The Heavy

Dealing with obesity in children is fraught with danger. Ignore the problem, and a kid has a pretty big chance of staying heavy, unhealthy and unhappy for thier whole life. But if you tackle the problem and put the kid on a diet, are you depriving them of essential childhood experiences? Are you setting them up for an unhealthy relationship with food?
As Dara-Lynn Weiss explains in her new book, 'The Heavy', parents of obese children can't win. Last year, she wrote an article for Vogue describing her successes and failures in helping her then 7 year old daughter lose weight. The article included frank descriptions of how she deprived her daughter, sometimes in public, of the calories she so badly wanted (but didn't need). It also revealed Weiss' own yo-yo dieting past, alongside glamorous photos of svelt mother and super cute almost-normal-weight daughter. Bloggers crucified Weiss for her parenting, impying that she was shallow and forcing her insecurities onto her daughter. But what the article missed, and what comes through in the book, is just how normal Weiss is, and how hard it is to be the perfect parent to a kid with a weight problem.
In response to the Vogue article, one blogger writes: "SO what should a mother say about a daughter’s weight?  NOTHING". But saying nothing can't be the right path if a kid really is obese. Putting a kid on a diet may risk body image problems later on, but letting them continue to gain weight when they're already obese almost guarantees it. And what do you do when cutting junk food, encouraging active play and limiting couch time don't help? Cutting calories looked like the only way for Weiss and her daughter, but well-meaning outsiders continued to be shocked at such drastic changes. "It is normal to assume" says Weiss, "if your child is a healthy weight, that your family’s food and activity choices are responsible for that fact, and that if other families did as yours did, their kids would be healthy, too." But you can get fat and stay fat eating relatively healthy food, and Weiss' story emphasises that the gentle approaches of balance and moderation just aren't enough for some of us. She also tackles society's weird expectations for body image and health, where one should enjoy food but also not be fat but also not think too much about whether we are fat. Considering obesity is currently a bigger threat to glabal health than eating disorders, it's a dialogue we badly need to have.