16-Year-Old’s ‘Fat Kid’ Memories Will Change the Way You Talk to Your Kids

As this girl's story illustrates, people gain weight for different reasons. Generally it's assumed that one is heavier because they have no self control but it's often much more complicated. Or in this girl's case because of something she couldn't control. I also know that personally shaming-as in that Georgia campaign-is not a motivating factor for everyone. In my case it makes me feel worse about myself and then it has the opposite effect of what's intended. The worse I feel about myself the less control I have and the more likely I am to make poor choices. While there may be some people who take criticism as a challenge and will lose weight as a result I doubt it works for the majority.

That poor girl. I suppose I'm fortunate that I never had a big weight problem growing up, but the pressure to stay that way is so great. I've always had a thin frame, but if one extra ounce of weight was added to it my mom loved to pinch my butt and say something like "Ooh, we're getting a little plump back there!" and then when I'd lose a little bit she would complain that I was too thin. I worry for my daughter, who is four, and how things are going to be for her when she gets older. I hope she can learn to fight against the body type-hype and be happy (and healthy) in her own body.

Thank you for this article! My mom always had the best intentions when she talked to me during my "heavier" years in high school, and to this day, I have a thwarted view of myself and what "thin" is. It is such a complicated subject for sensitive young girls

This just makes me so happy that all of this has come to fruition, thanks to Regan.  I have read her blog for years and she is a champion of Health at Every Size.  I'm so, so proud of her!  

It is really so important to teach girls to love their bodies!! My SD grandmother tells her not to drink too much milk or she will get fat. & one of my dads friends says his daughter is over weight when she is perfectly healthy!! These are both very beautiful girls being fed this nasty standard. 

I've told this story before, I'm sure... when I was around 7 (a skinny, gangly, active kid), my uncle (a man I idolized) looked at me and said, "you're getting a belly on you. You should start running." My dad routinely tried to "motivate" me by calling me a "wimp" and other names implying that I was pathetic and weak. He was a very athletic man, taught PE, and had me on a thrice-a-week weight-lifting program starting when I was 8. I hated every second of it. At the same time, my mother was watching every morsel I put in my mouth. If I ate more than a half a sandwich at lunch, she'd make comments about how fat I was going to get. (ironically, she also taught me to bake some of the best cakes and cookies you'd ever taste)

Fast forward 30-some-odd years, and here I am, almost 100 lbs overweight. Why? Because I am a defiant and emotional eater. ("I'm gonna eat these cookies, dammit, because *I* am in charge!!"..."I need some chocolate to make me feel better") I *hate* to lift weights. I *hate* running. Why? Because every time I ate, I had to justify the food going into my mouth. Because I was forced to lift weights, and I learned to hate it.

Shaming Does. Not. Work. Not on the majority of people. I have come to terms with the fact that I am probably going to struggle with this weight, and the consequences, for the rest of my life. Don't saddle other kids with it. Please.

All the "compliments" I got when I was little were so backhanded it wasn't even funny. I was told I was pretty...pretty ugly and pretty apt to stay that way. That will mess up your self-esteem something terrible. I wasn't a beautiful child, but I wasn't horrific looking, either. To this day, as a grown woman with my own kids, I have trouble with my self-esteem.

I tell my daughter all the time that she is smart, kind, sweet, helpful, pretty, good at whatever. I don't just tell her she is beautiful (although I think she is) because I don't want her to be one of those kids who only thinks of their looks, but I do tell her. She has so many lovely qualities and I want to make sure she knows what they are. I don't want my daughter raised the way I was, and end up with the same issues I have. Hopefully I'm doing it right.

I totally know where you're coming from, Antfarmer. When I was in grade school, I was uprooted from TX (where I had lots of friends) to OR (my mom's from Salem; I was the new kid with the thick Texas accent). When I started school there, it was hell. I'd always been a little heavy, but no one really cared til Oregon. I was called fat, ugly, Titanic...anything you can think of, I was called it. Didn't help that my family was lower middle class and I didn't wear brand-name clothing, but hand-me-downs from my grandma and Goodwill. Once I started middle school, it got a little better, I made some friends, but things didn't really turn around til 8th grade (that summer, I dropped my baby fat and got relatively slim). All the boys that teased and tortured me suddenly had crushes on me! I'm 28 now, and I still have image issues.

As a kid, I was sexually molested in Jr. Hi. for about 2 yrs by a neighbor. I had never been thin, but at that time, I decided that if that's what guys were interested in, being overweight was the way to go to keep them away from me. Also grew up with seizures, so running didn't work for me (hyperventilation led to a seizure) and had to watch out for situations in which I could get hurt (swimming, hiking, horseback riding). Never got into exercise. Years later, after surgery for the seizures (stopped them--Amen!), went to a dietitian who stated that she'd never met a woman severely overweight who had not been sexually abused. Friend's sister (incest survivor) is way overweight, as is another friend whose father was a pedo. Not saying that the weight is a sure sign of molestation in the case all women (or girls), but it just may be the thing they feel is protecting them from more abuse. See Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, p. 160-161.