kids and dieting

[keryx]

There's a discussion on BFB from last week about people's dieting history. This highlights just how much time and energy people, women especially, waste in fighting fat.

My parents never put me on the absurd diets some of these other women report, but - they and people around me berated me for being fat starting when I was 5 (and I was cute, not fat), and I recall being asked "should you eat that?" whenever something "bad" was involved ("bad" was ill-defined in my house, as my mom still thinks a cupcake is an acceptable breakfast as long as it's eaten with orange juice). I started dieting when I was 10 or 11, I think. And didn't stop permanently for over 10 years.

The article that Paul posted specifically points out that dieting at a young age, more than dieting in general, seems to make people fatter. But that aside, the thing that dieting at a young age seems to be most effective at is keeping you dieting, which is a tremendous waste of time. I still spend too much time and energy just trying to have a healthy, reasonable attitude towards food and exercise. If the people around me had just modeled healthy living instead of yelling at me for my phantom fatness, maybe I wouldn't have ended up like that.

If you added up the hours any woman spends worrying she's too fat - or too whatever - we'd probably each have enough hours to run a small business, or start a political career, or raise a kid really really well. That's depressing.

So, I hope the news that putting kids on diets makes them into fat adults will convince people paranoid about the "obesity crisis" (aka the dieting crisis) not to start kids down that road of wasting their time.

Comments

[attrice.livejournal.com]

I would hope so too, but I'm not gonna hold my breath. Someone will probably just come out with an Anti-Diet: The way to get slim, healthy kids! book and everyone will go crazy about that.

I was one of those kids that got hauled off to weight watcher meetings when I was 8, Jenny Craig when I was 11, I think nutri system was somewhere in between those. Fucking miserable. And its created this sore spot between my mother and I. When we talk about weight stuff, she gets defensive, I get angry and it just sucks all around.

[fatshadow.livejournal.com]

I’m sad to say that I don’t think people are getting this message. I think people are more and more willing to do anything to not be fat. I read about a boy who is still in high school recently. He and both his parents had weight loss surgery. In the article he was sitting in the cafeteria eating a few chicken nuggets and chips for lunch. I don’t want to sound like the food bigot that I am but chicken nuggets and chips? And we’re supposed to be happy because he’s eating less? The article also mentioned that he still doesn’t exercise much. I mean ... what the fuck? And the article was full of stories about how much happier he was because he’d lost weight. It was just the saddest thing.
But, reading this post it occurs to me that these stories might make a good book. A whole book of stories about weight cycling and diet failures as told by the people who lived through them. Putting a face to the lies.
My feelings about being able to complete projects and get books published aren’t good right now. But I’m trying to rally.

[emmapirate.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I was surprised that you cited the 'weight-loss talk' as the reason you didn't join beautacious. There's only ever been one post about weight loss- I just went and checked. To be honest, I was a little alarmed about the post, because I'd hoped to transcend the weight debate, and promote beauty as an all-inclusive concept. One of the main tenets of the community is its anti- 'industry standard' stance- I started it because I felt cross about how all the 'traditional' sources of beauty tips (ie womens' magazines) made me feel invisible as a dyke. I also wanted it to be a place where cheap'n'cheerful alternatives to £150 face cream could be discussed, in an attempt to challenge the multinationals' exploitation of women through such exorbitant prices.

I'm aware that you have exceptionally strong and well-informed views about weight and acceptance and the diet industry, and as such if joining my itty bitty community (which I wanted to be a friendly, supportive and welcoming place) would compromise your values and actions, then I fully respect that, but you would be more than welcome, and more than welcome to air your views- my personal belief is that if other people find them challenging, then that's their problem, not yours, and not mine.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

I feel the chicken nuggets and chips!?!!? thing, too. Cause making you eat even less of the food the doesn't give you the nutrients you need is a good plan. And I wonder what happens to that kid in 15 years. It's not about being healthy, that's certain.

These stories would make a good book. I was thinking that as I read the BFB post, too.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

I get the vibe of the community. I like it, I think it's a brilliant freaking idea.

But yeah, when I went to check it out, the thing at the top was the "how do I lose weight" post. I've gotten to a point where I just dodge any group that starts to get into that discussion; I'm tired of it, and I don't want to be around people who are still thinking like that. So I didn't join because I didn't want to read another post like that, as I'm always all conflicted about whether to lecture people or give up and leave them alone. ;)

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Also, happy birthday! I hope you had a good one, and have a better year ahead of you.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Sigh. It seems like almost every mother-daughter interaction has some part of a beauty/weight/whatever problem attached to it. I wonder why that is?

[fatshadow.livejournal.com]

I also recently read that acid reflux is increasing and esophageal cancer rates are increasing. Again, food snob that I am, I think chicken nuggets and chips has to be hard on the now damaged stomach of this kid. And I know people who have the surgery deal with an increase of acid reflux. I don’t want to hope the worst for this kid but I’m so angry about it. He hasn’t learned how to love and appreciate food. He hasn’t learned how to love and enjoy movement. He now has an eating disorder as far as I’m concerned. But. I don’t want to keep waxing negative.
Sigh.

[fatshadow.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :-)

[firecat]

Probably mostly because mothers believe/know that appearance is very important to a woman's success, and they want their daughters to be successful.

(Although if I had a daughter, I suspect our issue would be that she would try to diet and I wouldn't want her to, which would just be the reverse of what my mother and I went through.)

One thing that was interesting about the BFB discussion at the time I read it was that everyone talked about going on diets as kids as if it were their own choice. I was on diets as a kid but it wasn't my choice. My parents made me, and I didn't find ways around it until later.

[originalenid.livejournal.com]

"I've gotten to a point where I just dodge any group that starts to get into that discussion; I'm tired of it, and I don't want to be around people who are still thinking like that."

A-FUCKING-MEN, SISTER!

the worst part, and the part that really annoys me, is when those kind of people add you, and you assume they know from your userinfo (especially if you have a disclaimer/rant in your user info like i do) and yet, shortly after your friends list is blessed with diet talk. oh, but they don't want you to take it PERSONALLY because they don't hate YOU as a fat person, they're not disgusted by YOUR fat, they just hate THEIR FAT, for, um, HEALTH REASONS, yeah, that's it!

I don't want to argue about it anymore either. it kind of angers me that i even have to ARGUE about my beleif that everyone should have body integrity.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Good point. The end of my mother's pestering about my weight coincides nicely with my starting to make more money than her. And for her it was always about how people don't hire/promote/reward fat workers. A lot of moms do push this notion of a thin, "attractive" body as a commodity to trade for a job, or a boyfriend, or whatever. And why wouldn't they? It's what they've learned, too.

Later in the thread, there were a lot more people whose parents put them on speed and such, in addition to the people like me, who seem to have almost "snuck" their dieting, though it was still pretty clear their parents pushed them about weight.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

In Emma's defense, I will say that the whole deal with her community is that it's supposed to have an inclusive idea of beautiful; it's a cool idea. But yeah, one person talking about how much they want to lose weight is enough to send me packing these days.

Personally, I think the worst thing is seeing that BS on feminist and size acceptance communities. I mean, if you're talking about feeling beautiful, whatever that is to you, I can't really bitch - but I can't stand feminists and fat activists who don't get it.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Is it ridiculously mean of me to think - heh, well maybe this WLS thing will turn out to be the next fen phen? Maybe it could even be the LAST one - the thing that wrecks so many peoples' bodies that we finally go... duh, maybe dieting's not good for us.

I want to be optimistic, even if it's by thinking how close we are to the bottom, that we can't possibly not be headed up.

[originalenid.livejournal.com]

oh, i wasn't really commenting on the community, it sounds like it is very well intentioned.

You just worded my feelings about navigating this territory (especially on lj) perfectly.

vive le resistance!

[libskrat]

Thanks for posting this. I started dieting when I was fifth-grade-age too.

And it's all such a waste. It really is.

[miffyness.livejournal.com]

This is the one thing I think my mother got absolutely right. Women who put their kids on diets and nag them about their weight do so because of their own body issues, and my mother has never dieted. When she was younger she was naturally slim (she later found she had an overactive thyroid -- so much for equating thinness with health), and now she's put on weight she accepts it as a natural consequence of both the treatment for her thyroid disorder and of getting older. There's no such thing as 'good' and 'bad' foods in our house -- no guilt connected to cakes and chocolate -- and while in some respects that isn't healthy (a less permissive attitude might have made it easier for my dad to keep his diabetes under control) it's probably why, for all my occasional whining about being 'too fat', I've never been on a diet either.

One of my best friends at school was on a permanent diet from the age of about 11, and she was never a fat kid. It was just that her mother was always dieting and she thought it was an integral part of being a woman. Even if the parents aren't directly telling their children to watch what they eat, that kind of imitative behaviour must happen all the time.