What changed things for you?

What changed in your son that took you from "he'll grow into it" (I've said that, I've even told that to Sadie) to "we must take this more seriously"? Was it just that the weight gain didn't stop? or was it more social? And, how is he learning to talk about it?

I want to help us learn to talk about this in ways that acknowledge and give straight answers, but don't create failure. Is this my failure we're talking about now??

The BMI calculator, or, Mom, am I Fat?

To make Sadie conscious of her weight or not. That is the question. For you and I, to have been made "conscious" of being overweight as children or teens meant nothing but pain and misery and a sense of failure. But I do think there's a way to help a child become aware of a weight problem that is constructive and not destructive. It's absolutely one thing I would do differently if I could do it all over again and go back to when "Matthew" was about nine years old.

That's around the age when he first asked me if he was fat. Poor kid was looking for a straight answer and my answer was two tenths Yes and eight tenths Don't Let Anyone ever tell you You're Anything Less than Perfect, my Precious Child! How confusing. For one thing, he already felt great about himself. We had done a good job with that. He just wanted to know if he was fat, because he was starting to get feedback.

If I could go back, I think I would do exactly what you're thinking of doing and show Matthew a chart or enter the information on the CDC BMI calculator and look at the results with him so that he could see that, yes, objectively, he is overweight. I seriously doubt he would have spent the rest of the evening crying into his pillow. He just isn't that kind of kid. Plus, he likes science, and this is science.

It's also sociology. Kids are way heavier now than they used to be. According to the book they gave us at the family workshop at the Wellspring camp, the reasons for obesity are biological, environmental, and behavioral. Both the diet and activity environment for kids has changed tremendously since we were kids. I remember going to McDonalds in California, yes, but the portions were way smaller then. I had to walk to school. All the kids were outside playing in the neighborhood, all the time. We rode our bikes. Matthew would understand that and perhaps even be fascinated by the differences and the reasons for them. As for biology, it's just not fair that Matthew tends to gain weight while his sister does not (or not as much) and that his friends can eat whatever they want and they're little beanpoles. But them's the brakes - he inherited the chubby. I would also explain to him that it's behavior, it's the choices we make on a day-to- day basis, and that's the area we are going to change. And then I would make a plan with him.

When he was that age (and maybe younger) the pediatrician suggested that we let him grow into his weight, that we try to keep him from gaining weight for a year or two. I think that was good advice, but I think I would have taken it much, much more seriously. For Matthew to grow into his weight now, even after the weight loss, he'd have to gain nothing for about 6 more inches of growth!

So I would have: allowed him to see that yes, like many children these days, he is overweight. I would have committed to working on it with him, and would have made a very specific plan with him. It would have involved weekly weigh-ins, to make sure he wasn't gaining weight. (This would have seemed extreme to me back then, as I saw the scale as a cruel self esteem buster) And I would have started an all-out family lifestyle makeover involving regular exercise and lowfat diets.

I believe that if I had known to do that, we wouldn't be where we are. It's going to be a challenge for Matthew to maintain the weight loss at this point, much less lose more. If you decide to talk to Sadie, let me know how it goes.

BMI - What is it??

I followed your childhood obesity link to the Center for Disease Control and looked up more about BMI. This is something that I've heard a lot about over the past few years, but have never actually done the measurement.

The BMI Calculator tool on the CDC site is very easy to use and, since the girls had just had a check up, I did it for Callie & Sadie (I did it for me as well). As you guessed, Sadie is right on the cusp of obesity. Wow, now is the moment!

The recommendation is (no surprise) eat a healthy low fat diet, daily exercise, limit screen time. Okay, that seems doable.

My question is: How to best share this information with her? For the past year, I've not wanted to make her "self conscious" but I suddenly realize it is important to make her "conscious". Let's face it, she's already self conscious! I can see that in some of her comments and choices this summer about clothing and group activities.

Maybe showing her this simple graph/tool will actually give her, give us the tools to talk about this more openly together. What do you think?

Mom's on Weight Watchers, everyone else still eating unconsciously

A couple years ago I signed up for Weight Watchers, went to meetings once or twice a week, and lost eight pounds. I gained it back pretty quickly, but the program was effective at the time. You count your points for everything you eat, you exercise and subtract some of those points, and you lose weight.

Instead of doing that separate thing for myself, isolated both in time (there really wasn't much chance I was going to count points the rest of my life as it's somewhat complicated) and within the family, I wish I had started to make other lifelong changes and involved my whole family.

I think that instead of mom going on a diet to lose weight, she would do better to make one significant, permanent change at a time and get the whole family on board with it.

Changes such as: we're all going to learn to read food labels and we're all going to aim for eating less than 12 grams of fat a day. Such as: we're all going to get pedometers and we're going to aim for walking at least 10,000 steps a day.

Or, if nobody else in the family is manifesting a weight problem, just bring only lowfat food into the house, cook lowfat food, and involve the whole family in exercise on a regular basis. And tell them why. She can be more intentional about it and lose weight herself, but her family will be learning healthier habits along the way and will have less risk of ever being part of the obesity epidemic.

But if one or more of her children are starting to have weight problems, it's best to get on it right away and make it a conscious effort on everyone's part. Not in an anxiety-producing way, but in a slow, steady, one change-at-a-time way. And make it fun, make it a challenge. If only I could go back and do it this way, my son never would have gained the weight that propelled him from "a little chubby" to obese.

Since he did become obese, we needed outside help, and that outside help was this camp. Everything I've learned from the Wellspring program is making me look back and know exactly what I would have done differently.

List of Solutions I had along the way - an ongoing list of things I tried, either consciously or unconsciously, to solve the problem

1. Not bringing any attention to the problem because that would make him feel bad about himself and make it worse.

List of Theories I had Along the Way - an ongoing list of the theories I had in the middle of the night when I should have been sleeping

The italicized ones I still believe are accurate.

1. He has a naturally large body type
2. He's addicted to carbs
3. His school is too demanding and stressful
4. He doesn't get enough activity during the school day
5. He has my husband's family's genes
6. He has my and my husband's love for eating
7. My husband's too dismissive of a father