Where do fat kids come from?

The children of my generation were born into the families of those who were born after the great The Patriotic War. We no longer starved, but did not know food abundance, and still sometimes nostalgically remember about the queues for sugar and butter, the distribution of products on coupons and food "orders" with caviar and balyk on holidays.

We were taught to eat everything with bread – “you can’t eat otherwise”, and to eat enough sweets happened only on a birthday. In each family, they were able to bake at least an apple pie "Charlotka", and then something and troublemakers, cook pour and hot. Food was a holiday, especially tasty and abundant, and the holiday automatically meant food – also abundant and tasty. Any event was marked by a feast, after which the fridge remained puds with malnourished foods, any lunch necessarily consisted of three dishes - without soup you did not receive a second, and without a second - dessert. It was us, based on our own experience, who came up with a joke about a mole mother who says to a child: “If you don’t finish your socks, you won’t get a fur coat!”

Raising the well-fed and sudden abundance In our childhood, thin children were considered almost candidates for the next world. Grandmothers, wailing and wailing, cooked special porridge and baked special cakes, "as long as the child eats." A good appetite was considered a great advantage of the child, much more than, for example, mathematical ability. As a child, we were told a story about the owner who hired farmhands – a wise master would treat them to lunch and choose the one who ate the best. It is reasonable, because we were also prepared for farmwork - women needed to be able to combine work in their specialty and housekeeping in the absence of an understanding owner with half a word of household appliances, men - to be able to do small repairs around the house and in the car, to fill the garden in the country.

It was time we had our own children. It turned out to be a time of abundance. Today in all major cities of the world you can try any national cuisine, buy the most exquisite and rare products. The number of restaurants and cafes long ago exceeded the number of museums and schools, for people today seem to eat much more often and more than they learn or join in the beautiful. That’s probably not bad, because that’s what we wanted. It was only when those times came that we as parents were completely unprepared for them.

A secret mechanism

Today, neither nutritionists nor psychologists dealing with nutrition and overeating, it is no secret that the child's body has an innate, perfectly working mechanism that signals in time that the child is hungry and when he is full. Born into the world, a person has completely clear unconscious ideas about what he needs for a healthy and nutritious diet. In that case, if the process of its nutrition does not interfere.

But the more developed the world calls itself, the more adults tend to interfere in the process of feeding children, subordinate it to their convenience, the opinion of popular pediatricians, developmental norms, tables and ratings.

The results of the experiment, which I will tell you about, at one time had a very beneficial effect on my weakened maternal psyche (once I happened to become the mother of a boy who at one-year-old, one-and-a-half and two years of age practically did not eat anything). Grandmothers and pediatricians brought all sorts of buckwheat on me, my colleagues in the sandbox bragged about cheeky babies and the amount of food they ate, and I was looking for an answer to the question - why is it different for us, why does my child not eat a bowl of buckwheat porridge with meat at lunch, like the neighbor, but is content with two pieces of a banana or drying?

The answer was found in the description of the most famous, large-scale and long-running diet experiment of the century, conducted in 1928 by Clara Davis.

For 6 years, Davis observed small (aged 6 to 11 months) guests of a special dietary kindergarten organized for the purpose of this experiment. Participants in the experiment were children of single mothers who were unable to support and provide for their children, and children of teenage mothers from unwanted pregnancies. Most of the children suffered from severe anemia and significant underweight, rickets and other disorders usually accompanying poor nutrition. Each meal and each piece of food the child ate was recorded over a period of six years, resulting in about 38 thousand records of the "food diary".

Food was offered to children but never imposed. Food was laid out in certain places, in sight of children. Babysitters who cared for babies who did not yet know how to walk, never actively offered food to children. Only if the child absolutely definitely reached for a certain type of food, he received it in a spoon. If the child refused to eat, the spoon was removed immediately.

Children who could walk on their own could easily approach and choose any types and combinations of food that they liked. The food offered was absolutely natural, each type of food was a monoproduct - combinations and mixing of products were not allowed. Why? To make sure your child chooses a specific, specific food for its nutritional value. Therefore, whole grains were present in the diet of the experiment, but there was no bread. All types of food were unsalted, salt was served in a separate bowl, like any other food, and children could choose it if they wanted. Among the proposed products were vegetables and fruits, several types of meat and offal (kidneys, liver), whole grain flakes and cereals, milk and dairy products.

Unspoiled by "normal" The first discovery of the experiment, now a scientific fact about the diet of children, was that children consume an uneven number of calories during the day, week or month. One day, they can eat double the daily calorie intake, the other barely gain half. On one day, the calorie content of food could reach the norm due to the consumption of a small amount of foods with a high calorie value, for example, meat or cereals, on the other - due to vegetables and fruits eaten in a large volume.

None of the young subjects’ eating styles matched the diets developed by the Institute of Pediatrics for their age, and neither diet was similar to the other. Each child ate differently. Those little scoundrels didn't care about food standards. They ate stewed liver, washed it down with milk and ate a couple of steep eggs. Tonight. They gladly placed a mug of banana on potatoes and with appetite absorbed this nightmare nutritionist.

It was found that, compared with the statistics of other children's institutions, the children who participated in the experiment, little and rarely get sick and experience minor health problems typical for this age. Constipation was unknown in this kindergarten. No cases of vomiting or diarrhea have been found. During the experiment, viral infections such as influenza, which sick children, passed with a low temperature and lasted no more than 3 days. During the recovery period, the children ate unusually high amounts of fresh meat, milk and fruit.

Of course, the participants of the experiment underwent regular and detailed medical examinations, which revealed an increase in hemoglobin in the blood to the normal level, normalization of calcium and phosphorus levels, excellent calcification of children's bones in those who suffered from rickets before the start of the experiment, in some cases - in advanced form. The most striking thing is that the children gained weight to the age-appropriate norm, but no more. Of course, the group had thinner and more thoroughly composed participants, but neither exhaustion nor obesity was noticed. One of the physicians involved in the medical evaluation of participants subsequently wrote an article in the authoritative pediatric journal (Brennemann, Psychologic aspects of nutrition in childhood, J. Pediatr., Aug. 1932, 1 (2): p. 152), calling the experimental group "the group of the healthiest physically and behaviorally human species" he had ever seen.

Later, a number of dietary experiments with children were conducted, which showed the exceptional ability of the human body to independently regulate the level and type of food consumption.

Yet, watching a group of children play in the yard, it’s hard not to wonder what remains of this marvelous mechanism to school age.

Where do fat kids come from? Why do 25% of boys and 20% of girls weigh significantly more than normal? The number of children suffering from obesity in Russia is constantly and dangerously increasing. In this sense, we are not much different from our European and American counterparts – this trend is observed almost all over the world. Currently, Russia occupies an intermediate position between the undisputed leaders of these sad statistics – Greece, the United States, Mexico, Italy and the United Kingdom, and absolute outsiders – all Asian countries (Japan, Korea, China), Switzerland, Norway, Poland and the Czech Republic.

At the same time, children begin to weigh themselves and skip breakfast earlier in order not to get better. Today, it’s no surprise to find 9-10-year-old girls and even boys discussing diets and ways to lose weight. The dietary experiments of parents are also not ignored.

Psychologists distinguish three types of eating behavior, inevitably leading to overeating, and, ultimately, to excess weight and obesity, these are:

1. External eating behavior. That is, external eating behavior, when the process of eating is triggered by any external factors (the presence of food, its appearance, smell, the behavior of people nearby, food "for company"), and not internal, i.e. the feeling of hunger and the desire to satisfy it.

2. Restrictive (dietary) eating behavior. Simply put, these are constant attempts to be on a diet and the consumption of insufficient amounts of food for the existing level of metabolism, which ultimately leads to an increase in the initial weight in 90% of cases - the pounds dropped in the first weeks do not return alone, they bring friends with them.

3. Emotional eating behavior. In this case, the eating process is compensatory: the person eats to cope with frustrations or strong negative emotions.

For modern children, the behavior of the first two types is characteristic and the third is not too characteristic. The natural stress response mechanism is the temporary disappearance or significant decrease in appetite in children. “Eat” negative emotions, as a rule, get used to children, for whom care, love and food have become synonymous. This happens most often in children who have experienced traumatic events or suffered serious losses, as a result of which they were deprived of the attention and love of adults. In such cases, first of all, it is necessary to provide the child with professional assistance of specialists working with trauma or loss - child psychologists and psychotherapists.

Externalization of eating behavior As it became clear from the described experiment Davis, the regulation of eating behavior – what exactly is, how much and when – ideally should be completely given to the child, that is, to be carried out internally by himself. In fact, we are constantly externalizing the food behavior of children, in other words, bringing its management to the external sphere, so that we, as adults, are more comfortable or because we think it is right. It begins in infancy: until now, pediatricians often recommend “teaching” babies to eat not when they are hungry, but when it is convenient for the mother – for example, “in order to wean them from night feedings.” Then more. The child grows up, and their behavior is regulated by food: “If you behave well, you get ice cream.” Curiously, a few decades earlier, when food abundance was not so great, children were rewarded with hugs, kisses, stroking. Today, candy is increasingly replaced by a kiss.

The situation is aggravated when “behave well” means “finish the soup”. A child's food is rewarded with food. As a result, children are accustomed to listening to body signals, to the feeling of hunger and to the needs of one or another type of food, and learn to respond to external stimuli as triggers in order to start eating.

Started by parents ends with the beginning of watching TV. In the Netherlands, an extremely small country, about 40 million euros are spent annually on advertising aimed at children.

According to a report by the Health Council, 70% of advertising time in children’s programs is spent advertising sweets, sweets, chocolate bars and sugary drinks. According to a study conducted in the United States, children as a result of viewing advertising form a clear preference for high-calorie foods.

In school cafes, clinics, and leisure centers, soda machines and sweets appear: in the United States, about 80% of the budget of many schools forms the income received from the work of these machines. A child with already formed external eating behavior will not be able to resist the temptation, especially under the pressure of a group of peers, amicably going to change for bars and cola.

What to do in such cases? I think a lot of parents will say, "Of course, forbid." It wasn't here.

The sweetness of the forbidden--vid1-- From an experiment conducted by BBC 2 for the program “The Truth About Food”, it became clear that children tend to form a strong preference for forbidden food – it begins to seem unimaginably tasty to them.

In the experiment, children from 4 to 5 years old, who initially considered raisins and dried mangoes equally tasty, after a week gave a clear preference for raisins, if during this week their access to raisins was artificially limited. The experiment was that during the school break (in England, children begin to go to school much earlier than Russian peers), bowls with dried mangoes and raisins were put in the lobby.

After the first whistle, the children were allowed to eat the mango for 15 minutes, and after the second whistle, they had another 5 minutes to eat the raisins. No matter how small the participants of the experiment did not like the mango, after only a week, they stopped even touching it and ran to the bowls of raisins, eating it in large quantities even when there were especially many bowls with the coveted dried fruit.

Light my mirror, say it! In addition to the externalization of eating habits, one can not discount another indirect factor that has a huge impact on eating behavior, especially childhood. This is a modern cultural standard of beauty, focused, of course, on adults, but fully perceived and absorbed by children.

Dutch psychologist, specialist in the eating behavior of adults and children, Tatiana van Stryen offers the term “mirror body” – the ideal image, “mixed” from magazine pictures and advertising images, to see which reflected in the mirror becomes our cherished, unfulfilled dream. The presence of a mirror body in a person, especially a teenager or a child, means that his own real body will always be perceived as imperfect, imperfect, and will forever remain a source of frustration and displeasure.

Look through the collections of fairy tales that we read to our children and pay attention to the illustrations. Snow White and Cinderella, Red Riding Hood and Princess Swan are always slim and full of grace. Modern sources are not far behind: in the epic about the young wizard Harry Potter, read by millions of children, the nasty cousin Dudley is a spoiled fat man. And even in the Soviet “Boy-Kibalchish”, Malchish-Plokhish is a fat boy who “eats and rejoices.” Fat children never become heroes of children’s books, only antiheroes.

As a result, children learn that what they see in the mirror needs correction.

For some teenage girls, this forms the basis for the development of anorexia. But for the vast majority, this means the beginning of dietary behavior, which, due to the body’s natural resistance to dieting, leads to constant weight fluctuations – the so-called “yo-yo effect”.





"Drinking Mothers" and "Deprived Fathers" Despite the fact that a quarter of boys and a fifth of girls in Russia are much heavier than normal, and being fat is unpopular and almost tragic for a teenager, the cult of good appetite in a child has not lost its relevance. In the first year of a baby’s life, its main advantage and pride is weight gain, and the most important tragedy that generates a continuous sense of guilt in the mother is the insufficient appetite of the child who does not want to eat complementary foods in accordance with the instructions of leading pediatricians.

What's going on in the family? Parents have an increased level of anxiety about food, the infant feels this anxiety perfectly and rejects the object of anxiety – new food – with even greater enthusiasm. A new, adult food is already a huge discovery for a baby in the first year of life. So many unexplored tastes, smells, colors, you have to deal with all this flow of information, and you can only do it at your own pace. However, parents do not rest in the competition to win the contest “feed the child at all costs”. In the course are songs, dances, reading fairy tales, feeding toys, watching cartoons, under which the baby dutifully opens his mouth ... And only if the task of “feeding the baby” is solved, the mother can breathe out and think about something else. Unfortunately, feeding through force and against will is a much more common option for children in Russia than in other countries.

What happens in the end? The child quickly learns that food is incredibly important, and to be good, you need to eat. On the other hand, the need to eat a lot, often more than the child actually wants, often not what he wants, upsets the regulation of the system “hunger – appetite – food”. Physiological nutrient deficiency, called hunger, manifests itself in the presence of the child’s nutritional interest and healthy appetite, which he must satisfy, choosing the food that intuitively seems attractive to him. However, in reality, most often everything happens quite differently.

If the fullness of the child, true or imaginary, is the subject of anxiety of acquaintances, friends or doctors, and traumatizes the parents, the course often changes to the opposite. The child is put on a diet, simply forbidding him to eat everything from which the risk of getting better increases, and that is usually sweet to the child's heart - flour, sweet, fried. Interestingly, fathers are often more concerned about the figure of a girl than mothers, they are also prone to more stringent measures to “suppress” unwanted eating behavior, more often ridicule or criticize the “flavored” lazy daughter or fat son.

Both strategies ultimately lead to only one result: the child develops an eating disorder, which he takes with him as an “inheritance” into adulthood. Today, the most important factor in the development of his disorder called dieting in adolescence or childhood and negative attitude to the size or weight of the child by family members and significant adults.

Of course, the negative attitude of adults is nothing but a manifestation of strong anxiety that a full child will be unpopular, will not be able to gain authority among peers and will not be able to make friends. This anxiety is most often a manifestation of a hidden negative attitude towards fat people, and often a hidden dissatisfaction with their own body. Faced with a negative attitude towards themselves in the family, the child loses confidence, behaves more timidly in social situations, and is more likely to become the object of ridicule.

Surely everyone met charming, confident fat people. Their fullness, as a rule, was never the subject of concern or increased attention of parents, but was perceived as part of their nature. Such people are much easier in society.

What do we do with a fat kid? The most important recommendations have already been made: even if the child’s weight is above normal, in no case should he be put on a restrictive diet (this will lead not only to the development of eating disorders, but also to discord in the family, because a hungry child will lie and hide pieces in secluded corners to eat when no one sees, as well as save and even steal money to buy forbidden sweets or chips).

How do parents behave?

1. Find out what type of eating behavior your child is experiencing – external, restrictive, or emotional. This can be done by contacting an eating disorder psychologist to make a diagnosis using NVE-K, a children’s version of the Dutch eating questionnaire. But even if such a specialist is not available to you, there is no problem: for an attentive parent it will not be difficult to notice whether the child eats in moments when he is upset to comfort and cheer, whether he is seduced by his food appearance when he is not hungry, whether he tries to limit portions or completely refuse certain meals?

2. Don’t panic ahead of time. Overweight and obesity can be perceived as a problem from the age of 10, before this age, any fluctuations in the weight of an actively growing person are possible. If the child has passed the age of 10 years, and is still a little overweight, it is worth showing it to an endocrinologist for examination. If significant excess weight persists after the age of 15, the chance that the child will be full as an adult is quite high.

3. Talk to your child openly. Completeness is not the responsibility of the child, fullness of the child is one of the manifestations of family dynamics, a consequence of the combination of genetic factors and nutrition culture in the family.

Excess weight is not a child’s problem, it is a family problem, and changes in behavior and habits should also be family. Attempts by parents to present a full child as “problem” and “cure” him exclusively are usually doomed to failure. Even if you, unlike your child, are slim like Artemis and Apollo – review the diet of the family as a whole, go on family jogs or walks. This way, the child will not feel guilty about being fat, the risk that he will resist the changes addressed to him personally will decrease, and – most importantly – the child will feel your support and willingness to stand up for him.

4. Don't reward food. A child fell and hurt, he is upset by a quarrel with a friend or an insignificant assessment - never try to comfort him with a "delicious". This is how the child learns to mix comfort and food, this is the path to emotional overeating in adulthood.

5. Don't forbid it. Banning a product is useless. Again, useless. No matter how much you tell your child that Coke or French fries – a nasty combination of harmful substances and calories – the only effect you will achieve – junk food will become even more attractive. Accept that your child will occasionally eat junk food. Don't grumble about it. It is better a couple of times a month to have harmful things in front of your eyes than, having got to the "wrong" food outside parental control, to eat it to nausea daily.

6. Keep a “healthy” ratio of junk and healthy food at home. If the child is an external eater, it is unwise to keep a large amount of the food he or she normally overeats at home. Find out what your child likes. Sweet? Fill the house with fruits, dried fruits, make together “useful” candy from dried fruits, and add to your usual grocery basket for a week about 10-15% of candy or cakes loved by the child. Don’t control – allow these cakes or candy to be eaten when the child decides and wants to, but don’t buy more until the next trip to the grocery store.

7. Don't forget to set an example. If you manage to stay slim because you smother your coffee under your cigarette from morning to evening, it is unwise to expect your child to enjoy eating apples. Show your child that dessert fruit can be delicious, and that you also don’t mind quenching a little hunger with a fruit salad or avocado.

8. Get the older kids on board. In a well-known psychological experiment, a small Isaac began eating the hitherto hated broccoli after several older boys craved it in front of the boy and praised it. Since then, this method has been actively used to treat unexplained food aversions (failure without obvious grounds to eat certain foods) in children.

9. Don't make the choices excessive. If the child weighs too little, then the greater the choice of food offered, the more complete and abundant his diet will be. If the child is an external eater, then the choice of food should be limited so as not to provoke overeating.

10. Take your child at any weight. Even children with extreme obesity managed to go through a difficult period of treatment with minimal psychological losses, if they had absolute support and unconditional acceptance from adults. Some managed to recover and lose weight in childhood, some managed to do so only in adulthood, and there are those who remained obese for life, but this did not prevent them from getting an education, starting a family and finding work. Criticism and rejection of a full child, as well as regret and dissatisfaction with such a “loser” will only lead to the formation of depressive or anxiety disorders in the child, the destruction of your contact with him and the aggravation of existing eating disorders.

And do not forget that fullness is a consequence of a psychological state to a much greater extent than the result of a certain diet or lifestyle. Before taking your child to a nutritionist or fitness trainer, consult a family psychologist. published

Author: Svetlana Bronnikova

Source: letidor.ru/article/otkuda_berutsya_tolstye_deti_n_85133/