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A disconcerting new study refutes the link between childhood obesity and junk food in schools. The epidemic, it implies, is rooted closer to home than we thought. And with one in three kids overweight or obese, it can’t just be blamed on a few negligent parents. Well-meaning moms and dads are part of the problem, too. That’s because, in an attempt bolster their kids self-esteem by avoiding fat-talk, many have become too afraid to speak plainly and frankly about about what is and isn’t a healthy body weight. Unfortunately, putting blinders on isn’t going to make the problem go away—or make kids feel any better.
Fit Bottomed Mamas recently featured an insightful article full of suggestions for parents about the best and healthiest ways to approach childhood obesity in the home. Which is useful and awesome because, as the vast majority of our readers have pointed out, parents hold quite a bit of responsibility when it comes to childhood weight problems. Unfortunately, all of the great advice came after one very troubling admonishment from a professional. From the article:
“Never send your kids the message that they need to lose weight, get thinner, drop pounds, look better, etc.,” Katz says. “If you do, they’ll still develop unhealthy attitudes even if you never so much as utter the d-word. Instead, always frame your message in terms of your kids feeling better about themselves, having more energy, becoming healthier and happier, etc. These are sustainable goals that won’t damage your child’s self-esteem.”
I have to disagree with this assertion; it’s not wrong (framing the conversation in a healthy way is great), but it is misleading. The problem with strictly avoiding words and phrases like “diet” or “weight loss” is that it can also mistakenly encourage parents to skip the topic altogether–instead of helping their kids take on a body-positive, healthy approach to food and fitness. Parents may assume that hinting at health is enough–but for a child who’s already suffering with negative thoughts about their body, dancing around the topic instead of addressing it head-on, may not be.
As someone who was overweight as a kid (I even wrote about how I wished my parents had put me on a diet when I was young), I can attest to the fact that if my parents hadn’t been afraid of hurting my feelings and talked to me honestly about weight loss, I’m fairly sure I would have been better off. Their frankness about my health would have been a lot easier to bear than the teasing of kids and the angry voices in my own head about my body.
it’s called tough love. i agree it’s better to be called fat by your parents than to be teased at school. lets blame technology and all the electronics and gadgets.
I have to add, I don’t know what planet Strong4Life is on, but where I live fatness (i.e. any obvious adipose tissue other than in women’s breasts, even within “normal” BMI) carries huge stigma and shame and has for a long time. It’s everywhere in the media, it’s impossible to miss it. It’s inconceivable that there is anyone of average intelligence in this culture who isn’t painfully aware of it. I would love to know how they came up with their numbers. Because you know what? My kids are “overweight” according to the AMA. But if someone asked me I think there’s something wrong with their bodies, I’d say “no”. Not because I don’t recognize that fat is considered a problem in this culture, but because scientifically speaking fat is not inherently bad and thin is not inherently good, and the belief that they are is literally creating health problems that wouldn’t otherwise exist. What Strong4Life is interpreting as ignorance I’m guessing is, rather, a backlash.
I *was* put on a diet when I was a kid. I was talked to about how I needed to lose weight to be healthy and happy and liked. I was strongly encouraged to do sports (lest I get fatter) and I did: softball, basketball, soccer, and later, racquetball, weight-training, and running. I was hungry, I was miserable (I don’t like sports,) my self-esteem plummeted because of the obsessive focus on the supposed wrongness of my body, and guess what? I didn’t get thin. Yes, I did get a bit smaller, temporarily. But eventually I ended up *fatter than I would have been naturally* due to yo-yo dieting and disordered eating brought on by shame and misguided notions about what it means to be healthy. The temporary slight reduction in size wasn’t worth the damage done to my body and psyche. If only they had waited to let my height catch up with my weight — a growth pattern, it turns out, common in my family. Instead, there was “something wrong with me” (assumed overeating) and it became, through their concern, a self-fulfilled prophecy. I’m now, for the first time in my life, getting truly healthy. I’m moving with enjoyment, and learning to eat in a way that nourishes both my heart and body. I’m loved and I’m retraining my eye to see beauty in many forms and not assume that thin = healthy. My numbers are great and I feel great. Yet I’m still fat — and could care less about the haters and the deluded. There’s a new movement afoot that rejects the notion that controlling people through shame can have any positive effect, and asserts that movement and healthy food is important for children of ALL sizes. THAT is the future of health. Not parents telling their kids they’re “too fat” (no matter how nicely it’s phrased or implied.)
Dear Parents, its not just the diet that needs talking about its the feelings hiding under the overeating that need talking about. Every pound is a un-shed tear and a hurt feeling that needs expressing.
What everyone is really afraid to talk about is the underlying hidden feelings that contribute to overeating in families. Healthy Feelings equals healthy eating. Read here http://owl.li/8R9Po
The childhood obesity epidemic will continue as long as parents and clinicians ignore the important food mood connection families make at a very early age.
Parents if your child is overweight yes of course learn and role model healthy eating go together to weight watchers and be active together. But I have worked with childhood obesity for a long time and families are medicating all kinds of feelings with food. As such true solutions will not be found,as its not just about healthy eating exercise etc.
In order to eat healthy ,families must find other coping mechanism for emotions other than food.
Try this 24 Tips Healthy-Feelings=Healthy-Eating,My Feelings R Hungry Written by Ava Parnass http://listentomeplease.com/books
Also Parents if your child is over weight most likely your parenting style needs changing, help is here… http://owl.li/8RhbK
To play devil’s advocate– I was also overweight as a kid, and I was told blank to lose weight (or to maintain my weight until it was healthy for my age, which was the common suggestion instead of pure weight loss), and my parents worked to make our household healthier. It didn’t actually help me feel better, nor did it help me lose weight– if anything, it screwed up my eating patterns more. And, from what I’ve seen through my work as a personal trainer, that’s a pretty common experience– parents telling their kids to lose weight doesn’t make them lose weight, if anything, they struggle with their weight more and for longer.
Maybe it was just my situation, but I have a feeling the difficulty in the issue is how the kid will understand the encouragement to lose weight. It sounds like you’re looking back and wishing that your parents suggested you go on a diet, but you didn’t actually think that as a child. The thing is, your adult self has a much larger analytic capability and ability to see outside binaries of good/bad, so you can say, “Wow, if my parents told me to losing weight would make me happier, I would understand that they meant it entirely out of love and it would have made me overall happier.”
There’s a lot of developmental research, though, that suggests that our brains don’t develop the analytica ability to function out of binaries until the late teens. Thus, saying “you need to lose weight to be healthy” could just be heard as “there’s something wrong with you that makes you less loveable.” Which is why the common advice is to focus on how the changes will help the kid, rather than that they have something wrong with them– because they’re not grown-ups, and their brains just don’t interpret information on that level.
Kat – http://whenwetalkabouthealth.wordpress.com
Yes. What Kat said. I wanted to do the exact opposite of what my parents told me to on EVERYTHING, including going on a diet.
When it was mentioned that I should lose weight, it only served to make me crave comfort food because of how bad those words (coming from my parents, no less) made me feel.
I would like to recommend the free NAAFA Child Advocacy ToolkitSM (CATK) and other written guidelines/resources to assist you looking at programs.
A Yale Rudd Center report reviewed existing research on weight stigma in children and adolescents, with attention to the nature and extent of weight bias toward obese youths and to the primary sources of stigma in their lives, including peers, educators, and parents. As a result of weight bias and discrimination, obese children suffer psychological, social, and health-related consequences. http://www.yaleruddcenter.org/resources/upload/docs/what/bias/StigmaObesityChildrensHealth.pdf
Rebecca Puhl of the Rudd Center further brings to light the stigmatization of large children in the following article.
http://www.obesityaction.org/magazine/oacnews7/Childhood%20Obesity%20and%20Stigma.pdf
The NAAFA Child Advocacy Toolkit shows how Health At Every Size® takes the focus off weight and directs it to healthful eating and enjoyable movement. It addresses the bullying, building positive self-image and eliminating stigmatization of large children. The CATK lists resources available to parents, educators or caregivers for educational materials, curriculum and programming that is beneficial for all children. It can be found at:
http://issuu.com/naafa/docs/naafa_childadvocacy2011combined_v04?viewMode=magazine&mode=embed
The Anti Obesity drug makers and diabetes drug makers take in 10 billion$$$$ every year with no cure!!
Food Chemicals are the cause of the diabetes and obesity crisis
The FDA and Drug makers know this and are laughing to the Billionaire$$$ bank
The food chemicals break the gut(insulin) and this is the cause of the diabetes and obesity crisis. This is how Paula Deen fooled people
See here http://www.ourmidland.com/voices/community/article_381a5c8c-42c7-11e1-b7c3-cf08f6be1b90.html