Archive for the ‘Nutrition’ Category

Horrifying photo: A 7-year-old’s weight-loss plan

Wednesday, March 6, 2013 by:moms@sfgate.com (Amy Graff)
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(Courtesy Amy Cheney / Mama Mia)

An Australian mom was horrified when she found a piece of scratch paper with the word “Diyet” scrawled across the top among the “Polly Pockets and friendship bracelets” on the floor of her 7-year-old daughter’s room.

The paper outlines her daughter’s weight-loss plan and reads:

17 pooshups 2 times a day

16 star jumps 2 time a day

2 yoget

3 appals

1 per

2 keewee froots

5 glases of water

Rid my bike 3 times a day

Rariry a meniy thing as you can find

Jog/run up and down the driv way 3 times

(Before you attack her spelling keep in mind that most schools initially encourage kids to spell phonetically.)

Amy Cheney, a writer and mother of three, shared the list on the Australian lifestyle site Mama Mia, where she writes with humor and emotion about the thoughts that ran through her mind when she found this upsetting piece of paper.

Diyet. Jesus.

Where did she learn the word diet? How does she even know what a freaking diet is?

Whose fault is this? Is it mine because I let her play with Barbies? Because sometimes she’s allowed to watch Total Drama Action? Is it because when I draw with her I can only draw stick figures?

She goes on:

How did this happen?

I am smart about this stuff. I have a degree in early childhood studies. Our family focuses on and promotes healthy eating and healthy bodies. Our attitudes are reasonable and balanced. Weight has never been an issue in our home – it is, for the most part, irrelevant.

Read the full post at Mama Mia.

I think that I’d be equally troubled if I found a similar list in the room of my skinny-as-a-rail 10-year-old who swims three times a week, plays basketball, goes to dance class and doesn’t have a single ounce of body fat on her even though she always finishes her cake at birthday parties. I’d like to think that my daughter will never have to worry about going on a serious diet because she learns to love her body, eat everything in moderation and remains active throughout her life.

But the reality is that in the industrialized world the media and the food industry send our children confusing and unhealthy messages around food and body image. You’ve got fast-food chains dishing up triple-patty burgers, coffee chains pushing sugary drinks that pack in almost half the calories you need in a day and food companies cramming addictive amounts of salt and artificial flavoring into their chips. These companies are helping drive a scary obesity epidemic that’s leaving young children with serious body weight issues. On the other side of things, the fashion mags are filled with images of gorgeous models who’ve been airbrushed and Photoshopped to have impossibly perfect skin and skinny waists. Hollywood and the music and fashion industries are telling our girls to be pretty and thin.

It’s no wonder that a survey conducted by the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) found between 40 to 60 percent of children age 6 to 12 are worried about how much they weigh, and 70 percent would like to be skinnier. A survey by the Keep It Real campaign found that 80 percent of 10 years olds have already been on a diet.

Suddenly the fact that this Australian mom found a diet plan in her daughter’s room isn’t so surprising. And the fact that my own daughter recently told me about her friend who was on a diet isn’t so surprising either. Yet as parents we want to keep our kids away from that world of obsessing over every little crumb and looking into the mirror and feeling fat for as long as possible. Seven year olds shouldn’t be worrying about fitting in their push-ups every day. Rather they should be playing tag on the front lawn, chasing little brothers, shooting hoops at the playground. And they shouldn’t be counting calories. Instead they should be freely eating healthy foods and occasionally indulging in treats without any guilt.

Many thanks to Amy Cheney over at Mama Mia for sharing her daughter’s note because it’s a great reminder to us all to talk to our kids about feeling good about their bodies, and these conversations might need to start earlier than you ever imagined.

‘Don’t let them call you skinny’: Vintage ads push women to gain weight

Tuesday, July 17, 2012 by:moms@sfgate.com (Amy Graff)
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We’re in the midst of swimsuit season and women are on a mission to get skinny. Everywhere they look they’re faced with advertisements for products and diets telling them to lose 10 more pounds. But squeezing into a smaller-size bikini hasn’t always been the goal for summer.

British blogger Chris Wild takes us back to a time when beach weather meant putting on pounds. His telling collection of photos (above) features vintage advertisements pushing products to help women have fuller-figured bodies.

“If you want to be popular,” the copy on one ad reads, “you can’t afford to be skinny!”

Today, you’ll find similar slogans on weight product ads but instead “skinny” would read “overweight.”

The images appeared in magazines and newspapers between 1908 and 1984 but Wild says the majority of them are from the 1930s and 1940s. During the Great Depression, the United States faced a food shortage and appearing thin and malnourished wasn’t in style. The trend continued through the 1950s and 1960s with big-bosomed, curvy-hipped celebrities like Marilyn Monroe appearing on the big screen. In the 1960s, rail-thin models like Twiggy started to popularize being skinny, and in the 1970s, as obesity rates increased, the weight-gain craze stopped. The ads seemed to disappear altogether in the 1980s—and American women became fully focused on losing weight.

On the surface the vintage ads might seem refreshing in today’s world overrun with get-skinny-fast dieting ads but on a deeper level both types of ads do the same thing: Make women feel like their worth is dependent on their looks. Too thin! Too fat! When it comes to the advertising industry, women can never win.

Check out the series that originally ran on Wild’s site Retronaut.

Source and inspiration: Daily Mail and Retronaut.

Manhattan socialite shames fat daughter, writes about it in ‘Vogue’

Wednesday, March 28, 2012 by:moms@sfgate.com (Amy Graff)
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Dara-Lynn Weiss attracted national media attention by putting her obese 7-year-old daughter on a diet, writing about it in Vogue, and ultimately scoring a book deal. Her story is relevant in America, where 1 in 3 children are obese. There’s a need for information on how parents can help their overweight children—but Dara-Lynn, who fat-shamed her daughter in public, got it all wrong and only sets a bad example for other moms in similar situations. And as we all know, the last thing the world needs is yet another example of bad parenting.

Dara Lynn Weiss Bea Weiss Weight Watcher

Manhattan socialite Dara-Lynn Weiss and her daughter Bea posed for an article titled “Weight Watcher” that’s running in the April issue of “Vogue.”

When Bea Weiss was 6 years old a pediatrician diagnosed her as clinically obese. Bea was 4 ft. 4 in. and 93 pounds.

Bea’s mother, Dara-Lynn Weiss, sprang into action and put her daughter on a strict diet. The Manhattan socialite also fat-shamed Bea, humiliated her in public, and once she denied her daughter dinner because she consumed brie, filet mignon, baguette and chocolate at her school’s French Heritage Day. Another time she stopped her daughter from eating a salad because it was overly dressed.

Dara-Lynn, who is a chronic dieter herself, shares these details in a provocative tell-all article titled “Weight Watcher” running in the April “Shape” issue of Vogue. Fashion photos of the mother and now-slim daughter accompany the article.

You can’t find the article online but bloggers are sharing bits and pieces of it all over the Internet.

Here’s a bit about the salad incident:

I stepped between my daughter and a bowl of salad nicoise my friend was handing her, raising my palm like a traffic cop. “Thanks,” I said, “but she already ate dinner.”

“But she said she’s still hungry,” my friend replied, bewildered.

I forced a smile. “Yeah, but it’s got a lot of dressing on it and we’re trying–”

“Just olive oil!” my friend interrupted. “It’s superhealthy!”

My smile faded and my voice grew tense. “I know. She can’t.”

My friend’s eyes moved to my daughter, whose gaze held the dish in the crosshairs: a Frisbee-size bowl bursting with oil, tuna, eggs, potatoes, olives.

And here’s another disturbing excerpt:

Sometimes Bea’s after-school snack was a slice of pizza or a gyro from the snack vendor. Other days I forced her to choose a low-fat vegetable soup or a single hard-boiled egg. Occasionally I’d give in to her pleas for a square of coffee cake, mainly because I wanted to eat half of it. When she was given access to cupcakes at a party, I alternated between saying, “Let’s not eat that, it’s not good for you;” “Okay, fine, go ahead, but just one;” and “Bea, you have to stop eating crap like that, you’re getting too heavy,” depending on my mood. Then I’d secretly eat two when she wasn’t looking.

Dara-Lynn clearly handles her daughter’s weight problem in the wrong way, and she’s setting Bea up for a life ridden with body image issues and eating disorders.

“She did everything we recommend people don’t do,” Lynn Grefe, president of the National Eating Disorders Association, told Time. “To us, diet is a four-letter word.

Weight problems among America’s youth are real with 1 in 3 children being overweight. We all like to blame this sobering number on fast-food chains and the food industry but ultimately the responsibility lies with the parents of these children. And how can a parent help an overweight child?

Parents certainly can’t cull any advice from Dara-Lynn’s sensationalized article. She can only tell you how to destroy your child’s self image.

I only wish that Vogue ran an article about a parent who got it right. Putting a child on a diet is a delicate, complicated situation and parents could use an example of a parent who handles her child’s obesity with thoughtfulness, love and care. Parents don’t need yet another example of bad parenting, nor do we need another parent who’s exploiting their children and neurotic parenting style for media attention. Shame on Vogue for printing this article.

The sad thing is that bad parenting sells. Dara-Lynn has been written about by bloggers at media outlets ranging from the HuffingtonPost to BabyCenter. And MediaBistro’s GalleyCat just announced that Dara-Lynn scored a book deal with Random House’s Ballantine to write a memoir, tentatively titled “The Heavy.” Can we all agree to not buy a copy?