View Poll Results: My child is
underweight 2 8.00%
normal weight 19 76.00%
mildly overweight 4 16.00%
moderately overweight 0 0%
severely overweight 0 0%
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Old 08-23-2006, 11:16 AM   #1  
Jen
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Default Overweight parent and their kids

Just something I was thinking about today. I've read lots of stuff about how kids are more likely to be overweight if one or both parents are overweight. I was wondering how the kids out there of 3FC'ers are doing. Is your child overweight, if so is it mild, moderate or severe? What are you planning on doing to help your child lose weight or what do you do to keep your child at a healthy weight. Please tell us about your own child/ren and what he/she/they do to keep active and healthy.
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Old 08-23-2006, 11:25 AM   #2  
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I'll start. My son will be 5 soon. He is about normal height and weight for his age. He is very active, running around the house all the time, doesn't feel like he is still for 1 second. As for eating I won't say that he never has treats but I really try hard to keep them to a minimum. We won't have fast food more than once a week. Snacks at home are fruits and veggies. Sometimes he'll ask for cheese and crackers. He'll drink fruit juice, milk or water, we do not have pop in the house at all. I think the biggest thing I've had to do is learn to say NO. We went to the grocery store this morning and he was asking for everything under the sun usually stuff that is 100% sugar. I must have said no over a dozen times, the only thing I said yes to was a box of raisin bran. I explained that the treats he was wanting was nothing more than sugar. I don't know how much he understands but I tell him anyways. At mealtimes I try to give him a balance of foods and I don't make him clean his plate. He knows when he is full and stops eating. Dessert is not an every night thing, just 1-2 times a week. So far I think we are on the right track with him. What makes me sure of this is that if I asked him if he wanted a cookie or an apple for a snack he'd pick the apple!
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Old 08-23-2006, 11:30 AM   #3  
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I have a son that is 20 yrs. old, almost 6 foot and only 145 lbs. He has always been athletic and is in the military. He actually wishes he could gain weight. Takes protein powder supplements and works out all the time. He is a weight lifter and has won competitions in his weight class.
My daughter is 14 and is 5'4 and weighs 130. She wants to lose weight, but not bad enough to really diet. I am glad, I think she is totally fine in size and doesn't need to be like her 90 lb. friends. She has had health problems with open heart surgery at 8 yrs. old and stomach surgery. She isn't at all athletic. Her tummy is a little too round, but she only wears a size 3 , so she doesn't need to actually do anything more than tone a little. I think that since she hasn't gotten breasts or really hips yet, that she just needs to mature into a shapelier figure with age. I try my best to just keep healthy foods in the home for the whole family. She takes her lunch each day because the cafeteria here feeds them just junk and she eats her other meals at home. I don't want her to be obsessed or worry constantly about her weight. Peer pressure is so hard at this age. She has been walking with me whenever possible or will sometimes get on the treadmill. We do the silly Richard Simmons tapes together sometimes and she laughs at how totally uncoordinated I am. lol
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Old 08-23-2006, 11:42 AM   #4  
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Hi...

DD is 5' even and about 108. She just quit competitive gymnastics, but is now cheering. She is very athletic, and has always been that way. Once she quit gymnastics, she did gain weight and got up to 115. She realized that since she's not working out 20+ hours per week, she couldn't eat like that anymore. She cut out dessert and most junk food. She's cut down on her soda intake. She wants to be 100-105 (she is VERY petite, also - size 4 shoe). I have shared with her the healthy habits I am learning and I am trying to be a good role model. It's funny when I sit down to dinner with this big plate of veggies and stuff and she says she can't believe I can eat so much and lose weight. Unfortunately, she hates most fruits and veggies.

DS is 2. We are enrolling him in gymnastics in the next few weeks. His biggest junk food is tortilla chips and salsa. He is mainly on organic foods, and I buy organic graham crackers and organic "wheat thins" and give that to him with cheese cubes that we make together from a block of natural cheese. He munches on applesauce and yogurt. He's not a big fan of veggies, but I'm still trying. I figured if I start him right, it won't be an issue. I buy the mini water bottles with a sport top so he drinks those, or I give him a cup of water with a juice "floater" to cut down on the juice. Oh yeah... his other vice is the Lay's organic cheese puffs. But he seems to prefer the chips and salsa. I think "goldfish" are the only non-organic snack he gets come to think of it. I converted the bottom drawer of our refrigerator to his snack drawer. I keep everything there, whether it needs refrigerated or not so that he can choose when I open the fridge. Anyhoo... I just want him to have healthy choices available. And sports will keep him active. That way he won't have to "diet" like us.
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Old 08-23-2006, 11:45 AM   #5  
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My kids are all adults. One is into bodybuilding so if you put him on a scale, you'd think he was fat, but he's very muscular. He was always a normal to underweight kid. My other son was a normal weight until he hit puberty and moved in with his biological father and stepmother, who wouldn't let him participate in sports. He's still overweight, but working to convert the weight into muscle. My daughter was always thin (95th percentile in height, and 40th percentile in weight) until she hit her senior year in high school and was diagnosed with PCOS. Now she's somewhat overweight. My stepdaughter, who didn't live with us, was always a bit chubby, and now she's morbidly obese.

When my kids were growing up, they participated in sports, and we did a lot of outdoor activities. We always ate dinner as a family. Once they started getting away from home, all bets were off.
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Old 08-23-2006, 02:14 PM   #6  
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First, let me preface this by saying that when I decided to lose weight, I realized that the entire family needed to eat healthier. I quit buying junk foods, and have remade the whole family's diet with healthier choices (with my DH approval). They eat what I eat for the most part, with varying amounts and some additional choices for them.

My DS (14) is within the normal weight range (although at the high end) for his height and age, but he could stand to tone up some. His eating habits have improved vastly, and he has discovered lots of new healthier foods. While I go to the park to walk for exercise, he goes with me at least 3 nights a week and runs. He works with me on strength training. I think he is off to a good start and although he could actually stand to lose a few pounds, I'm not too concerned about him. I think he has developed a good foundation in the last year.

My DD (12), on the other hand, concerns me more. She has always been fairly thin, and is at a normal weight right now. In the last year, she has felt a good amount of animosity towards our new way of eating. She frequently tells me that she hates the way we eat now, why can't we have (french fries, cookies, cokes, etc). She enjoys rebelling against it when she goes to my parents home, for example. She sneaks candy and soft drinks home from their house. A few weeks ago, she got upset about something and wailed out that she needed "chocolate right now". When she was a 4 year old, we were at my mom's and Mom and I walked outside to look at her flowers, came back in three minutes later, and my DD was sitting on the floor surrounded by 10 empty single Reese's packs. In that 3 minutes she had scarfed down 10 Reeses candy's. There have been a handful of other incidents like that, and it worries me that she may have a problem later bingeing on food, and that she eats for comfort at times.

Do you guys think I should be concerned about this? Maybe I'm worrying unnecessarily, I don't know. I just don't want her to face the same problems I'm facing.
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Old 08-23-2006, 02:35 PM   #7  
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Its so funny in my household... My hubby and I are overweight and working to correct this, my son (who was a preemie) is a little underweight and my doggie needs to pack on a few lbs according to my groomer... SO My hubby and I are trying to lose and I'm feeding my son and dog more to gain! Hopefully in 6 months we'll all be closer to a balance and we can be on the SAME journey! I thought it would be tempting for me because my son has to have pudding, whole milk, cheese (as in Mac and cheese) and other items higher in fat until he gets caught up. I'm closely monitoring it though, one thing I DON'T want is for it to get out of hand but doc says go for it now. Surprisingly, I'm doing just fine with my diet and Carsons also doing well with his!
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Old 08-23-2006, 02:36 PM   #8  
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I don't have any kids yet, but the thought of them having to deal with what I've dealt with my whole life (I've been overweight since about age 4) scares me to death. Then again, so does the opposite idea of pounding health tips into their heads so much that they become completely obsessed with health and nutrition and alienate themselves from others their own age. I pray I'll be able to find a happy medium.

But I can speak for myself as the child of an obese mother and a slightly overweight father. My grandparents (on my mother's side) were both overweight as well. When I was little (until I was about 8), my mother ran a day care out of our home so she could stay home with my sister and me and still have an income. Having so many kids around and not having much time/energy for frequent grocery shopping, we had a lot of lunches of spaghetti o's, mac n cheese, hotdogs, etc. Dinners were more well-rounded (once all the other kids went home) with meat (chicken, pork chops, ham, meatloaf...) and veggies (usually canned peas or carrots) and a starch (rice, noodles, or potatoes). However, I grew to dislike most foods, as her cooking wasn't the greatest. She cooked pretty much any kind of meat in a pan on the stove until it was bone dry. Until VERY recently (as in a couple months ago), I always said I hated steak and pork chops. I remember never being able to choke them down when my mother made them. Then my boyfriend coerced me to try a bite of his steak at a restaurant a few months ago, and, to my surprise, it didn't kill me Just last weekend, I also tried a piece of his pork chop at a restaurant, it was actually GOOD. Not just tolerable, but good.

Anyway, my mother tried. I never remember her openly trying to lose weight until I was older (around middle school), and by then I was already obese. My older sister was always about avergae, then had a brief bout with anorexia one year where she got down to a size 2 (she's about 5'9) by obsessively working out in her room every night and eating only a small dish of plain white rice for most meals. More recently, she's been battling the opposite, fiddling with WW Points and working out in an effort to get out of plus sizes and back down to a size 10 (at which she looks very healthy since she is so tall).

Would she and I have been better off weight-wise if our parents were both thin? I have no idea. I can blame genetics for a tiny bit of my weight, but I cannot believe ANYONE is really genetically predetermined to be over 300 pounds--that was my own doing.
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Old 08-23-2006, 02:38 PM   #9  
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tolose85 View Post
my son (who was a preemie) is a little underweight
heh, I'd like to mention that in my first year-2 years of life, my parents and doctor were very concerned because I was underweight and not gaining weight quickly enough. Guess I showed them!
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Old 08-23-2006, 03:23 PM   #10  
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Gem is only five, and is very small for her age. She's only about 32 pounds (she was 26 pounds for a full year). She has digestive difficulty, in that she was born with an imperforate anus and had to have surgery early on. She can't feel when she needs "to go" and so we have to focus on fiber especially for her.

Fortunately, she loves oatmeal, and is used to 100% whole wheat bread. She snacks on Cracklin' Oat Bran and other slightly sweetened bran cereals. Other than that, though, she's a very picky eater. She eats berries and bananas and apples, but almost no other fruit (and nothing processed -- so no applesauce). She won't touch vegetables of any kind. She doesn't like potatoes, pasta, rice, or beans. She won't even TRY soup or stew. The only meat she likes is breaded chicken tenders or fish sticks. Or hot dogs. We just got her to eat grilled cheese sandwiches this past summer. She won't eat eggs.

On the good side, she likes yogurt and milk and cheese and peanut butter. I'm rather worried about how she'll fare when she starts school and has to eat hot lunch. Most days the school offers something she'll eat -- grilled cheese or chicken tenders or a hot dog. But there will be at least one or two days a week when the two options for hot lunch are things she doesn't eat. But she's a big girl, and she'll just have to decide to eat what they offer or wait until after school.

So, no, she's not overweight. She gets whatever candy, soda, and cookies her Daddy gives her, and we have ocasional treats. But by and large, she doesn't overeat.
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Old 08-23-2006, 04:23 PM   #11  
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JTammy -

Regarding your DD, I'm just wondering if providing access to those things for her might not be bad. I'm just thinking out loud here, so I could be wrong... but... I know that we didn't really have that much junk food in the house when I was growing up, and then when someone brought something home it was a race to get it. Then, when I moved out on my own, the fact that I could finally buy anything I wanted got me into trouble. With my own DD, I've always kept what she likes in the house, but she only eats it here and there. I'm wondering if she can control it because it's always been there and it's not a "no-no" or a "temptation", and it's never been a reward. Maybe if your DD had her own stash somewhere, she could regulate it. Maybe she's rebelling just because she wants it to be available, not because she would binge on it?

I could be WAY off on this, but it was just a thought.

I wonder how many others had the stuff as available as any other food growing up and still ended up overweight as adults? Maybe it's that reward thinking of the "bad" stuff that gets us into trouble.
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Old 08-23-2006, 04:32 PM   #12  
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I had children that were thin when they were young. My son is now 33 and is 6'6" and weighs about 230, but is in jiujitsu and is very muscular. My dd is 5'5" and struggles with weight, BUT only around her hips and upper thighs. She is tiny everywhere else. She is the most diligent mother of my grandson I have ever seen with regards to food and he is growing up learning to eat properly. He is a gangly little thing like his daddy, but he eats well. His favorite foods are sushi and broccoli so THERE McDonald's!

We didn't have much money when my kids were growing up so they had a lot of fatty, carb heavy foods like hamburger and pasta. They survived it partly because they didn't sit around and watch tv all the time and video games barely existed back then. I encouraged them to get outside and play, ride their bikes, skateboard, etc which they did. I think parents allow too much couch potato time for kids and too much junk food. I am not sure it is regular eating time that is the enemy, but too much sitting, not enough moving and too much soft drinks, snack chips and candy.
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Old 08-23-2006, 11:03 PM   #13  
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Thanks everyone for their replies. Very interesting.

Tammy - I think it is important to allow some treats like cookies, chocolate etc for a couple of reasons. Firstly you don't want your dd to binge behind your back, better that you have treats in the house and you can see what she is eating. Secondly I have heard that a lot of kids are taken in by people meaning to do them harm by being offered treats that they don't get at home. Not that your daughter is going to get into a strangers car for a chocolate bar but that is generally the idea behind that theory. If she is feeling that she is being denied something she really wants then it will get more blown out of proportion than if you told her it was okay to have a chocolate bar once in awhile.
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Old 08-24-2006, 06:11 AM   #14  
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My son is 15 and very height, weight proportional. The worst is that he has a lot of my bad eating habits, like forgetting to eat and depending on empty calories to keep him going when he gets tired.

The one thing I have done differently is buying preportioned snacks. I really resisted the 100 cal snack packs for a long time, assuming that someone would just sit down and eat the box. Its been working well though, no longer do we just sit down with the bag of chips. It like you get a bag and its done.

One thing I saw recently though that pissed me off was a very overweight woman and her family out to dinner. The child was about two and they had finished with their appetizer course. The child was done and wanted down. She kept forcing food at the child as comfort and so she could continue the rest of her meal.

I know the trap of using food for comfort and I thought what totally BS behavior. Or maybe its because I always let my son's appetite sway his eating and never been finish everything on your plate mom. Whatever, small vent.

Miss Chris
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Old 08-26-2006, 11:24 PM   #15  
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Thanks for the replies. I've thought about it some more and have decided to loosen up a bit, in regards to my daughter and snack foods. I guess what I have to teach her, as a parent, is control. Otherwise, when she's grown and moves out, she will have all the choices we have as an adult, and still be unable to control her choices. Thanks for something to think about.
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