I’m fat?’ My nine-year-old daughter asks me one morning, standing in front of the mirror in my room.
‘That? Do not be silly!’ -I say nervously. ‘Why do you say that?’
“Because one of the third-year girls told me I had a big, fat belly,” she says.
What a rude thing to say! Nothing’s wrong with you. You’re lovely,’ I tell her. She shrugs and looks back at her profile in the mirror.
The problem is that, while she is lovely, my daughter also has a “very healthy appetite” and has, in fact, developed a sizeable belly over the last year. She has always loved her food, but she seems to have gained weight in recent months.
Carrying extra weight during childhood puts you on a direct path to conditions like diabetes and heart disease, while losing it dramatically reduces your risk.
I find this disconcerting and disturbing in equal measure. We don’t use junk food at home. I like to think we eat well: the usual: spaghetti bolognese, homemade chicken curry, roast dinners.
I wonder if I occasionally overload her plate, but when I reduce the portions or replace the potatoes with salad, she says she’s still hungry.
And I don’t want my daughter to think that going hungry, as happens to so many girls and women in search of a smaller stomach, is normal or okay.
The truth is that I consider her emerging body image and diet to be very delicate topics, which makes it difficult to address the topic of her ever-expanding abdomen.
I frame my disapproval of your snacking habit in health terms.
Oatmeal cakes are a better alternative to bagels; Yogurts are healthier than potato chips. But he still eats a lot.
However, I can’t speak directly to reducing food intake.
Nowadays we are so aware of the epidemic of eating disorders that it seems that talking about diet is like playing with fire.
With today’s eating disorder epidemic, the last thing a child needs is for their parents to question their eating habits.
As it is, girls are bombarded everywhere with images of perfect, slender bodies and are constantly invited to compare themselves. The last thing they need is for parents to question their eating habits too. I have a friend whose 12 year old daughter is currently in the hell of anorexia and I can see how terribly damaging she is.
At the same time, however, I know that being overweight in childhood carries serious health risks.
Last month, a terrifying study by researchers in Germany claimed that being “severely obese” in childhood can cut life expectancy in half. This means that a four-year-old child weighing 3.8 pounds, who does not lose the extra pounds and continues into adulthood with the same rate of obesity, could expect to live to be 39 years old.
Even being overweight at the age of four (classified as weighing 3.5 kg) reduces life expectancy from 80 to 65 years. Carrying extra weight as a child puts you on a direct path to diseases like diabetes and heart disease, while losing it reduces your risk. dramatically.
The question is: how can I put my daughter on a diet without causing her lifelong problems around food?
Unfortunately, she is not the only one of my children with whom I have this dilemma.
My youngest son, who is 12 and blessed with his father’s metabolism, is rake-thin. But at 14, my oldest son has also become quite chubby. The other week I even had to buy him oversized school pants.
Last month, a terrifying study by researchers in Germany claimed that being “severely obese” in childhood can cut life expectancy in half.
Now two of my three children are overweight. It’s very difficult when I see them together not to feel like a failed mother.
Can I blame genetics? I’ve never been particularly thin, but I’ve never been what you’d call fat either. I was a size 10 until I had kids in my early 30s, but now I’m more like a 12-14.
Sure, I’ve found it harder to keep the weight off now that I’m in that middle-aged perimenopausal stage, where even daily exercise, like walking the dog, doing Pilates, or swimming, doesn’t dent the little muffin top that’s appeared around me. waist. . But I don’t consider myself that big.
No, my son’s problem is nervousness. I swore I would never be the mom who made multiple meals at dinner time to satisfy everyone’s hard-to-please tastes, but that’s precisely what I’ve become.
Even now, my 14 year old son still eats mostly “beige” toddler food. It’s that or nothing, and again, I don’t want him to go hungry, although I have occasionally sent him to bed without dinner rather than capitulate to demands for fish fingers or chicken nuggets.
I have also cajoled and bribed, but to no avail, and if I am too busy with work, I often end up taking the path of least resistance. I don’t have the energy to sit down with my teenager and force him to eat green beans. I don’t have time to work in front of an oven preparing endlessly varied dishes of food cooked from scratch in the vain hope that one of them might tempt you.
To alleviate the guilt, I buy multivitamins and probiotics. But there’s no ignoring the fact that their relatively poor diet is starting to show.
And I feel guilty; This is made worse by the fact that none of this would have happened at my mother’s table. She cooked everything from raw ingredients. We ate everything and ate nothing. No one would have thought to demand their own menu or raid the pantry between meals.
But food (and family) culture has changed. We encourage our children to be more autonomous today; Be more in touch with your feelings. To help themselves when they are hungry.
That’s why I started hiding the cereal bars that I put in my kids’ lunch boxes to make sure they meet their allotted amount per day. This makes me feel ashamed and angry.
It doesn’t help that the price of some healthy foods has skyrocketed recently.
Weight loss experts advise children to snack on nuts or dried fruit, but these days a single bag of mixed nuts can easily cost £5. You can get 20 packets of crisps for that (I don’t, but many do).
I refuse to eat low-fat or sugar-free foods when those types of foods are even more ultra-processed and chemically enhanced than a high-sugar cereal bar.
Still, I hate the fact that we are apparently becoming a “fat family.” My husband, still thin, says it’s probably just a phase and that hopefully the kids will grow up soon and lose all the puppy fat. But I confess that there are times when worry keeps me awake at night.
I also fear that my friends are judging me. I know I used to secretly roll my eyes at a girlfriend who handed out snacks with deliberate abandon to her then-chubby daughter. How petty and ashamed it makes me feel now.
I have another friend whose son seems to live on absolute garbage (mostly pepperami and pizza) and he’s still skinny as a stick. The question of metabolism seems to be key and, also, total luck.
And yet, even as I look anxiously at my son’s growing stomach and his tighter-than-ever jeans, I know I can’t mention it.
I don’t want to add to your list of worries by making your weight an issue.
After many hours of anguish, I have come to the conclusion that the only thing I can do is sit still, try to squeeze in some more vegetables where I can, and offer them healthier snacks when they are hungry.
The most important thing is that I have to try to lead the way by setting a good example. And that means never mentioning the “D” word (for diet) in this house.
I just hope that the next time someone is insensitive enough to comment on my daughter’s weight, it’s to congratulate her on it. The thought of her looking in the mirror and feeling ashamed of her body breaks my heart.