are making
their way into their medical charts. For 95 percent of the
children under 18 who have those co