In the comments on the Fat Camp post yesterday was the question, "Why not send a child to Weight Watchers?".
There's some overlap between Fat Camp and Weight Watchers and it has to do with the attitudes and thoughts cultivated in children who have been effectively told they're too fat and that they must lose weight, and that they need professional help.
Putting aside the question of whether or not Weight Watchers or Fat Camps teach healthy weight management practices, my belief is that for most children instead of cultivating healthy behaviours, Fat Camps, Weight Watchers and other direct weight loss interventions end up cultivating tremendously negative emotions, guilt, self-doubt, low self-esteem, sadness, and in most cases, ultimately failure.
My belief quite simply is that unless the child has a major weight related medical condition that requires treatment, that weight loss education should be relegated to the parents and not to the child.
Furthermore I'd state that any weight loss intervention for children that does not explicitly involve the parents is ill informed and worth avoiding.
To illustrate some of what I'm talking about, Rudd Sound Bites back in June posted a fantastic essay by Marjorie Galler who herself had once attended Fat Camp. The essay is a fantastic glimpse into what goes on at Fat Camp. It's a must read - click here.
Any readers out there go to Weight Watchers (or other weight loss program) when they were kids? Any of you remember how it made you feel and whether or not it fostered healthy attitudes and behaviours about weight? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.
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I did Fat Camp as a child and Weight Watchers as a teenager. I did feel that Fat Camp was extremely demoralizing and did little to effectively modify behavior. It felt like the staff really didn't know how to handle weight problems. The "solution" in their eyes seemed to be to force kids to memorize Canada's Food Guide and get them to do moderate amounts of exorcise. In all the time I was in the program I saw no indications of success for me or any of the campers. Education isn't enough to change behavior. Just because you know you need several servings of vegetables in a day won't stop kids from wanting donuts.
ReplyDeleteWeight Watchers did not feel as bad (probably because I was older) but I did feel out of place as the local meetings were pretty much all aimed at (and attended by) middle-age women. There was one other male (I myself, am male) and he was a 50+ biker-dude whose wife had clearly dragged him in.
What might actually be helpful to kids is the Weight Watchers online content. It depends on the age, and while I have had little success with it, I should provide an environment where kids can get at the content while not feeling out of place. The question is whether Weight Watchers really works without the "Community".
These days I recognize that if there was any positive change to happen, it should have started early and from home. My parents, while not overweight, could still have benefited from some education. I think what tends to happen is that most parents get frustrated and want their kids weight problem to be someone else's problem.
I didn't do Weight Watchers as a kid, but I did do it as an adult and when I was there were several young people in my meeting. I believe there were two girls in their early teens, a boy in his late teens and a young boy around 10. The girls came with their parents and I think the teenaged boy came with a friend. The youngest boy came with him mom. All of them were pretty active at the meetings and seemed genuinely proud of their accomplishments.
ReplyDeletehttp://dietingbattle.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteI've been yo-yoing with diets my entire life. I believe that portion control and positive attitude goes a long way in a child's life. I was never treated badly by my parents/family, however, it was the bullies in school that made my life miserable. I believe self-esteem goes hand in hand with weight gain- call a person fat at the age of 12 and they think they are fat...then they turn to food for comofort- rather than turning to a counsellor, a friend or a family memeber.
I'm one of those kids.
I'm blogging my way to losing 100 pounds.
Hope to hear from you!
http://dietingbattle.blogspot.com/
I went to WW as a kid. I hated being told what to eat and what not to, and having to measure it. And it was geared toward adults - I was the only kid there. It made me feel even further removed from other kids than I alreay was. It put far too much focus on the problem, and made the "solution" feel like punishment.
ReplyDelete"Unless the child has a major weight related medical condition that requires treatment, that weight loss education should be relegated to the parents and not to the child." Touche.
ReplyDeleteI'm at a loss. My 10 year old son is obese. He was 35 pounds as a 4 year old, got his tonsils out, and within two months he was 52 pounds. Then 62, then 82, now 124. It seemed his "catch up" phase never stopped. Neither my husband or I have a weight problem, although all the grandparents are obese, one grand parent has had gastric bypass and is obese yet again. He plays hockey nearly daily all winter, but now that hockey season is over it seems he's gained another 10 pounds in a matter of a few months. We both work, and just can't devote the amount of time required into monitoring his food consumption every minute. He will come home from school and tell me that they got glazed donuts, and that he ate three of them. I feel hopeless and guilty and anxious about his future. Our pantry is "junk" free, although left to his own devices he will eat huge pieces of cheese and drink the juice boxes ear marked for lunches until he is caught. Aside from getting rid of these sorts of foods (moderation is not in his vocabulary), what can I do? Do I go hardcore at the expense of his self esteem? And I hate to say this but he is lazy lazy lazy to the point that we had screaming matches about forcing him to go to hockey practice when all he wanted to do was watch tv. I know i need to reduce screen time and it's a constant battle. I vacillate between being accepting and kind and getting in a panic and forcing him to choke down a homemade bran muffin for breakfast as I did this morning. I know I am fu**ing up his self esteem, but I also know that by doing nothing I am slowly killing him. My husband is a very large framed, muscular man, and I'm praying that this weight is setting the stage for puberty, my sister in law has assured me that my husband was a chubby kid before he hit puberty, but I am afraid I am just in denial. He has huge hands, a huge head (wears men's hats) and big feet. His ankles and wrists are as thick or thicker than mine (I'm 5'5" and 145 lbs, gained some recently on vacation, which is coming off) and his shoulders are very broad. I'm not sure that he "fits" within normal BMI calculations, I took him to his doctor a few years ago and he simply shrugged his shoulders. (the doctor is fat too).
ReplyDeleteI just want someone to tell me what to do... Obviously what I think I should do, and what I manage to do, is not working. I cannot imagine how big he would be if we didn't battle with him constantly about exercise and regulate his intake as much as we do....
You should live the life you want your child to live and if you're not already doing so, making the kitchen the most important and inclusive room in your home and certainly not a battlefield. Some links for you:
Deletehttp://health.usnews.com/health-news/blogs/eat-run/2013/04/11/the-power-of-we
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/blogs/eat-run/2012/10/17/the-40-minute-a-day-junk-food-vaccine
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/blogs/eat-run/2013/04/24/the-dos-and-donts-of-successful-family-meals
So you're saying that I should not put him on a diet? That I should just set the stage for healthy eating and exercise? I'd like to think I'm a good cook, it's intensely frustrating when I spend an hour in the kitchen to have the kids turn away in disgust. I must admit I don't handle this gracefully. Both my husband I work out regularly and try to include the kids, we have a family gym/pool pass and put them in team sports. Both are excellent swimmers and my heavy son has been on swim teams in the past. My younger son is lean and active, although he probably has a bigger appetite. Do you think his weight gain had anything to do with his tonsillectomy? I've been reading about other children who have experienced this as well. Also, I have hashimoto's disease, it runs in both sides of my family as well as my husband's. What is the likelihood of this occurring in a child, and would it be worth looking in to? He doesn't seem to have any other hypo symptoms, I guess I'm just grasping at straws. Thanks again for kindly answering my questions.
ReplyDelete