I have been heavy for most of my life. The scale has gone up and down for me so much that I feel like I am constantly on a rollarcoaster ride. I just started a diet once again because my cholesteral started to go up. I have two children and one of them has a weight problem. She is more active and eats healthier than my child who doesn't have a weight problem. With all the recent headlines of people's children being taken away to foster care because of their weight scares me. Is anyone else out there have the same fear of this. My family has a history of being overweight.

My mom used to tell me, "Our whole family has weight problems." My father was anorexic for years in high school. When I lost weight the first time, my larger cousins stopped talking to me. The two people that were skinny in the family were fawned over from the adults because they were awesome (and skinny). I don't know what it would have been like to taken away as a child for being 250. I think I would have ate more but now that I'm an adult, I hate the fact that I grew up on fast food, diet sodas and chips probably have a slight addiction to it. The only homecooked meal I would get was at my babysitters and later on, it was hamburger helper once a month. Awesome family!

My family did try to bribe me to lose weight all my life though. I would have fantasies that Santa or some Harry Potter like skills would grant me eternal skinniness. All my writing stories involved very Barbie-like characters. It didn't matter because they were skinny! I love knowing how to lose weight/proper nutrition now. Going to Subway every day is no way to diet which is what my mom would do.

If your kids are eating healthy and being active, there should be no problems. Any social worker should be able to see that. If you are stuffing fast food in their faces 2-3 times a day, that's different (that was my childhood).

this is a crazy world Life doesn't come with a book. You can be be over weight or skinny and no be heathly or in good shape been skinny is no always heathy being love is, So make sure your child feels the love first and then work on weight i have 2 children and one of them can eat anything they want to,and is under weight she 5'9 she weights 130 and try to gain weight has been to the doctor and nothing helps one of my children exercise all the time eat health never touch junk food and is 5'6 weight 145 and has diabetes .so things happen . I am a stay at home mom I always cook proper nutrition food for my family, am i a bad mommy course not is it my faulth my child is a diabete, course not life isn't always fair and somethings we dont get a choice . So make sure love,heath and exercise is a part of their life and they will be just fine and remember to take care and love yourself body mind and soul. And your kids will do just fine . Sometimes we forget we are the most important thing in our kids life,so if your heathy then your be around to teach them. So don,t worry my family has a history of highblood pressure being overweight and cancer. But I can't control that so I have to studie and learn as much as i can and teach my kids about their family history, and at he end of the day thats all I can do

moonspinner - Be good to yourself, and good to your children. Don't let fear stop you from living a healthful life, educate yourself, and educate all your children. No matter whether they have weight issues or not learning how to eat healthfully, how to think about what you are eating and developing a regularly active lifestyle is good for all of us.

Moonspinner, I would seek advice and professional help for your child that has the problem. I see it absolutely NO different than taking a child to an Optometrist for vision problems or to a speech therapist for speech delay.

I guess I offer that ambiguously though since I don't know her stats. If my child was in the upper overweight category or beyond (obese, morbidly obese, super morbidly obese), I would know I was feeding my child too many calories. Whether or not siblings eat less healthy or whatever doesn't matter. Every child's needs are different in every respect--including caloric needs. Is it fair? No. But it's absolute reality. So many terrible things arise from facing weight problems as child--some of them life changing and lifelong patterns.

If nothing else, seeking professional advice SHOWS that you are concerned and realize that your child needs help. I would certainly find a professional though that knows what the HECK they are doing and has a successful history working with children! Your school nurse may be able to help find someone or perhaps your regular pediatrician.

I must agree with the poster above that says to make sure your child feels nothing but LOVE and ACCEPTANCE from you though. First and foremost.

You didn't say how old your child is and that would impact my answer. If she is 6 - 10 years old I'd try to modify her diet and let her grow into her weight, so to speak. If she's older, I think I'd have frank discussions about how you want to get healthier and you want her to get healthier, too, and work on it together.

I'm going to say something now that might get some people upset. That isn't my goal. Here goes. Why is it that people say "My family has a history of being overweight?" but no on ever says, "My family has a history of being thin?" I think families who tend to have many overweight people tend to eat the way overweight people eat. I was overweight (252 pounds - close to morbid obesity) in a family of thin people. I went to a 60th birthday party for my high school class in September and if I had not lost 90 pounds, I would have been the most overweight classmate there except for one guy. I have a group of friends that range from average weight to way past morbidly obese. The heaviest of those friends comes from a family of large people, but you should see the way they eat! I think "heavy" runs in families (or circles of friends, too) because we spend so much time together sharing habits. And one habit is eating like heavy people. I think it's mental, not physiological.

We have to change that and eat like thin people. Easier said than done. Work at it, though, and you'll dispel the myth that your family is simply doomed to being heavy. Won't it be great to be the first? You came to the right place for support, advice, opinions, hugs, and cheers. Welcome to the board. Set goals on a weekly basis for behavior and for weight loss. Do everything you can to break the bad habits. It gets easier, in my opinion, and soon the attitude will be more "thin" than "heavy."

Lin

linJber, as a person that comes from a long line of fat people, I can tell you what you said hits home for us--once I altered my lifestyle, I had no problems..it was totally my lifestyle and NOT my DNA causing my problem.

Childhood obesity doesn't run in the family I was raised in, and my experience was so different than everyone else's that I do wonder (and suspect) that obesity does run in my biological family.

I suspect there is a genetic component, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that childhood-obesity does run in my bio-family.

My mother was fat (having gained her weight in her late 20's and early 30's), and many people blamed my weight on her (but couldn't explain why my three siblings were not overweight).

My brother and I are adopted (and not bio-related), and our weight patterns are very different than our parents. Our younger sisters (my parents bio-kids) follow the patterns of our parents. One like mom, gaining weight around her 30th birthday, and one like dad, is almost effortlessly thin (only ever being overweight after her second and third pregnancy - and only then for less than 6 weeks. After her third child, she joined WW and reached her goal weight in only 6 weeks).


Suspecting a genetic component didn't inspire me to blame my genes and give up. It made me see one possible explanation for the difficulties I had, and inspired me to work harder (and be ok with it). I figured that if I did have a "fat gene" I would have to be even more dilligent than everyone else - but it also gave me hope because I didn't have to believe I was lazy, crazy, or stupid anymore.

I agree with Lin. My family is mostly heavy because all the family recipes are terribly unhealthy (baked rice made with 1 cup rice and 1 stick of butter, really?!) and traditions are mostly involved with eating said unhealthy family recipes. Not to mention, when we all get together we never do anything active. We sit around, talk, eat, watch movies, etc. The obese family lifestyle is passed down, not fat genes.

It's hard to break away from the mould, especially at family gatherings. Persistence in reminding them about loving your new healthy lifestyle will sink in eventually though.

I think it's a bit of both, honestly.

^I AGREE ~ yes, some families have over-eating patterns, but some families don't ... and over-generalizing is a mistake & unkind. My paternal grandparents were normal weight, ate healthy, but they did work at it. My maternal family struggled with their weight, as did both my parents. My father is now normal weight again (after being ill and working hard at it). My mother struggled her whole life.

Some of my siblings are overweight, but some are not; so that disproves the family over-eating pattern theory. I'll say it -- my husband's family are all lower weight people, and have a history of being in the normal weight range ... However, my husband can & does eat anything & all he wants, and is still 120 lbs soaking wet. He overeats, but he isn't overweight. Many people are like this ...

Stating the fact that your family has weight issues, doesn't mean they don't have over-eating patterns or visa-versa -- it's just an observation. I have heard food scientists say that weight issues can & do have some genetic components for some people (ie people with diabetes, thyroid, or other hormone issues, etc) ...


OP ~ DR. LUSTIG, (google him) is a pediatrician that has a clinic for helping kids with weight issues; he does not put them on a diet, but encourages them to make small changes, called switches ...

1) SWITCH sugary pop and fruit juices for milk & water ...
2) SWITCH junk to whole fruit & nutrient-rich foods & snacks ...
3) SWITCH simple processed foods to *high-fiber* foods ...
4) SWITCH to natural, whole foods; esp raw foods, ie nuts, seeds ...
5) SWITCH to a more active lifestyle; kids must do 1 hour of exercise (esp outdoors) for every hour they spend watching TV or playing on their PC. Minimum 1 hour each day.

Yes! Example, my very large cousins would all salt, salt, salt, salt their food. I couldn't imagine salting food that much. It kinda made me feel sick to watch.

I won't deny that physical attributes have biological roots. Maybe weight fits in with this, maybe not. My SIL's family are all built with the same general frame - wide shoulders, narrow hips. Men and women. My mom's family all look alike. You could pair up any number of cousins (and our kids, too, who are 3 generations removed from our common grandparents) and tell people they are siblings and no one would doubt it. We ALL look alike. My dad's family all have very similar personality traits, like outlook on life, attitude, etc.

I think we do ourselves a disservice to say we come from a long line of heavy people, however. I'm probably as old as many of your mothers. Probably even as old (close, anyway) as a few of your grandmothers. I am 60, and my whole life there were things available to me that were not available to the generation before me. We can't begin to compare our lifestyles with those of our parents or grandparents. My grandparents were born in the 1870's and 1880's. Think of the physical labor they had to do just to get through the day. There were no processed foods. No fast food. No machines to replace physical labor.

Anyone my age had access their whole life to machines that made life simpler. Cars, washing machines, dryers, gas and electric stoves, gas and electric furnaces. You didn't have to cut wood or shovel coal for fuel. You didn't have to walk everywhere. In the 60's when I was in middle and high school, fast food was available even in the very small town in central PA where I grew up. Packaged food and TV dinners were available. More women were working and the food industry catered to making it easier for them to serve supper after working all day. All this contributes to my generation and those that follow having weight issues that those before us didn't have. I think we have to draw a line across time before we generalize that our family member might all tend to be heavy. I'll bet that very few of us had heavy relatives who began their adult lives prior to 1920 or there abouts.

If being overweight was truly a matter of simply being a family trait, then the statistics on obesity would not be very different today than they were in past years. If Family X was always overweight, then their statistics would not have changed much as the years go by. But there was a huge increase in the percentage of obese people in the US between 1986 and 2008 (the rate of obesity quadrupled) and the rate continues to rise.

The rate of obesity in children 6 - 11 tripled in the years from 1980 to 2008. It more than tripled for teens. Obesity in the elderly is lower than the rate for adults and for children. This tells me the younger you are, the more at risk you are. Popular culture (culture = lifestyle) as a whole is to blame.

Southern states have the highest obesity rates (Mississippi is #1). New England states tend to have the lowest. Hawaii is 50th, California is 41st - I guess it's the bathing suit life style. It seems that where you live (and the lifestyle associated with where you live) might have as big an influence as who you are. But no one says, "I'm overweight because I'm from Mississippi."

I was overweight because I ate too much and because I wasn't active enough. Simple facts. I suspect the same holds true for most of us if we're honest about it.

Lin

This all assumes no hormonal imbalance, no PCOS, no other real medical problem that might prohibit a person from being able to maintain an ideal weight.

When I was in nursing school, a professor once told us: Heredity loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger.
I think that is dead on when it comes to how much is genetic and how much we control.
Having said that, I'd like to introduce the idea of perspective. I grew up in a family where it was normal to never exercise for recreation. No bike rides. (I bought my own bike, and taught myself to ride a bike as a teen.) No playing in the park. No walks, runs, or voluntary movement of any kind. No one played sports. We played video games together (original Nintendo!) and board games. We watched TV.
Our eating habits were a sin. I was raised drinking whole milk with breakfast, which was on most days an adult sized portion of buttermilk pancakes with butter and syrup and bacon or sausage. For lunch and dinner, I was given regular soda. That's all I drank until I had my own job and started drinking regular iced tea. I never really thought about drinking water! Meals were things like burgers and fries. Veggies were always canned and only a spoonful or two at meals. Some dinners were just a meat. Like just a pile of BBQ chicken. And my parents buttered and salted everything FOR ME. I grew up salting and buttering canned veggies. I was allowed to eat whenever, whatever and as much as I wanted with no restraint. Parents that "controlled" their kids eating habits were bad parents as per my family...but HELLO!! I was a size 20 in 8th grade. I had to shop in plus size women's stores. WTH?


This was normal for me. This was normal for my family. And now that I am grown and have two kids of my own, I can see that when a family is so deluded into thinking the way they live is normal, that they have a very skewed idea of healthy, normal portions, even what's active. What my dad defines as active, is NOT active. He thinks I was active as a kid. His idea of active was leaving the bed each day, and the fact that I was physically able to reach speeds a little faster than walking (fast walk) if we were to go out to the car. (An 8 year old that runs ahead of him to the car is "active") And his concept of portion sizes is insane! A four year old does not need a fully loaded hamburger with a pile of fries followed by a big freaking bowl of ice cream. (Don't forget the regular soda in a bottomless cup!) Now we here, might say "duh!" but to him he really is so uneducated / informed on healthy eating and portion sizes, that if you asked him, he would tell you he fed his kids healthy and they were just fat.

I think what I'm getting at is when we say a child is active and eating healthy and they are obese, people do look at the parent. Not that obese parents are intentionally over feeding their kids, but what the parent might see as "normal" is subjective, and maybe they do need some outside help.
I can't say that I wish I was removed from my home, but maybe if I had things would have followed a different path. Let's face it, parents don't just instill our eating habits, but often they instill our percieved relationship with food. It was easy for me to change to healthy eating. I don't think there's a shadow of my childhood food selection in my home today. But my relationship with food, runs much deeper. I was shown to turn to food as a crutch, as a pick me up, as a surprise, an activity, a reward, an event, a way to relax, as the main focus of the day, as a way to express love, and I was even told and taught that "health" people, or people that don't eat tastey foood like "us" our depriving themselves, are "obsessive", "boring" and that people that are thin have "something emotionally wrong with them" for not eating, or they stave themselves....THAT core belief haunts me daily.

On a lighter note, I have 2 boys and the older one could care less about food. If I didn't remind him to eat, he wouldn't. He actually had issues with not gaining weight in a healthy way (like he was getting taller and not gaining at all) he's also a picky eater. One could eat a buffet of food infront of him and he doesn't care. My little one however, could eat a whole meal then want for everyone else's food. My guess it my older one doesnt see anything special about eating, while my younger one enjoys it. So I can see how different children may find a different amount of pleasure in eating. Perhaps that's the genetic part??