Overweight Child
in [Weight Watchers]
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From: Jangchub on 30 Dec 2005 14:51 I am not sure I am reading your tag correctly, but does your tag mean you were at one time 415 pounds? If so, and if you are only 28, how can you think this is not serious illness which is in dire need of medical care. If this child is emotional eating, she needs a certified therapist because it is an eating disorder, not just a kid who is rebelling. I'm not saying you are wrong, but that I find your response interesting. On Fri, 30 Dec 2005 13:21:38 -0600, spamaddress(a)hotmail.com (Tayra) wrote: >If she doesn't *want* to, there's nothing you can do. Really. I speak >from personal experience. My mother, when I was a kid (starting about age >8 and lasting until about age 16), kept putting me on whatever fad diet >was going around the office that week, because she said I needed to lose a >few pounds so that when I went to the doctor, he wouldn't say I was >overweight. Now, I'll grant that *is* a stupid reason, but my thought was >'that's stupid, I don't think there's anything wrong with myself, I like >the way I am'. So, every diet she'd put me on, I'd throw the healthy food >out the window (literally: I chipped the paint off a window that'd been >painted over so I could dump the nasty food out there) and sneak other >food. The harder she tried to make me diet, the worse the food I'd sneak >would be for me. Early on, when it was just slimfast stuff, I might sneak >peanut butter. When she got hardcore with those diets where you have a >cleansing week, eating nothing but prune juice and iceberg lettuce >(seriously), I'd start sneaking cake icing, large chunks of chocolate, >even going so far as to make up boxes of brownie mix and eat those raw. >The more the diet sucked, and the less it was like the way I wanted to >eat, the more drastically I countered it, and the harder I rebelled >against any form of exercise. Come to think of it, I stopped playing in >the yard about the time she started enforcing things on me. I did *not* >want to be on those diets. > >My stepmother's approach was better (interesting note here: another poster >said not to disparage the child's biological mother, but this may or may >not matter: disparaging mine actually knocked a bit of sense into me). >She said look, this fad diet stuff is stupid, but so is overeating just to >make up for it. She told me quite openly that whenever I was over at her >house, she'd make healthy, delicious food (which she did), and she'd let >me have as much of it as I wanted (she'd rather see me gorge myself on >spinach lasagna than chocolate bars). She told me that my mother's way of >eating was extremely unhealthy, especially for a girl my age, but that she >wasn't going to force things on me. And being treated like an adult and >left to my own choices made a world of difference to me. I still ate more >than I should, but I was eating healthier stuff, and I never felt the urge >to sneak food at her house. > >A lot of the binging/purging people do, the emotional eating, is a control >issue. They can't control the world around them, so they control the >food. Giving the girl some control will go a fair ways to getting her to >eat better. This isn't to say it'll stop the emotional binging entirely, >of course; it's just the gateway to it. Before she can counter the >emotional eating (note I keep saying 'she': she's the only one who can do >it, not you, or her mother, or her father, or anybody else; *her*), she'll >have to sit down and realize *why* she's doing it, and she'll have to feel >in control of her own life and her own choices before she can do that. > >So. Give the girl control, give her some choices, treat her like an >adult. Don't force anything on her. Once she gets used to the idea that >she affects her own life, she'll be more open to suggestions of exercise >and healthy eating. Just don't start big or you'll scare her off. And >then down the road, perhaps you or someone else can have a talk with her >about why she eats when she's upset/angry/depressed/whatever, and how the >food doesn't actually fix the problem, it's just a distraction. If she >likes reading, books can be a *much* more satisfying distraction than >food. > >You can't just turn her around and all of a sudden she's eating healthy >and caring about it. It'll take a while, and she may gain more weight in >that time. The good news is, she's young and her metabolism can be easily >roused, so she'll have an easier time losing it than I'm having, at 28. >Hard as it is, you have to let her make her own choices, even if you see >her driving herself into the ground. You can't do it for her, much as you >might want to. The best thing to do is give her the tools she needs, and >let her make the decision herself. Once she does that (and she will, >eventually), all the walls will fall away. Until then.. you just wait, >and make sure she knows you're always there, willing to provide good food >and sensible advice. > >Good luck. >-Tay
From: Lesanne on 30 Dec 2005 15:26 > My quandary: How do I get this kid to care about the way she looks and > DO something about losing weight? Okay. I am an R.N., now at goal weight, after having spent most of my life "morbidly obese" and I too hate that term. I know quite a bit about eating disorders and other emotional issues. YOU cannot get her to care about how she looks. YOU CAN LOVE Her just like she is, and tell her that. If you can't do that, you are out of luck if you want to have any positive effect on this child. I agree with much of what Tayra said about rebellion. I also agree that she could use professional help, but frankly she is not that overweight YET. If you focus on it and try to force her to lose I can almost guarantee that you will have the opposite effect and she will gain. Children her age do not belong on any sort of weight loss diet. She needs to have more activity, and things done as a family, and a healthy diet designed for someone her age who is a normal weight. If she eats that she will eventually BE a normal weight. Re: activity... (does her father like softball? Is he a normal weight? Can you walk together as a family? Buy one of those mats with video and nasty loud music to dance to in the living room?) -- Lesanne
From: Tayra on 30 Dec 2005 15:33 In article <hp3br1po0e122h86590kvt8nonkd3ji8t6(a)4ax.com>, Jangchub <sakadawa(a)kopan.com> wrote: > I am not sure I am reading your tag correctly, but does your tag mean > you were at one time 415 pounds? Yep. 28, I started out at 415 at the tag-end of this past February. Altho I was 27 then, of course. > can you think this is not serious illness which is in dire need of > medical care. Well, I'm not sure why me having weighed 415lbs has anything to do with whether or not I'd see overeating as a mental illness, because I'm one of the most mentally healthy people I know, but.. She's seeking to control her own life. That in itself is not an illness. The problem she has is that she just doesn't know how to do it. She's not actively doing something to make herself ill, to the extent it'd be considered an actual psychological illness: she's not forcing herself to throw up (we're assuming on all these, of course, just based on the OP's observations) and therefore damaging her digestive system, her teeth, and robbing herself of vital nutrients. She's not taking laxatives and/or starving herself. She's not doing long-lasting and serious physical harm to herself by her actions (as in, she's not inducing reduced immune response or osteoporosis or organ failure). She's just eating too much of the wrong things, and that alone is not recognized as a psychological illness (unless it's to the extreme where she cannot control her eating; it seems she can, because she *chooses* when to sneak food, so this does not apply). Too many people do that for it to be considered abnormal. > If this child is emotional eating, she needs a > certified therapist because it is an eating disorder, not just a kid > who is rebelling. If she needs a therapist because she's eating emotionally, then 99% of people need a therapist. Emotional eating is just as common as nail-biting. Which I'll agree isn't good for people either, but nobody considers it a medical condition until you get so bad you're chewing your fingers into bloody stumps. I bet if you did a survey, 9 out of 10 people in this newsgroup would say they eat for emotional reasons. They've realized why they do it, and they've learned to control it, but they did it, and may still be prone to relapses. I am the one and only single person in my 30-40-person WW meetings who *doesn't* do it, and I'm an extreme rarity. Nobody in the meetings I've been to can understand how I don't feel better stuffing myself when I'm depressed (I can't, being depressed makes me nauseous; nobody else has that problem), it's that common a problem. Also, the rebelling is not the emotional eating; the rebelling is the sneaking food. Emotional eating is, as I said, a fairly common thing, and probably totally unrelated to the food-sneaking. Heck, my younger sister eats emotionally, and she's 6' tall and 140lbs. She also refuses to eat the vast majority of fruits and vegetables. I kinda hate her sometimes. But the only food she'd ever sneak would be cupfuls of sugar and fistfuls of butter, which she only ever did in my presence to gross me out. Otherwise, mom let her eat whatever she wanted to (within normal parental restrictions), and she turned out just fine. There's a good rebuttal question for you: is a female age 25, 6' tall, 140lbs who eats emotionally and unhealthily and yet is doing quite well both physically and nutritionally according to her physician in just as much need of a shrink as the 13yr-old 145lb 5'3" stepdaughter? If the answer is no, then your premise is in trouble. -Tay
From: Nunya B. on 30 Dec 2005 16:27 "Tayra" <spamaddress(a)hotmail.com> wrote in message news:spamaddress-3012051433390001(a)192.168.0.3... > In article <hp3br1po0e122h86590kvt8nonkd3ji8t6(a)4ax.com>, Jangchub > <sakadawa(a)kopan.com> wrote: > >> I am not sure I am reading your tag correctly, but does your tag mean >> you were at one time 415 pounds? > > Yep. 28, I started out at 415 at the tag-end of this past February. > Altho I was 27 then, of course. > >> can you think this is not serious illness which is in dire need of >> medical care. > > Well, I'm not sure why me having weighed 415lbs has anything to do with > whether or not I'd see overeating as a mental illness, because I'm one of > the most mentally healthy people I know, but.. She's seeking to control > her own life. That in itself is not an illness. The problem she has is > that she just doesn't know how to do it. She's not actively doing > something to make herself ill, to the extent it'd be considered an actual > psychological illness: she's not forcing herself to throw up (we're > assuming on all these, of course, just based on the OP's observations) and > therefore damaging her digestive system, her teeth, and robbing herself of > vital nutrients. She's not taking laxatives and/or starving herself. > She's not doing long-lasting and serious physical harm to herself by her > actions (as in, she's not inducing reduced immune response or osteoporosis > or organ failure). She's just eating too much of the wrong things, and > that alone is not recognized as a psychological illness (unless it's to > the extreme where she cannot control her eating; it seems she can, because > she *chooses* when to sneak food, so this does not apply). Too many > people do that for it to be considered abnormal. Actually Binge Eating Disorder is considered a psychological disorder and doesn't require that one can't choose when to eat. Sometimes the urge to eat is there and the situation doesn't permit it so it just gets worse and worse until the person does whatever necessary to get into a situation that they *can* binge. That said there really isn't a way to know if that is the case with this child. I know my eating disorder started around age 11 even though it didn't become full blown until my mid to late teens. Eating disorders are difficult to identify from the outside. -- the volleyballchick
From: ahmward on 30 Dec 2005 17:38
http://tinyurl.com/7ozvj This school is near where I live and the rate of success has been quite good. Chilhood obesity is an extremely serious health problem and it needs to be addressed as soon as possible. Work with your pediatrician or family doctor to help this child. Those here who are or have been morbidly obese will agree that they wish someone had helped them with their eating disorders/weight problems when they were younger. It is never too early to start. I tutored a high school boy for three years and during the last two years he lost close to thirty pounds making better food choices, playing basketball and getting other forms of exercise. His mother and aunt were supportive of his weight loss and I stopped bringing sweets for after school, switching instead to fruit. He was a happy high school graduate. Audrey |