To think it's awful the way some people try to justify their children being overweight

[Tulahoob]

by saying they just "are tall and big boned" or that they "like their food". And by thinking it's almost a good thing that they're big!

I know two people with overweight children. Person 1 has 4 extremely overweight children. The parents are both tall and overweight, and the kids are all fairly tall, but the mum justifies them being big by saying 'They're just tall and they like their food'. It's clear they like their food, but they're not giants, and regardless of height they are all very overweight. The mum is almost proud of the fact that her children never stop eating. It's quite odd really; she's setting them up for a lifetime of having the piss taken out of them and a lifetime of bad eating habits and potentially bad health. Her eldest child even came came out as overweight on those weight/height ratio tests they do in reception year and she was proud of it because it meant he is tall and loves his food.

Person 2 has one son, who is again extremely overweight and is getting called names at school such as "Fatty". He is 7. She is up in arms about the mickey taking but insists he isn't fat, but that he just loves his food. Again, she is setting him up for the same problems that person one is setting their kids up for.

I know we are all blinkered where our kids are concerned. But surely over something like this some people can see that their children really are overweight?

That is a little reassuring, curry, thank you :)

I think it's really, really hard for some people to loose weight for a number of reasons so just because DD is lovely and slim I don't feel like its because I have got it all right.
I have a huge appetite and as a child was comforted and kept quiet with food. When I look at old photos I am always eating something, mouth open to a spoon like a bird. I noticed I had a real belly which was not natural for me at all. Mother was controlling with food and seemed to want her girls to be big so she could be the slim one. It was all a bit messed up :(

As young woman I went on the obligatory diet and lots loads, got a fantastic body as I grew tall and lean and realised how over fed I was. Now through a bad time when I am not working and under stress I am totally comfort eating and have a layer of flab that should not be there. I am a typical Amazonian type build, tall slim and muscular.

DH has this skinny gene. Endless limbs and tiny aristocratic bones. DD has inherited this together with a lack of interest in food. The lucky pair have no passion for food and just see it as a necessary fuel whereas I get so much joy from it, probably due to my upbringing.
It's all so complex. I never, ever judge people with overweight children. I don't know shit about their issues.

I started a thread a while ago about my ds as I was convinced he wasn't overweight. The HV said otherwise - a shock as I'm a size 8, my DH is a 30" waist (so slim) and all of our family are slim/skinny.

Looking at ds now (he's 3), I'm starting to think he is overweight. It is a blinkered view I've had - I'm :( as I've never encouraged him to finish a meal and he eats a lot of fruit and plenty of exercise. I think he just eats too much snacks. We're cutting down and he seems to be shooting up and losing the fat but he is quite broad shouldered with huge hands and feet so I don't know if he's naturally stocky like my brother/uncle (they aren't fat at all).

Oh lordy! If it was that easy to bring up slim, fit children there wouldn't be any fat unfit parents would there?

We all know what to do. But so many of us don't. Saying the onus is on the parents to teach their kids how to eat well is like saying the onus is on the parents not to bring their kids up to be anxious, or scared of dogs, or shy. We all do our best - but that isn't always enough.

And I have to say that after being Mrs Smuggity of Smug Town when my babies were at primary school they were all long and thin as a piece of string, I have had to eat my words as DS1 (now 16) began to pile on weight and is now really quite big largely because he gave up almost all outside physical activies. DD (13) also got a bit chubby in Yr 7 but lost it all when she worked at a stables.

And how to get over the fact that teenagers are ALWAYS hungry?

why is it ok for a 7 year old to be bullied?
and why is that specifically his Mothers fault?

This is my take on it.

There are genetic factors in weight - which is why the same diet and exercise plan will not affect different people in the same way. But people tend to overstate these.

Some people do have to exercise more and eat less than others to stay within a healthy weight limit - linked to genetic factors above.

A "healthy weight" is not the same for everyone. Two people of the same height can be very different weights and they will both be healthy.

We generally vastly underestimate how much activity we need to do every day to be healthy (not just to control weight gain - but to remain strong and healthy).

Some people are naturally more active in their daily lives (e.g. walk instead of drive, potter around the house rather than sit on the sofa) which burns calories. People often forget about this and thinks that a child who prefers to be sedentary will be OK because they go to PE a couple of times a week.

So many children are overweight now we have normalised it in our subconscious, so that only very overweight or obese children strike us as unusual - e.g. I worked with a health promotion service where the parents of morbidly obese children literally could not see that their children were fat because they compared them to their peers.

Dodgy thyroids aside - it is a simple formula of calories in - calories out = weight gain or loss. But it's not that simple to get right - for all the reasons mentioned in this thread.

Only read page 1 so far, but YANBU. It's something I really worry about and as parents we have to look out for our children's health, because who else will?

I have started worrying about my DS. He is 3 and when he was born he weighed nearly 12lbs (it is thought I may have developed GD in late pregnancy), so I had lots of "ooh he's going to be a big child", "you won't make enough milk for him" etc. I BFed him for 2 years and he weaned normally at 6 months, but he is 3.5 now and has a bit of a belly on him still. I have no idea if it's normal as my DD is skinny like her dad and always has been.

Anyway DS had a recent paeds check (speech delay) and they aren't concerned but he is around 75th centile for weight and only around 50th for height - is that bad? He would eat all day if we let him - since he figured out stairgates it has been very hard to keep him out of the kitchen. He is really into fruit and cheese and yoghurt.

I feel so guilty about the lack of exercise too, due to health issues (mine) they don't get out as much as they should, although they walk a lot. Feel like a failure TBH.

My friend's 5 yo DD is really huge. I could barely get my arms around her to help her with a cardi the other day. My friend and her DH are both extremely overweight but seem to eat healthily, but hugely. I've realised recently that portion control is everything - you can't eat huge plates of something just because it's 'healthy'.

I saw a doc some years ago where a very fat actress had her diet examined in minute detail and all her metabolic stuff checked. She was adamant that she ate a really healthy diet, and she did - but enormous portions. She actually had a quicker than average metabolism but was vastly overweight.

I agree with the portion control thing. My dsis thinks i have a problem with food and is very vocal about it. Upsettingly so. I have a bmi in the middle of the range, as do all of my family and until recently we didnt have a car. But she thinks that I undereat on purpose and underfeed my dc and dh because my portion sizes are so different from hers. She had her dh are overweight.

It is acceptable sometimes to make jibes about me being skinny and underfeeding my dc but I would never say anything to her about her eating or portion sizes.

Also for a toddler 2 weetabix, then toast and then a banana is actually a huge amount of calories as the calories in fibre have been seriously undercounted plus it would probably bung them up for ages. I dont think that brown bread and rice and wholewheat pasta ime are very good for babies and toddlers at all. Mine have been very intolerant to that much roughage.

I dont restrict the food my dc eat, there are no treat food, it is just all food with no good or bad foods and there are puddings everyday and occasional takeaways but the portions are the right sizes and there are hardly any snacks.

I really feel for the people on this board who are doing all they can and even a dietician says there is nothing more to be done. I would find that really depressing.

There was a programme on last year called "Secret Eaters" which was quite interesting in terms of the psychology of overeating. It featured several overweight couples/families who could not understand why they were so fat - they felt they ate healthily, cooked from scratch, and when they did a food diary it came in at about 2000 calories.

When the programme makers secretly tracked and filmed them for a week, they found actually they hugely over ate without realising - I remember one woman making healthy salads and then adding 200 cals of mayonnaise, or a family that had a barbeque and managed to consume thousands of calories before the burgers were even cooked. It seems easy for people not to realise quite how much they/their children eat.

I too saw the Secret Eaters thing and I think it is easy to underestimate how which we (and our DC) eat.

My friend is very overweight. She says she doesn't understand it and just eats one meal a day. That's either a lie or she just doesn't realise.

Thumbwitch it will all roll off as he grows. Bf babies do self regulate and that centile chart needs babies on all the different lines... My ds went off the chart and was like a puddle of bread dough. No evidence of that now on his brawny lean frame.

"Person 2 has one son, who is again extremely overweight and is getting called names at school such as "Fatty". He is 7. She is up in arms about the mickey taking but insists he isn't fat,"

YANBU but it's also unreasonable that young people are taunted and bullied for their weight by their peers at that age (or any age). I'd be up in arms over the bullying as well.

the physics of food/energy are very simple- calories (energy) in should equal calories (energy expended) out.... but the psychology of food is very very complicated....hence the justification.. the societal/ social and personal/psychological factors in the way we think about food are (imho) really skewy at the moment

Thanks noodled! :)

I think your being a judgmental cow in my opinion.. Get of your high horse. Oh and before you ask neither me or my children are over weight

It is not that pleasing to have a kid just eating like this, at least problems of health should be taken into consideration. Hope mums pay attention to the overweight issues.

I said this on the other thread about weight that's active at the moment, but I think it bears saying here too.

I think that a big part of the problem is people not knowing how to cook properly - so many have been de-skilled by the removal of proper cookery lessons from school, and the wider and cheaper availability of convenience foods, and these people are now raising the next generation, so where I learned to cook by watching my mum in the kitchen, and working with her there (and my children have learned the same way), but there are children whose parents rarely cook from scratch, so they cannot learn these basic and vital skills at home, and for whom food technology lessons involve very little actual cooking.

Firstly we need to bring back proper cookery lessons in school - so that children can learn how to follow a recipe, what the different terms actually mean, and can master the basic skills - like chopping an onion, or telling when something is 'done', or making a basic white sauce. Yes, there are many, many good recipe books out there, but unless you can understand the terms in them, and know how to saute or dice or seal etc, you are going to struggle to follow the recipes. Children also need to learn how to plan their meals and budget their money.

And the same applies to a lot of adults - they need to learn to cook from scratch, to see that it is not difficult or too time consuming, and that the results can be cheaper and nicer than what is in the packets. Essentially, we need to re-skill at least a generation, probably more.

TheSecondComing, can you link to HENRI? I googled it but I don't think any of the results are what you are talking about...

You are right, tiggytape - and what I forgot to say in my post was that, once people can cook properly, then they can be encouraged to follow the healthy eating guidelines, and it will be easier for them to do so. Sorry for my dimness!