AIBU to ask ....

[ItsOnlyAQuestion]

Do overweight/fat parents tend to have overweight/fat children?

I am 25 stones and my DS is slim. I often get asked, if he is my biological child!

Are you naked?????

NAKED AND MAGNIFICENT

Magnificent liar more like.
HTH

anyway, I'm off shopping for salad :(

I mean

Do you think one of the reasons as to why parent's would distract/comfort kids without using food, was because food was more expensive at that time?

I think so yes...and sweets were a once a week treat on payday for us. Come to think of it, I don't even think multi packs of crisps were available until the supermarket boom.

Sometimes he does Itsa but once we realised what we were doing, we made efforts to stop - it's so easy to do the "be good and we'll get you some sweeties" thing, or to think "oh we'll just get them a little treat" and it was a habit. It is hard because it's just so "ordinary" - who wouldn't want to give a child a sweet? but it's insidious almost too. MiL still buys a massive bag of stuff for the DCs every saturday - we asked her not to get sweets, so she added grapes, apples (nanna's apples are red ones which makes them special) and bananas, but she still includes (last week's list here) one of those big "share size" pouches of maltesers or bite sizes, a freddo, and a packet of jelly sweets each for them and she hands them to the DCs directly, leaving DH to take them away again. We have managed now to get them to hand them over without too much trauma, it used to cause complete meltdowns when they were younger, but MiL does the "aww give them them, it's only a bit" stuff and it's just a complete headache.
I think that since I was seriously ill (I've had heart attacks) and in hospital etc, that really brought it home to DH that we cannot let this go, but it is hard for him, it's how he was raised, and how his mother shows her love for his children iyswim. My whole family tend to be overweight, there are only my uncle and nephew who aren't and they are actually seriously underweight with a completely different set of issues we put the fun in dysfunctional some days but DH is the only one in his family who is fat. I think it's because he was the baby, and the only son - his sisters are 14 and 8 yrs older than him - so his mam spoiled him. It's only now when he's in his 40s that he's truly realising how hard it is to break the bad habits around food, and to lose the weight.

I wasthe only fat one in our family. And tbh I think I was easily the favoured child. So I think I got given more treats and sweets as a way of my mum showing her love.
Although sadly as a teenager I think she liked the fact that I was fat (secretly) so that I wasn't any competition for her

There is actually overwhelming evidence that maternal stress and cortisol levels during pregnancy can affect fat storage for at least two generations. In families where famine or rationing have been imposed at some point in the maternal lifespan during early gestation or prior to pregnancy, children have higher propensity to fat storage throughout their life1. Some studies have shown this continues in the grandchildren too, but I think that's less certain. Obviously this is evolutionarily beneficial if there are continued food shortages or food insecurity (that's the point of fat storage), but not in a surplus situation as now exists in most developed countries. Interestingly this also means the anorexic 50/60s generation are partly responsible for current obesity levels, for all their self-righteous gabbing on about how they are 'normal' to be skinny (pictures of women from the 70s compared to things like the visual BMI scale2 show that they were mostly seriously underweight, BMIs around 17-18 at most).

So in summary it's kind of stupid of people to assume that the influence should be as direct as they seem to be with you and your child. But then, most people in the UK don't know what DNA is and only 25% or something stupid know the earth orbits the sun, because we are as a nation very neglectful of science education.

1 www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7327_supp/full/468S20a.html, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/934222, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez/18955703?dopt=Abstract&holding=f1000,f1000m,isrctn, google 'epigenetics famine obesity' if you want more, there is a lot* on this that is glossed over by upper-class published medical advertising material for obvious reasons.
*2 www.healthyweightforum.org/eng/calculators/bmi-visual-graph/, www.cockeyed.com/photos/bodies/heightweight.html, www.flickr.com/photos/77367764@N00/sets/72157602199008819/

wibbly - That is really interesting. I know my mum was very stressed when she was pregnant with me. She was a single mum in the 60's and was actual pregnant and homeless for a bit.

All these theories on influence and cause are interesting.

But they don't change the fact that we should all be eating and exercising according to the metabolic rate we've ended up with...not matter how we ended up with it.

No I agree there are not an excuse. But scientifically very interesting.

It has taken me a while to realise that I can bleat on about it being unfair while being fat and miserable yet full or do it while being slimmer and happier but always vaguely peckish....

I think it does tend to be the case that bad eating habits can be passed on as normal healthy eating, when perhaps its not. This would lead to parents of a larger size, whose children then become larger during childhood.

However I do think genetics and exercise play a big part in it. My sister and I were fed similarly during our childhood yet she has always struggled with weight issues whereas I am naturally a slim build, like my mother.

Even if poor food habits exist, a person can be slimmer if they undertake regular exercise, but if a person is inactive and has a poor diet that issues do arise. Medical issues are wholly different and therefore irrelevant from my point.

I'm going to make a contract with myself and eat for nutrition/weight loss. The weather is very nice too. Time to take a daily walk outside so i can get jeered and sneered at by the general public

You lot are too clever, for me.