Strollerderby : eating disorder

They Say: Moms Don't Care if Boys Get Fat

Madeline Holler — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:01:00 GMT

A study that set out to determine whether restricting what and how much your child eats would eventually lead to obesity (it doesn't; more on that in a second) uncovered a dirty little secret:

Moms care more about keeping their daughters skinny than letting their sons get fat.

That actually came as no surprise to me and probably not you either. We've all witnessed something like this: people admiring a "growing boy" as he shovels it in at Thanksgiving, but eating in silence (or looking away) as the family's teen girl heads back for another round of desserts.

From eScienceNews:

"Our findings mirror those of other studies that have found that parents are much less likely to recognize or be concerned about the overweight status of sons compared to daughters," says [lead author Kyung E. Rhee, MD, MSc, a researcher with the Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center at The Miriam Hospital]. "These behaviors may represent a sensitivity to societal values that girls should be slim while boys have a physical or social advantage in being larger."

Anyway, the study, which appears in the journal Obesity, is good news for parents who never really bought into the idea that kids can exercise portion control when facing an open bag of cookies.

Instead, researchers learned that controlling what and how much your kids eat between the ages of 4 and 7 leads to a healthier BMI between 7 and 9 years old. (No word on whether these restrictions lead to eating disorders, but, hey! At least the kids aren't fat!)

Here's a summary of the study from the LA Times:

Researchers studied 789 boys and girls in nearly equal numbers, calculating changes in their body mass index between the ages of 4 and 7, and 7 and 9, to determine how their mothers' restrictive feeding affected how much weight they gained -- or didn't gain. The data were from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's study of early child care and youth development.

Mothers were also asked, "Do you let your child eat what he/she feels like eating?" Answers were scored on a four-point scale, from "definitely no" to "mostly no," "mostly yes," and "definitely yes."

They found no correlation between a rise in mothers controlling their kids' eating in the early age range and weight gain in the later range. So it's OK to say, "no dessert tonight!" But spank yourself if you're telling your girl one thing and your boy another.

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Dad Shackles Overweight Daughter to Bed to Stop Her Eating

JeanneSager — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:33:00 GMT

It started with chains and locks on the cabinet doors of the family home to keep his daughter away from the food. When Robert Blue found his fifteen-year-old was getting past them, police say he decided to chain the girl to her bed and beat her with a stick.

The problem? The teen was twenty pounds over the weight her father thought appropriate.

Theres's no excuse for it, but the extreme methodology to make a child lose weight may not be that uncommon.

Obese kids are often at risk of being treated poorly by their peers - and obese adults by other "skinnier" adults. Then throw in the stigma for parents of obese kids. Malnutrition and neglect are most often linked to the words "child abuse," but these days childhood obesity is earning parents the stinkeye - for being too permissive and putting their kids at significant health risks. Two years ago, a British mother was told to put her eight-year-old on a diet or she'd lose custody.

So what are parents doing? Mostly uneducated themselves about proper nutrition and weight loss (studies have also shown most obese kids have at least one obese parent), they go to extremes. They enforce strict diets and padlock the cabinets. They impart little knowledge of how to eat well, exercise and modify their lives, instead believing they can discipline away the fat - which, any of us who have ever lost weight know, doesn't work.

The methods described by Blue's local Nevada TV station are nothing short of criminal - and clearly abusive. But how many parents are just a few steps short of this themselves? Sadly, studies have actually proven child abuse can be a trigger FOR obesity into adulthood. Which points directly back to the Blue case. Child abusers break down a child's self-esteem, upping their chances of overeating. And what happens then? More abuse.

Image: Fox News Vegas

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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Teenager Arrested For Kiddie Porn - The Pictures Were of Herself

JeanneSager — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:59:00 GMT

I'm not up on all the legalities behind child pornography arrests, I'll admit it. I've never had to know. But last time I checked, a child has to have been somehow objectified, right?

So how does a 15-year-old teen girl taking nudie pics of herself and sending them to her classmates qualify? I'd be calling in counselors for the teenager. Instead, Central Ohio school officials called in the police. Now the teen has been charged with illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material (a felony) and possession of criminal tools. That's right, she used herself. And then she possessed the evidence of it! Not only that, the high schoolers who received the pictures may face charges too! Because, well, they possess child porn too!

In Ohio, adults convicted of possession of child porn have to register as sex offenders - I'm all for that. But the judge in this case will have flexibility according to a spokesperson with the district attorney's office. OK, so she may have to register as a sex offender for, um, having pictures of herself naked? Please call the authorities. My daughter climbed out of the bathtub this evening and ran past the mirror. She stopped and made raspberries at it. Naked. She looked at herself naked. What are we going to do?

The worst part of all this is that this girl is a foster child. Which would point to a childhood that's already been disrupted in some way. Teen girls sharing their naked bodies with other kids usually suffer from low self esteem, and there are possiblities of everything from depression to an eating disorder. This, people, is what we call a child in crisis. Not a sex offender!

Child pornograpy is serious and seriously scary for me as a parent. But the fact that a child is naked and a picture is taken does not make it child porn - anymore than a picture of a woman breastfeeding is adult porn. Maybe money would be better spent keeping kids out of trouble than chasing down every picture of a naked kid.

Source: Az Central

Image: AdaptiveMobile

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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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