Strollerderby : bulimia

They Say: Parents Don't Know Kids are Too Fat or Too Thin

JeanneSager — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:56:00 GMT

Think your kid has a weight problem? You might want to check with their doctor. A Melbourne University study of more than 2100 families found almost half the parents of overweight kids thought they were "healthy." The numbers weren't much better for parents of underweight kids.

The Australian study found 49 percent of parents with a child who is overweight thought they were of an average weight. For kids who are underweight, 43 percent of parents thought they were just fine.

It's no wonder - I walk around and where I see overweight children, I often see an overweight parent. If Mom or Dad has trouble identifying a healthy weight and healthy eating habits themselves, how are they going to do it for their kids? With childhood obesity so rampant, they can't even guage a child's health against his or her classmates - because "normal" has shifted. Add in the differences in bone structure, body type and America's melting pot of ethnicities with their own traits for weight, and it's hard to tell what qualifies as "overweight" without a doctor sitting down to evaluate height against weight against muscle mass against . . .

And in a society that researchers found has a "social bias toward thinness" (really, they had to do a study to figure that out?), complaining that a child is "underweight" is a sticky wicket. As parents, for the last several years, we've had the words "childhood obesity" drilled so heavily into our heads our ears are bleeding. Underweight isn't something most parents focus on - the National Eating Disorder Association estimates 5 percent of the American population at any given time is living with an undiagnosed eating disorder. That includes adults - often adults whose parents don't see them as having a problem. But eating disorders have been diagnosed in kids as young as 7 or 8.

A recovering bulimic, I struggle daily to ensure I'm keeping my daughter on track toward a healthy weight. I have vowed not to make food an issue in our house, denying her little but presenting as many healthy options as possible. Still, I hold my breath at each well visit with the pediatrician, waiting to hear the magic words, "your daughter is doing just fine."

Image: Mebby

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What's Worse, Getting Fat or Getting Pregnant?

JeanneSager — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:08:00 GMT

Been on a diet lately? If pregnancy's in your future, you might find the scale climbing a lot higher than you thought. A study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association this month shows women with a history of dieting are more likely to gain weight.

Following 1,200 expectant moms, researchers from the University of North Carolina determined it doesn't matter what you weigh when the sperm meets the egg. It's your history that counts. Ironically, in the same month, the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care claims women are more afraid of gaining weight than they are of getting pregnant. That's what's driving their birth control decisions. It was what they call a "snapshot" study with just 55 women, but together the two offer a look at the delicate balance too many of us are trying to strike in our lives.

Excuse the woman who was once pregnant and is still showing a bit of that state around her mid-section for thinking, but when you get pregnant, AHEM, you gain weight. Well, unless you're pregorexic, but that's another post. Going into pregnancy, I think every woman knows in her head that she's supposed to grow, that watching the numbers on the scale rise is normal. But women who struggle with their weight often have a disconnect between what the brain knows and what the brain sees on the scale or in the mirror. It's the difference between plain old smarts and emotional intelligence.

And so I've wondered if we don't over-compensate when we get pregnant. Knowing our tendency to eat poorly, to make an issue of our weight, we fight the urge to diet to the point where we overeat. I've always been pretty open about my bulimic past. When I was diagnosed with the severe morning sickness they call hyperemesis gravidarum during pregnancy, a small part of me was grateful. I had to smack myself back into reality when I realized that despite the misery, I was happy knowing I wasn't gaining weight. Then I started to feel like this was punishment for years of making myself throw up. Now I literally couldn't help myself.

When the medicines prescribed to chemotherapy patients to help them battle nausea finally took hold, and I began to eat again, I did so with a vengeance. When I swallowed pints of Ben & Jerry's to soothe the heartburn in my throat, I told myself I was doing my baby a favor. I wasn't taking more medicine, and I wasn't denying our two bodies what I would have denied my one. It's no wonder I found myself, B&J in hand, devouring Greek Tragedy blogger Stephanie Klein's new book, Moose, through tears. The book follows her from the day the doctor orders her to pack on 50 pounds to feed the twins growing inside her straight back to fat camp. How could it not? After years of being told NOT to eat, Klein wasn't just being told to eat, she was ordered. And when the order comes from a doctor, when you know you have life inside of you, you do it. And, yes, sometimes you do it to excess.

Because fat or thin at the beginning of pregnancy, the acceptance of "fat" on a pregnant woman brings out what we once were in ways nothing ever will. We will always be the fat girl. As Klein says in one of her blog posts about the book, "While you might be tempted to say when I realize I've outgrown that puffy girl, then I'll be real, you're wrong. Realizing that Moose is who I was, and who I will always fear being again, is who I really am."

So women fear being fat more than they fear getting pregnant. Women who fear getting fat get fatter when they're pregnant. Yes, it all makes sense when you're the fat girl.

Image: Stephanie Klein

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Are More Pregnant Women Suddenly Starving Themselves?

Miriam Axel-Lute — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:00:00 GMT

A blogger over at self-improvement site PeopleJam is warning us about a new buzzword, "pregorexia," and the supposed trend from which it stems—women suddenly trying to be like a couple of skinny celebs by staying thin during their pregnancies.

But the original article reporting on the topic in the Times of London paints a somewhat different picture—one of a world in which lots of women have eating disorders, and, surprise, surprise, they don't just disappear during pregnancy, though sometimes pregnancy does make some that have been in remission return. (Since eating disorders are as much about control as appearance, I can see that the feeling of being out of control that pregnancy can bring would be a risk factor.)

The article paints a depressing picture of insufficient care and doctors not asking about, or noticing, symptoms of unhealthy eating. But it doesn't make the case that there's actually any new upswing in cases, and in fact specifically notes that there is no data to show that. Perhaps there is just an upswing in awareness, which is often mistaken for an increase in the thing itself.

More awareness of eating disorders in general is good, and I suppose I can tolerate "pregorexia," a creepily cutesy term for a non-cutesy thing, if it helps with that, but my gut feeling is it would make more sense to use the words we have and not treat eating disorders in pregnancy as some new, separate thing that those crazy knocked up ladies are getting into.

There does seem to already be a disturbing willingness to assume that healthy pregnancy weight gain is going to screw with all of our delicate self esteems, even if we have no eating disorders. Take lines like this one from BabyCenter—"It's normal to feel anxious and even depressed as the numbers on the scale edge up" (Depressed? Just from that? If that's true, we're in sad shape) or the popular, defensive "I'm not fat, I'm knocked up" T-shirt.

So there's weirdness out there, but I'm still suspicious of making it a celebrity supermodel problem. There are an awful lot of normally protruding pregnant bellies in evidence on famous people. Enough that even under-a-pop-culture-rock me has seen the pictures.

On the other hand, from what I've heard from midwives and other mothers, fears about gestational diabetes (a real problem with extreme weight gain) and "babies too big for a natural birth" (which is almost always bunk) seem to lead an awful lot of nurses and doctors to cluck their tongues warningly over even slightly high weight gain. That won't create an eating disorder out of thin air, but it sure can sow doubt and paranoia. And if eating disorders are as common in pregnancy as the Times thinks, medical professionals might want to reconsider which side of caution they err on.

Photo by tomeppy.

Babble Talk: Why Do We Worry About Eating Disorders, But Only for Daughters?

Jen Chaney — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 16:25:00 GMT

In this week's Bad Parent essay, Jeanne Sager confesses that she is a recovering bulimic and is petrified that she'll pass on her eating disorder to her daughter.

"I worry constantly: Should she have another cookie?" Sager writes. "Should I buy the organic peanut butter or the Skippy that's on sale? Am I letting her get too fat? Am I making her too thin"

Any woman living in our size-two-is-best society probably has some body image issues. I know I do. Even those of us who don't take those issues to the level of having an eating disorder worry that we'll pass on unhealthy behavior -- staring in mirrors for too long, obsessing over calories -- to our kids. But here's the thing: I say kids. But really I mean daughters.

Even though it's entirely possible (albeit less common) for males to develop eating disorders, we don't seem to worry as much about that happening to our sons. In fact, the very first comment on Sager's essay says: "This is the scariest thing to me about having a daughter (on Friday!). I'm ALREADY hearing the murmurs of my ED when the doctor says, 'Oh, she'll be at least 9 pounds.' I realized that with my son I was happy that he was 9lbs, 6oz, but I felt disappointed that my daughter might start out big."

While we don't want any of our children to be overweight, we consider it a compliment if someone says our baby boy is large. That means he's healthy, strapping, destined for football glory. If someone says it about our baby girl, though, we subconsciously think: Fat. Unattractive. Destined to be a Heavier Version of Bridget Jones, Sans the Love Affair With Colin Firth.

Of course, we all know this is unfair, wrong and inappropriate. And yet it's ingrained in us by society. It's a reflexive response. So what can we do about it?

Really, the same thing Jeanne Sager is doing to deal with her eating disorder's impact on her daughter. Be aware, feed our kids healthy foods and fight the good fight against those bad impulses. And that all starts in the very beginning. When someone says: "Oh your little girl is so pudgy and cute," we have to convince ourselves not to cringe. Instead we should say, "Thank you." We should give our strapping daughters a kiss. And we should be silently grateful that she's got some meat on her bones and a perfectly pleased smile on her face.

Image: Klee McMullen/Babble.com