Читать книгу Why Can't My Child Stop Eating? - Debbie Danowski - Страница 10
ОглавлениеSOCIETY, FOOD, AND EMOTIONAL EATING
TAKING A DEEP BREATH, I DUG MY fingers into the palms of my hand. I knew what was coming. Within a matter of a few seconds I would be assaulted. Forcing myself not to look in the direction of the teenagers gathered in front of the garage on the corner, I said a silent prayer that they wouldn’t notice me, especially today in front of Linda, a girl in my grade for whom my mother occasionally babysat and who walked home with me after school on the days she came to our house.
My heart began to pound as I bit my lower lip to stop the tears that were welling up in my eyes. I forced myself to try and concentrate on what Linda was saying. Though I saw her mouth moving, I had no idea what the words were. Then I heard the high-pitched voices call out.
“Look at the whale! Why doesn’t she go back to the ocean?” Laughter filled the air.
“Fat ass. Lose weight.” Again, the laughter.
Walking as fast as my layers of fat would allow, I kept my head high and focused my eyes straight ahead, digging my front teeth even harder into my lower lip. I knew my eyes would betray me, so I avoided Linda’s gaze and prayed that she wouldn’t tell anyone else about this. It wasn’t as if she was a friend. I barely knew her. Like everyone else at school, she stayed away from me.
“That’s so disgusting. How could anyone let themselves get so fat?” I heard the deep voice behind me.
My knees shook as I prayed that my legs wouldn’t give out underneath me. If I fell now, in front of “them,” I would surely die of embarrassment. A few more steps and I could no longer hear the laughter I knew was still there.
Reaching my house, I pulled at the front door handle, rushing in before Linda. Unclenching my fists and letting my shoulders droop, I exhaled slowly. I was home. I was safe.
Clearing my throat, I looked at my mother.
“Maybe you can make us Mommy Burgers so Linda can try one.” I used my sweetest voice. My mother hesitated only for a second before her eyes filled with sympathy, and then she nodded her head.
I could feel the saliva gathering in the corner of my mouth as I thought about the two cheeseburger patties sandwiched between three slices of white bread, slathered with gobs of mayonnaise on one side and ketchup on the other. I knew that since we had company, my mother would do as I requested—even allowing me to eat two.
As I bit into the thick sandwich, my whole body relaxed. Even if no one else in the world liked me, I knew that my mother loved me. No matter what I did or how fat I was, she would always be there. Smiling at my mother, I hoped she would give us dessert next . . . .
To my parents, and so many other members of their generation, a fat child was a healthy child. Coming from times and places that had experienced deprivation and want such as a Great Depression survived by my grandparents and the aftermath of World War II when my parents lived through food rationing, they embraced a cultural ethos that told them that the preparation and presentation of food was not only necessary for survival, it was a demonstration of love. And so they fed me accordingly.
As a child, I believed that the more food my parents bought and prepared for me the more they loved me. As I grew older and moved from the haven of family to the bigger world of the classroom, eating became a way of coping with the pain I experienced as the fattest child in elementary school. And though I didn’t know it at the time, I was setting myself up for a lifetime of emotional eating that would eventually result in my reaching a top weight of 328 pounds. Growing up in a time when treatment for eating disorders and individual counseling were looked at as stigmatizing a family’s reputation, I never imagined that there was any other way to deal with my emotions.
On television, I saw mothers who regularly baked cookies to show love for their children. I studied the way these families gathered at the dinner table to discuss the events of the day, all while enjoying a mouthwatering meal lovingly prepared by Mom. And during the commercial breaks, I saw toys intertwined with food, too—my favorite being a real, working oven whose heat supply was a light bulb. With this little jewel, I could actually bake and frost a real cake. Then, there were the cereal boxes, each containing a prize. I could barely contain myself, finishing the sugary flakes in record time to reach the plastic treasure.
In books, I read about Nancy Drew and the delectable meals she and her father shared, oftentimes inviting her boyfriend Ned and best friends George and Bess. To me, this was the ultimate in true friendship—being able to eat in front of friends without worrying about what they would think.
In real life, I knew that if I went to the dentist, the doctor, or even the bank, the receptionists or tellers there would have candy or a lollipop for me if the experience was stressful or there was a long wait. They all did their best to make my visit more pleasant. This was great—but holidays were the best. For weeks before these special days, my mother and grandmothers would bake cookies and cakes that I only got to eat once or twice a year. Christmas was my favorite because there was even more food around than during any of the other holidays, and my grandmother baked a particular Italian delicacy—something she only did once a year.
DID I HIDE THE PAIN AND SHAME of the teasing I endured because I didn’t trust my parents? No. In fact, it was nearly the opposite—I didn’t want to worry them. I grew up knowing that my parents were desperately concerned about the size of my body. They always did whatever they could to try to encourage me to lose weight. I truly believe that either one of them would have given a limb if it would have solved my problem.
I approach this book with the knowledge that whether or not you are a parent of an overweight child, a stepparent, a grandparent, a guardian, an aunt or uncle, or a close friend, you share the same concern for the child in your life that my parents had for me. You are probably willing to do whatever you have to in order to help your child become healthier, yet it is my guess that you have been bombarded with so much information that you are uncertain about how to proceed. I know this because as a twenty-three-year-old adult, I was faced with the same situation. I had tried just about every diet program out there and had failed. I didn’t know what was missing in my efforts and was completely overwhelmed by the amount of weight-loss information available.
Through intensive individual and group counseling and even by spending six weeks of my life in inpatient psychiatric treatment, I eventually discovered that I had, and have, a physical addiction to sugar, flour, and caffeine—a concept that was quite unknown during the late 1980s. With a lot of hard work, I was able to turn my life around but at a very severe cost. Choosing good health for myself today, one day at a time, means accepting I cannot eat items that contain large amounts of sugar, flour, or caffeine.
To maintain my recovery, I weigh and measure my food and plan each and every bite that goes into my mouth. Though extreme, this is the only thing that has ever worked in my life. For the past twenty-three years, I have enjoyed a 150-pound weight loss and lived a relatively normal life which is not adversely affected by food and eating. I choose to live this way, one day at a time, in order to maintain my hard-won health.
What does all of this have to do with you, the child in your life, and this book? For starters, this book is an attempt to save your child from experiencing the intense pain of recovery from a full-fledged addiction. As a child, I was unaware of the ways that I used food to deal with my emotions. For me, food was comfort. It was my friend, my lover, and even my confidante. No matter what was happening in my life, I felt that I would get through it—as long as I had my food. Overeating was as natural to me as breathing.
At the time, I didn’t realize that I was planting the seeds of addiction by using food to deal with my emotions. The concept of emotional eating, though gaining more popularity today, was never even a consideration when I was a child. My parents simply did what they had learned from their parents, who did what they had learned from their parents, and so on. No one had the knowledge to realize that emotional eating could be dangerous to children and to society as a whole.
Today, though the concept of emotional eating is gaining more attention—as evidenced by appearances like the one I made on the FOX Cable News show The O’Reilly Factor, during which I discussed the topic—there is little, if any, information about specifically helping your child to overcome his or her emotional eating. Similarly, although there are several well-written and respected books about the societal attitudes that contribute to overeating (Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health by Marion Nestle, and Food Fight: The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America’s Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do About It by Kelly D. Brownell and Katherine Battle Horgen are two good examples), there is little information about changing emotional eating patterns in children. This book aims to change that.
In these pages, you will not find a recommended food plan for your son or daughter, nor will you find growth charts telling you what your child should weigh. Bookstore shelves and pediatricians’ offices are filled with this information, so it can be easily obtained. Rather, this book will concentrate on addressing the emotional issues that are tied to eating and food. While most of us know what constitutes a healthy meal, how many of us are aware of the emotions behind the food that we present to children on a regular basis?
Societal solutions, though alluded to in these pages, are not the focus of this book. You, the reader, whether as an individual family member or friend of an overweight child, will find here specific suggestions that you can take to improve the quality of that child’s life by severing the link between emotional connection and food.
Because this information may be new to you, and may at times seem radical or unusual, it’s important that you prepare yourself before you read on. First, please know that the single most important thing you can do while reading this is to stop blaming yourself for your child’s situation. It’s vital that you are aware of this tendency right up front. As you will discover, there are many societal attitudes that contribute to emotional eating. You did not invent these, nor are you responsible for them. Once you’ve read the information in this book, you can make a decision about what you will change; but it is never okay to punish yourself for things you think you’ve done wrong. As a parent, you did the very best you could with what you knew. Once you know more, you can change your patterns.
Second—please keep an open mind. Some of the concepts you will read will be unfamiliar to you and may seem extreme. Try to remain open to the suggestions. Remember, you are questioning societal attitudes that have been pervasive for decades. These attitudes are ingrained in our culture—they have in some instances become part of the traditions and observances we celebrate and enjoy as Americans. This being said, keep in mind that serious problems require serious solutions. If you have truly tried everything you can think of to help your child with little success, then you owe it to yourself and your child to open your mind to the information presented here. It may be the only chance you have to save your child from the life I described above.
In tandem with this, though you may be tempted to put all of these suggestions into action immediately, that is not a good idea. Throughout this book, you will be reminded to choose one or two areas to work on rather than trying to do everything. Decide what you consider to be your child’s most troublesome area and work on that. If you attempt to change everything all at once, you will create resentment in your child and perhaps even in yourself. This will not only be counterproductive, it will make your efforts seem haphazard and thus ineffective. The size of the effort is not nearly as important as the consistency behind it. One small and consistent change will mean more than ten sporadic ones. Keep in mind that big journeys begin with small steps.
As you continue to read, you will learn more about how to deal with the “saying-no-to-food” guilt. For right now, think about many of the ways that food is used as something other than a means of nourishing human bodies. It would be very helpful for you to make a list of those ways that may be present in your child’s life that food is used for a purpose other than nutrition. Here are some ideas to get you started. (Remember, the items listed here are not the only ways food is used to deal with emotions.)
• A baby cries and a parent automatically reaches for a bottle.
• A child goes to the doctor for a shot and is presented with a lollipop afterward.
• A preschooler learns to bake cookies as a classroom activity.
• A child is threatened with “no dessert” if the entire plate of food is not eaten.
• A kindergartener is bribed with an ice cream cone for good behavior during a haircut.
• A filled cookie jar sits on the kitchen counter in one family’s home to serve as a reward for good behavior to the children who live there.
• An elementary school child’s parents are asked to provide cupcakes to celebrate their child’s birthday in class.
• A yearly family activity involves making cookies for Grandma’s birthday.
• Following a day of outdoor activities, school children are presented with ice cream.
• Middle school students taking part in a musical play convene after the performance to eat cake and cookies at the wrap party.
• A child invites others over to a pizza birthday celebration.
• A high school student puts money in a vending machine to buy two candy bars for a quick lunch so she has more time to talk to the boy she likes.
• Stressed-out over constant bickering, a parent relents, giving a teenager $20 to have dinner out with friends.
• After a relationship breakup, a high school student eats a half-gallon of ice cream.
• Watching television cooking shows is a regular part of one family’s routine.
Does any one of these sound familiar? If not, were you able to come up with your own list? Whatever you found, take a moment to look it over. Are you surprised? How many of the items on your list did you do as a child? What about your parents? Do you know if they, too, did those things as children?
Don’t worry if you weren’t able to make a long list or couldn’t answer all of the previous questions. Later in the book, you will be asked to write more about this. Right now, the important thing is for you to begin thinking about the role food plays in your child’s life.
While you are contemplating all of this, think, too, about the fact that as a society, we give lip service to the idea that fruits and vegetables are important for our health, whereas our actions indicate that we value the flavor of fatty, high-calorie foods more because of their taste. “Remember, actions speak louder than words.”
While many parents would assert that they value fruits and vegetables, think for a minute exactly how that value is demonstrated. In many families, a great deal of energy is expended urging children to eat healthy foods, including fruits and vegetables. Sometimes even threats or bribes are used to accomplish this. Yet, how frequently do parents in these families actually model the behavior—eating fruits and vegetables—themselves? Or, if a parent tells a child to eat all of his or her vegetables so that he or she can have dessert, then the subtle message being sent is that dessert is more desirable than the actual meal. Dessert becomes a reward to be eaten only after a chore (eating vegetables) is accomplished.
Similarly, when a child is rewarded with special foods after accomplishing a difficult task or attending to an unpleasant event, the unconscious message is that the “reward foods”—usually high-calorie dessert items—are a means of soothing unpleasant feelings. Or, if a child’s school uses dessert items to celebrate birthdays and holidays, the lesson being imparted is that these items are more desirable than the everyday foods he or she regularly eats. This creates a food hierarchy wherein certain items are more important than others. Let’s consider what can happen when children are given these messages.
A child who receives the message that high-calorie dessert items are a form of comfort during difficult times will continue to turn to these when life becomes unpleasant. In the same way, a child taught to use these items to celebrate special events will become dependent on certain foods to have fun or receive satisfaction from life. Taken to the extreme, this behavior could lead to obesity, even death.
Though many of these social practices were established years before the current rise in obesity, the difference now is due to the extent and the combinations involved. Unlike in years past, today’s children are faced with a greater number of fears and challenges than ever before: rapid technological progress, the threat of war, unemployment, inflation, rising health care costs, extremely high beauty standards, child molestation, a rise in the number and degree of violent crimes, rising divorce rates, etc. The list could go on forever but the point is that children today are faced with numerous challenges. How many of us worried about even half of the things on this list when we were growing up? Quite the contrary to our experiences, children and young adults today regularly worry about most of the things mentioned.
For instance, graduating from high school no longer guarantees that teens will get good jobs or be successful. In fact, great pressure is put on today’s students to begin preparing for college admission in elementary school, with the result that a grade of B can be a cause for tears if the child in the next seat gets an A. Most children are subjected to the pressures of standardized tests well before entering their junior year in high school, while some begin as early as middle school to plan their college majors.
Those who dream of getting married can no longer look forward to a “happily EVER after.” Quite the opposite, as more than half of those marrying will end up in divorce courts within a few years. Children and adolescents are well aware of this.
Now, think for a second about children’s schedules today (and it’s only recently that such words as “children” and “schedule” would have been written in the same sentence). In the past, childhood was a time of freedom and of “making one’s own fun.” By contrast, today’s children are shuffled from activity to activity (music lessons, scout meetings, team sports, religious education, private instruction in a variety of subjects, etc.) in an effort to make them well-rounded adults and give them an edge in applying to college. Little, if any, time is left over for children to simply entertain themselves. The leisure time left gets eaten up by television and computers, neither of which involve the kind of meaningful physical activity that contributes to a fit frame, while at the same time standards for physical beauty have never been higher, for both boys and girls.
Interestingly enough, the recent rise in—and fear of—obesity among children has promoted a “look good on the outside” mindset. Today, even infants are provided with designer clothing. Store shelves abound with children’s makeup, nail polish, cologne, “sexy” underwear for young children, and so forth. The pressure for children to “look good” has never been greater.
Add to all of this the current state of the American family. Even children in two-parent families are aware of the negative effects of divorce. It is no longer guaranteed that both parents will be in a child’s life on a daily basis. Yet, children’s television programs and movies are filled with images of supposedly “perfect” two-parent families, much as they have been for generations. Thanks to endless reruns, today’s children are exposed to the same unrealistically divorce-free, intact-family-celebrating programming that their grandparents viewed.
Take for example, the fact that on several cable stations you can regularly view the programs that were popular when the Baby Boomers were youngsters. These stations regularly air repeats of shows such as The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. Though neither family has traditional roots (the Bradys are a blended family, created after both partners were widowed, and the Partridges do not have a traditional father present) both have strong, nurturing male and female characters. In the case of the Bradys, both parents are regularly available for the children while the Partridges have a strong mother and a nurturing father figure (the family’s band manager). Neither program makes allowances for the absent mothers or fathers who have become realities in today’s children’s lives. The fact that such television families are far from universal is never explained to the children who make up much of the television audience. No wonder that many children feel there is something wrong with their own families when viewed alongside such models of togetherness. That feeling of not being “normal” or even “good enough” can add to a child’s stress.
A real-life example of using food to deal with the stress of divorce comes from Sean, a child who began to overeat after his parents divorced. After moving to a new house, starting a new school, and seeing his father only on weekends, Sean began to overeat and watch an excessive amount of television, resulting in the seven-year-old’s ballooning to ninety-six pounds at four feet tall.
“I think maybe I contributed to the weight thing because I was so emotionally stressed about this divorce,” says his mother, Val. “I wanted him to feel okay, so I didn’t deny him anything.” Because children began teasing him, Sean finally asked his mother to help him lose weight.
As if school and family stressors aren’t enough, crimes against children are on the rise. It wasn’t too long ago that new mothers simply left their babies sleeping in their car seats for a quick run into the store. Today, this notion sends shivers down the spines of parents everywhere—and rightly so. To leave a child unattended in public for any length of time greatly increases the odds that the child will be harmed or even kidnapped. (And to leave an unattended child in a car is to risk his or her death from overheating or at the very least, a fine or public censure for the parent.) Young children are regularly fingerprinted for identification in case of foul play, and milk cartons and mail inserts are filled with pictures of missing children. No matter how hard parents may try to shield them, children and young adults are aware of the dangers surrounding them.
Put all of these stressors together—high academic expectations, overbooked schedules, more rigorous beauty standards, rising divorce rates, and increased crime against children—and you have some idea of the issues facing today’s children. In general, the emotional state of the country, and specifically of children, is chaotic and filled with fear. Now, more than ever, nurturing is needed to deal with the issues mentioned above. Unfortunately, many of today’s children are learning to nurture themselves by overeating.
Think for a moment about the many ways in which children are taught to use food to make themselves feel better. How many times has your child been offered a lollipop, cookie, or ice cream after a doctor’s visit, or a special comfort food like mashed potatoes or mac’n’cheese when he or she is sick?
Modern, Western parents no longer fear starvation, for themselves or their children. But it wasn’t so long ago that food was scarce. It was not uncommon for people to suffer from and even die of malnutrition. Eating was therefore seen as a means of promoting health, and a fat child was seen as a healthy child. While our societal circumstances have changed, our attitudes have not. Food is still used to nurture children during difficult or stressful times. The biggest difference now, however, is that the abundance of foods high in fat and calories allows children to eat a greater variety and a more dangerous quantity of food to nurture themselves.
In addition to using food to soothe our children, we also use it to reward good behavior. The practice of using lollipops after a trip to the doctor or dentist, though fortunately being phased out in most modern medical and dental practices, continues in others. Even though this may seem innocuous enough, let’s consider for a second the unconscious message being sent to children. When food is used as a reward, children are given the idea that eating is associated with the good feelings of being rewarded. By making food a reward, we teach children to place too great a value on eating. Rather than sending the message that eating is a biological act needed to nurture our bodies, children are regularly taught that food is a reward for good behavior, thus setting up a form of competition between those foods considered desirable and those that are healthy, or, even more dangerous—the expectation that all good behavior will be rewarded with treats.
Consider for a moment that a child with this expectation misbehaves in the grocery store. In the past, he or she has been bribed to discontinue such behavior with a sweet treat. If given a cookie or candy, this child has learned that food is provided for a desired behavior—he or she has also learned how to manipulate others in order to receive high-calorie foods, thus setting up a dangerous cycle as the child grows. Imagine this child as a teenager who has just completed a difficult homework assignment or gotten a good grade on a test. What do you think he or she will desire as a reward? Even more alarming, how many times in his or her life do you think food will be used in this manner?
Taking this a step further, one of the most dangerous ways that food is used is as a means of showing love. While this concept is related to the previous discussion of using food to nurture, there is an important distinction here. Using food to show love means that children come to associate, perhaps even confuse, parental or familial love with food. Therefore, when a child feels unloved, he or she may seek out food. Taken to an extreme, this may result in morbid obesity at a very young age.
Rather than learning to deal with feelings of rejection or lack of affection in healthy ways, when food is used as love, children become conditioned to reach for food. As time goes on, children will grow into adults unable to distinguish between eating for biological reasons and eating for emotional solace. It’s important to read the previous sentence once again. The danger of using food to satisfy emotions lies in the fact that children (and later adults) become unable to recognize genuine feelings of hunger. Without knowing what physical hunger feels like, children are unable to use food in the manner for which it was intended—to nourish their bodies.
In addition to all of the feelings children often associate with food and eating in their families, there are many unhealthy messages presented through the media. On any given Saturday morning, children’s cartoons are filled with commercials for fast and junk foods targeted to convince young minds into believing that fun can be had by consuming these products. One of the biggest examples of this is the creation of cultural icons designed to appeal to children. The biggest of the fast-food giants have their happy-go-lucky clown and their rambunctious king, and candymakers have even animated the candy-coated chocolate figures that “melt in your mouth, not in your hands,” sending them to parties, and even having them go trick-or-treating in commercials. Many candy commercials depict ordinary children at play.
Though these kinds of advertisements have been around for years and have come to be accepted as part of society, most people have never thought about the messages being sent to children. When a group of children or young adults appears in commercials, eating chips or candy while laughing and having fun, viewers are given the subtle—and sometimes not so subtle—message that eating these high-calorie items will add fun and excitement to their lives. Yet the reality is actually quite different. Eating these items will cause children to gain weight, thus making them unable to participate in the portrayed activities.
Taking all of this information and putting it together, it is easy to see how children have come to associate food and eating with many emotions and actions. Using food to nurture children, as a reward, to show love, and to help them experience fun and freedom, puts greater importance on food than necessary. And when food is used to deal with or express feelings, children do not learn healthy coping skills. Rather, a child who knows only food as a means of coping with stress, expressing emotions, or nurturing is more likely to turn to eating to deal with life’s problems.
Now, add to this the fact that inactivity, likely due to television and Internet use, is increasing and physical education classes are being cut or downsized and the problem becomes even more serious. According to the most recent study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, available at the organization’s website (http://aspe.hhs.gov), “Schools are decreasing the amount of free play or physical activity that children receive during school hours. Only about one-third of elementary children have daily physical education, and less than one-fifth have extracurricular physical activity programs at their schools. Daily enrollment in physical education classes among high school students decreased from 42 percent in 1991 to 25 percent in 1995, subsequently increasing slightly to 28 percent in 2003. Outside of school hours, only 39 percent of children ages 9–13 participate in an organized physical activity, although 77 percent engage in free-time physical activity.”
Furthermore, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse, approximately 215,000 people younger than twenty years of age have diabetes. Among those twenty years or older, 1.9 million people were newly diagnosed with diabetes in 2010. Approximately 20,000 youths each year are diagnosed with diabetes. This number is expected to increase.
While many point to genetics as the reason for the problems discussed in this chapter, two researchers disagree and point out that society and the cultural environment contribute greatly. The associate director of the division of nutrition at Harvard Medical School points out that genetics in humans have only experienced small changes. As previously noted, 20 to 40 percent of overweight cases are attributable to genetics, and 60 to 80 percent to lifestyle. If we accept this as true, and I do, the rate of childhood obesity can greatly be reduced by making lifestyle changes.
Though the last sentence is the key to successfully helping your child to stop emotionally overeating, please remember that you don’t have to make these lifestyle changes all at once. If you’ve read all of the information in this chapter, you’ve already “digested” a great deal. You may be feeling overwhelmed, or even worse, ineffective as a parent. Realize that these thoughts are quite normal but at the same time think about the fact that they may not be true. Whenever a person begins something new, his or her subconscious feels threatened. The way that the subconscious manages these threats is by using fear or negative thinking as a way to prevent further action.
In other words, since you first began reading this, your subconscious has been in protection mode, attempting to keep your current life intact. This is accomplished by trying to sabotage any new efforts you make at improving your life. Try to think of your subconscious as the voice of a scared child. When a child feels threatened, he or she is likely to “act out,” saying and doing negative things to try and feel in control of the situation. It’s the same with your subconscious. When the status quo of your life seems threatened with change, whether for the better or not, a part of your mind kicks into action to stop something—anything—new from happening.
You are at that point right now. Your mind is telling you all of the reasons why you shouldn’t even begin to undertake changing your child’s eating habits. And it is doing so in a very subtle way. The voices inside of your head probably aren’t denying the fact that your child’s eating habits need improvement. Instead, they are finding things to criticize about the information you’ve just read. They are telling you that this will be too much work or that you don’t have the time. Or perhaps your inner voices are saying that your child isn’t “that bad” or doesn’t need help. Rather than listen to your voices, consider the following example.
At thirteen, Dana was nearly twenty-five pounds overweight and miserable. Unable to participate in many of the same activities that her normal-weight friends did, Dana often turned to food as way of handling the sadness she felt. Though her well-meaning mother regularly tried to limit her intake of junk food, the result was disastrous. Dana, feeling out of control in her life, was determined to have power over her eating no matter how destructive it was. Every time her mother prohibited her from eating high-calorie foods, Dana sneaked food without her mother’s knowledge. The two were at odds with no hope of making any progress.
Desperate to get her daughter help, Dana’s mother decided to follow several of the suggestions outlined in this book. First, she had an honest conversation with her daughter about the health risks of obesity. Then, she began to concentrate on being a good role model by eating healthier herself. And, finally, Dana’s mother offered her daughter several options for changing her eating habits. Rather than impose strict guidelines, Dana’s mother let her child have a say in solving her problem. Even more important, Dana’s mother made sure that her daughter was provided with alternative ways of dealing with the emotions that she regularly ate over.
Today, Dana is a happy, well-adjusted teenager who is living life to the fullest. She no longer needs to overeat and has since learned to eat healthy meals. Dana also made exercise a regular part of her routine. Now, at a normal weight, Dana is enjoying a life she never could have imagined several months ago.
This was only possible because her parents took actions that were unfamiliar, even frightening, at times. Now, it’s your turn. Are you ready to help change your child’s life? If so, read on and find out how.
