to think underweight teens are a bigger/more common problem than overweight ones?

[manicinsomniac]

There is so much in the news/media in general about the obesity crisis and the number of obese children and teenagers.

I guess I believe the figures (I mean, I assume they're factual statistics!) but I find it difficult because it's so completely different to the reality I see around me.

My 12 year old year 7 daughter has been underweight and suffering from disordered eating since she was 7. She was diagnosed with anorexia earlier this year. Today we learned that a 13 year old girl in the year above will be leaving the school to go into a residential eating disorder treatment centre. She is anorexic too. A 10 year old boy in my tutor group is currently trying to avoid eating lunch and is already underweight. A 10 year old girl has recently been in counselling due to a fear of eating. There are many other very thin children in the school.

In my daughters year of approx. 45, I would say there are two overweight children and 11 who are thin to the point of it being surprising or noticeable (difficult to say underweight without knowing what's normal for them). For most, I hope it's pre pubescent/natural/the result of being very sporty. But I don't know.

I can count the numbers of visibly overweight children in the school on my fingers and that's in a school of around 350.

I worry that the publicity the obesity crisis is getting is actually starting to drive children the other way. I've had an eating disorder since I was 15 but at 12 I didn't even know what a calorie was and had never considered my body shape. Now we have 7 and 8 year olds learning about what foods they should 'rarely eat' and 10 year olds worrying about getting weighed. It feels counter productive and disturbing to me. AIBU?

ragged
BMI is just a proxy for body fat. Weight does not define health.

This visualiser is interesting
bmijs.is.tuebingen.mpg.de/
especially when combined with the pictures here
cockeyed.com/photos/bodies/heightweight.html

A very low BMI in somebody tall should ring massive alarm bells.
A very low BMI in somebody short and athletic is a matter of note and enquiry.

You can't give hunter gatherers unlimited access to food and expect them not to be fat. Why are we not blaming junk food manufacturers and the people that allowed processed foods to become part of our normal diet? I blame capitalism. I reckon in 50 years or so, almost everyone will be overweight

This is probably the silliest thing I've ever read on MN.

I don't live in a particularly affluent town/city etc so does that mean my children are more at risk of becoming obese....? Don't be so ridiculous. I'm only 8st wet through and my dc's dad is just under 11 stone, we eat healthily and have passed these habits onto our children so I resent the insinuation that they and other children who don't live in "posh" areas will become or are more likely to be fine overweight!

If OP is pre-menopause age but stopped having periods then she may be at risk of various bad things, I think heart disease & osteoporosis top the list of related problems. There are probably things a person can do, like supplements?, to reduce the risks.

talkin the OP has been clear that she has an eating disorder. And that her DD is also struggling.

But you think it's a good idea to tell her she should celebrate being thin!

Seriously, that is vile!

Being too thin or overweight, it seems that either way more and more younger children have issues around food. The messages they are getting at school and at home often do not help the situation. It would be better to have a more holistic approach in schools, incorporating more sport and being active and nutrition information as part of a balanced healthy lifestyle.

It is almost futile telling an eight year old not to eat xyz if all the parents provide is xyz.

Eek, I didn't really intend this thread to be a discussion about my own issues!

Yeah, I'm not at a healthy weight for me. I'm not really sure what my ideal weight is but I think it must be more than this because I maintain my current weight on 1000ish calories a day. Some people my height might be naturally underweight. I don't think I'm one of them.

I do have periods though. Light and irregular but they're there. I don't tend to lose them altogether until my BMI drops to something like 14.5 or 15 - I don't think I can use that as justification to lose some weight and still be okay though - can I?!?

I don't know. I'm confused and slightly intrigued by the idea that I could be okay like this.

I think, though I appreciate the encouragement Talkin , that I have to keep working on allowing myself to go higher though. For my daughters' sake, if not for mine. I don't want them to see me as a normal adult weight to aspire to. I have osteopenia and terrible teeth and nails. I'm lucky not to have worse things. I want better for them in their future. My daughter that is struggling is going to be okay, I hope. She understands that she is too thin, she's just very frightened of eating fat, sugar etc at the moment and is very caught up in staying below certain numbers. But she has been helped early and I won't let her give up on herself like I did.

"I resent the insinuation that they and other children who don't live in "posh" areas will become or are more likely to be fine overweight!"

Note: you aren't the only influence on your children.

DH and I eat healthily, watch our portion sizes, and raised our children to eat and enjoy vegetables, fruit and good quality meat and fish. However, we live in an inner city area and my teenage dd has picked up terrible eating habits from her peers, who drink fizzy drinks and eat junk food daily. She is now overweight - significantly so.

My godfather was a psychiatrist specialising in eating disorders. He actually said that eating disorders are to some extent infectious/catching as it creates a climate of competitive under eating and spreads a fear of food, so whilst others may not become fully anorexic, they develop disordered eating. Certainly that helped explain why in my year of 70, 5 were hospitalised with anorexia and they had to replace the damaged pipes in the bathrooms due to the sheer volume of bulimics (me and 3 of my close circle for definite, who were not in the five who were hospitalised, and fairly certain on 8 other girls). I would never, ever send a daughter of mine to an academically driven all girls school.

nags
food is the symptom, not the cause

one interesting point is that anorexia gets a very high proportion of the teenage MH budget, because the parents of the children are often articulate, affluent and well informed and the cause

whereas obesity is seen as a disease of the poor and uneducated, despite that on a risk based analysis it outscores by 100 : 1

I think it's more about what I called the "climate of fear" than the food. That climate of fear is a very complicated one. But the competitiveness did make the food issues spread amongst my friends and me.

If you think what I'm saying is so silly, why don't you qualify why. I believe the the normalisation of junk food is behind the obesity crisis. And that many of are genetically programmed to overeat. That is how hunter gatherers survive in lean times.

So much victim blaming. I knew from age two which of my children was likely to have a weight problem. That same child has no off switch. I have no doubt he will eventually become overweight, even though I will do by best to prevent it. That is genetics, not because he is weak willed

This may or may not be relevant but this thought has just popped into my head.

I genuinely don't think I've ever seen an overweight child or teenager, who doesn't have overweight parents/parent.

Due to the age gaps in my 3 kids, I spent 20 years as a Primary school parent and I still have 2 DC at senior school.

Yet I can't think of anyone at all.

"believe the the normalisation of junk food is behind the obesity crisis. And that many of are genetically programmed"

Not silly or wide of the mark. I absolutely agree with you.

I live in a poor area with very very high levels of obesity. Poverty has denuded our high street of decent shops and replaced them with junk food outlets. Literally a dozen in the 500 feet of high street on which the primary school sits.

Thedevil - how can genetics be to blame? Obesity has increased very very fast in two decades. Are you saying there are more people genetically programmed to be obese in 2015 than there were in 1970?

I can think of one overweight child at my son's school with a very thin mother (no dad on the scene) and a very close friend of mine is extremely obese, with thin parents, apparently, even as a baby she guzzled everything in sight

My dd is obese. I'm a bit overweight but only became so 4 years ago when I got a gyppy thyroid. DH is normal BMI.

But why was the baby allowed to guzzle everything in sight?

And what sort of things did she guzzle?

Genetics are partly to blame, junk food is more prolific than it was in the 70s, (when most of us still ate three meals a day) and easy to get hold of 24 hours a day. Many children now drink juice or fizzy drinks instead of water, which sparks sugar cravings and yes some of it is learned from parents. Factor in lack of exercise and you have a toxic combination

IT was an anecdote from a friend, I didn't ask for details. She comments on it herself, the lengths her parents went to to stop her from eating.

I don't think genetics are to blame at all.

I think there are many things at play all together though. Some of those things are...

Lack of education
Junk food and coffee shops everywhere
Delivery of junk food so we don't even have to leave the house
The sheer volume of what people eat/drink and the normalisation of overeating (think about how massive most desserts are in restaurants...and that's after eating a whole meal).
Kids not playing out as much as they used to
The internet
Game consoles
Satellite TV
Over reliance on cars

All of that together, or even just some of it is what's widening waistlines imo.

Does anorexia feature highly on the teenage mh budget spend?

Not being snippy, I genuinely don't know.

If so, I'd imagine it's because anorexia has a higher fatality rate - in the immediate term - than obesity.

Not sure making any generalisations about what eating disorders 'are about' is helpful though. Surely everyone has their own story?

I don't know, I think it could do Dancingqueen - an average stay IP is, what, around 3 months? Can be up to a year? That must cost an absolute fortune.