Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘fat’

One of the things every parent will tell you when his/her daughter is diagnosed with Anorexia or any other eating disorder is that they could not see it coming. I am sure they mean it. Parents do not want to believe their child is having a problem, including me. It is mainly because most of us think that it says something about us. Maybe it says we have failed and we are not good parents. The problem with this fear is that it clutters our thinking and makes us blind to the warning signs of anorexia.

Be brave! Keep reading and look carefully at every photo, even though they are scary.

Having a child with Anorexia or any other eating disorder requires strong, brave parents who manage to help their child despite what others might say about them. The problem with Anorexia is that everyone can see it. Most kids do not do a very good job hiding it.

A couple of years ago, I worked with an anorexic woman who was 40 years old and weighed about 25kg (55lbs). Trust me, that was scary! It is not something you can hide very well. When I was in hospital with her, in the mental ward, there were other girls there and not all of them were teens. They looked like skeletons! But it is much harder to notice anorexia when it is developing and people often say, “She’s just a bit skinny, that’s all. She’ll get over it”.

You may have been on a diet at some stage in your life and your diet may not have been successful. If not, I am sure you know someone who has had this experience. Dieting requires a lot of effort and it is very frustrating when it does not produce big enough results or when the effects disappear as soon as you stop the diet.

I have always believed that fat was a result of heavy thoughts, because the mind is a powerful thing. Now, I have the research to back it up.

The show “You are what you eat” showed people they had full responsibility over what they ate. I think they can call it “You are what you think”, because a recent research discovered that our thoughts have a direct impact on what we eat – we gain weight when we have “fat thoughts”.

In recent times, “light” became a keyword for food shoppers. We are convinced that in order to be healthy we need to eat “light” food – no fat, no calories, no sugar, no salt, etc. Well, our body reacts badly to it. The more we try to be healthy, the harder it is to lose weight.

Why is that?

My friend said to me, “Look around you. There are more sick people than there ever were. The food we are eating is not nutritious enough. There is too much antibiotics in meat, too much processed food and too much cancer. People are dying because of extra use of chemicals in their life. What’s your opinion?”

I had to make a decision on the spot. I knew she wanted me to support her for her kids to recognize it as something “all mothers think”, not just her being fanatic. The problem was that it was just her being fanatic.

I said, “Really?! I am looking around and I’ll tell you what I see. My dad is 77 years old and he is a pretty healthy person. My mom is 71 years old and loves doctors and medication. 6 years ago, she came to visit us and we travelled around the North Island of New Zealand for 12 days. We spent most of the day on our feet and even trekked (with then 3-year-old Noff) for about 6 hours. My mom did very well and she was 65 then. My dad did even better than she did and he was 72 years old. I am looking around and what I see is that those sick people who eat junk, food that is not nutritious enough, consume too much antibiotics with their meat and gobble up cancer-inducing processed food, those people live longer”.

Ouch!

Before you think I am crazy, here are the facts.

This week, I lost it. I finished a session and came crying to Gal. I think I am surrounded with crazy women. It usually takes me a lot longer to say things like this about people, especially when I do not know them, but this week’s emotions accumulated to the point where I must vent.

Many studies have been done on the influence of TV on viewers (in fact there have been 4,000 studies on the effect on children alone, which you should not read if you love watching TV). Excessive TV viewing raises concerns in five major areas: Health, Behavior, Outlook on life, Relationship and Education

Unless there is something wrong with them, all parents want their kids to be healthy and eat well. With so many supermarkets and so many items on the shelves that are mostly processed, full of food colors, additives and lots of sugar, keeping your kids healthy is not easy. Not easy, but more important than ever!

These days, when children’s eating habits have led to an increase in obesity, parents’ responsibility to raise food-smart children has increased too.

It is the quality or the nutrition in the food we give our kids, coupled with the teaching of good habits, that will determine our kids’ health as children and later as grownups.

It is amazing how many women struggle with their weight. When I talk to women about how they think of themselves with an extra 3 to 15 kg, they usually express feelings of disappointment, failure, being ugly, not sexy, not wanted or clumsy and this is all because they feel they do not fit the standard weight graph (which, by the way, seems to shrink every 10 to 20 years). Most of them are not happy at all with their weight but they have many excuses for their being overweight.

“Fat” kids suffer a lot from problems associated with being overweight. Many grown ups carry feelings of self-loathing and self-disappointment following the negative treatment they got during their younger years.

Fat kids and low self-image almost go hand in hand. Kids who are overweight need a healthy, balanced eating plan without damaging their self-image that is already damaged.

It is important to remember that it is better to handle the problem when it is small. It is much easier to handle 2 extra kilos than 5 or, God forbid, 20.