3 Fat Chicks on a Diet Weight Loss Community - Holy wotsit

I like 'Ian Wright's Unfit Kids' - that's a good show. The kids have awful attitudes though and even he struggled to get through to them (so what chance their parents or teachers would have, gods only know). My own kids are thin as whippets - they never get processed food at home at all (except for birthdays) and chocolate is a 'treat'. TBH, I'm as bothered about their dental health as their general health - and because I'm an organic, veggie wholefood type of person, they are constantly exposed to that anyway. All my kids chose to eat meat and it's minging (smells like poo if you don't eat it, after a while) and I hate having to even look at it but am forced to cook the stuff. But apart from meat, they don't eat anything unhealthy on a regular basis. (I try and buy free range, and if I can't afford that just get the best the local butcher has, from local farmers).

I had a mate years ago with an obese 7 or 8 year old, and she got VERY defensive when anyone tackled her about it, and yet it had got to the point her obesity impacted her education and everything as she was a school refuser and it was pretty clear school was a hard place for her to be, at that weight. My friend had a lovely figure, and her son was a normal size, but the little girl was really not overweight but obese. But if you pushed my friend a bit on it, she'd cave in and admit the kid had pizza for breakfast and this whole litany of processed and rubbish food, cakes and biscuits, etc all day. I said to her *Just don't buy it if it's not in the cupboards how can she be eating it?* It's not like a child has an income to go down the shops, either, unless you give them money! But my mate said the child just created such a fuss, she gave in and she couldn't cope with the tantrums (no doubt sugar fuelled). She thought I was hard. Have had the same issues closer to home with a family member. Again, a female. She looks at my 18 year old who is very skinny and snake-hipped and she says *It's not fair, why can't I be like him? He can eat anything and not get fat!* But the truth is, he desn't eat that much, doesn't eat between meals very often and if he goes round her house, he pigs out on chockie biscuits and crap because they're a novelty he doesn't have at home. The female relative on the other hand, can't lose weight because her parents have a fridge full of utter crap - stuff like pop, even the diet ones are full of chemicals and you're kidding yourself if you think otherwise - and biscuits, and bought cakes etc. If my kids have cakes - once or twice a week - it's as a pudding to a meal and they're homemade, so I know what's in them. No preservatives, chemicals, dyes, E numbers, or sweetners - only wholefoods!

It's hard to brooch this with the overweight teenager or child, though.

My very overweight relative just walked away from a teaching course she had worked so hard to get on that degree - and now has no hope of finding a job with comparable pay, etc - and although she won't say it, I can;t help wondering if that isn't weight related (knowing how brutally honest little kids are - she was going to teach infants...) That it has impacted her self esteem to the point she dropped out of a degree doing the one thing she ever wanted to do - I'm guessing teaching PE and all these new health education initiatives would be embarrassing for her, too. Like my friend's school drop out 8 year old - child obesity is a really important issue that ends up impacting self esteem, and maybe even their life chances.