Avoiding childhood obesity

My husband and I both come from genetic lines of predisposed obesity. Both my husband and I are obese. In order to avoid this with our daughter, I have her enrolled in extra-curricular activities afterschool. Right now she is doing dance, at the end of this month, she will start teeball. In June she will start taking swimming lessons as well as tap dancing for the summer. In August she will begin another soccer season. When I had the discussion about enrolling her in a more pricy form of dance (tap), my husband was not completely sold on the idea because of 1, the costs and 2, whether our daughter would like it or not. When I saw my daughter dancing at her winter dance in December, I knew she loved dance and that was something I wanted to see if she would like to pursue. Sure enough, she enjoys the hip hop part of her dance class she is taking at the moment, but she can't stand ballet (ahhh, like mother like daughter...). Ever since she saw the movie Happy Feet, she has wanted to take tap dance.

When I discussed putting her in tap dance with my husband, I explained to him that I don't want her to end up the way we ended up. While both of us were active children, we were not so active when we hit puberty, and that's something I don't want my daughter to end up doing- so I'm hoping that she will find her niche in soccer or teeball or dance and we can continue to put her in afterschool programs.

As for our diet, I know one thing that we could all stand to have in our diet are more greens. With my daughter's pickiness starting to subside, it's been easier to get her to eat the foods we eat. I'm a bit of a stickler and a bit of a "mean mom". I don't cater to her whims and whatever I make for dinner is what she gets- and she can whine and cry all she wants, but that's all she gets. I'm just trying to ensure a well-balanced diet, is all.

When I was a kid, obesity didn't seem like a major problem. There was one big girl in my elementary school then. Nowadays you see obesity as a huge problem. It's something I hope my daughter can avoid.