Dieting Makes Little Girls Fatter, Study Finds

Tue Jun 29, 3:44 PM ET


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Girls who are starting to get too fat at 5 are often experienced dieters by the age of 9 -- but put on extra fat instead of taking it off, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

They said their study shows that children and their parents are well aware when they weigh too much, but they do not know the best ways to slim down.

Jennifer Shunk and Leann Birch of Pennsylvania State University studied 153 girls living in central Pennsylvania. Those who weighed too much tried to diet, but ended up putting on more weight, they wrote in their report, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

The unhappier the girls were with their weight, the more they tried to diet, but they failed. This supports other research that shows "youths' attempts at weight control may promote weight gain," Shunk and Birch wrote.

At age 5, 32 of the girls were considered at risk of being overweight by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) standards.

They were checked again at ages 7 and 9. At 7, girls at risk for overweight were eating significantly more than those not at risk, the researchers wrote.

For the study they were asked about foods they ate and answered questions such as, "Do you try to only eat a little bit on purpose so that you won't get fat?"

The girls were left in a room with toys and snacks and told to play or eat while the researchers left the room. The researchers watched to see what the children ate.

The heavier girls tended to munch snacks even if they were not hungry.

The researchers said their study supports other research that shows when people try to diet by simply eating too little, they eventually set themselves up for binges.

Mothers may also help this along by forbidding the girls to eat snacks, they said.

"Even during the preschool period, before any evidence for the emergence of dietary restraint, maternal feeding practices that restrict children's access to palatable foods can promote children's overeating," they wrote.

Middle-class families, especially, try to restrict snacks because they do not want overweight children, they added.

"However, rather than promoting moderation, these feeding practices can promote disregulated overeating in children."

Instead, parents should themselves demonstrate healthy patterns of eating and exercise, the researchers advised.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...health_girls_dc

I agree with the comment about PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY!. As a parent, I know first hand it is my job to ensure that the food in my home is healthy and nutritious, and that it is up to ME to teach my daughter healthy eating habits, and to give her healthy options - as well as daily excersize. By starting early in life (2 or 3 years old), then by the time the teenage years hit it will be so second nature to her that hopefully she wont' take a bad path with her health.

I get so angry and frustrated when I see parents whining that they can't understand why their child is 110 pounds at 7-8 years old, and then in the same breath say that "well, yes, they do bring the cookies, donuts, chef boyardee, pizza etc, into teh home on a regular basis". Or that their child "demands" these things - well, who is the parent, and who is the adult? Sorry to rant, but this is a subject that infuriates me, no child should have to suffer from unnecessary weight gain and the stuff that goes along with it.

I don't think you should ever put kids on a diet. Rather you make sure that the only food s/he has access to is wholesome and unprocessed. At the same time educate your child on the dangers of processed foods. If you start young enough they might even turn down junk food when it's offered to them outside the home. To make sure they don't feel deprived take them out for the occasional treat, but pick it carefully, like premium ice cream. Many kids love to go to Macdonalds not for the food, but for the toys and the games. Keep the toys and games and ditch the food. For example, take them to the dollar store hand them each a dollar and let them pick what they want and then take them to a restaurant that serves decent food, or failing that, take them on a picnic. There are always ways to treat your children without resorting to junk food.

I think the key is to avoid singling them out (you're fat so you can't eat this) or making them feel excluded. Don't bring the junk food into the house. If the child asks why she can't have if, explain you won't bring this food in the house because it's not good for children and adults. The absolute worse thing is to have junk in the house and not allow her to eat it, even though other members of the family are permitted to have some. And if other members of the family complain, make sure the blame is put on the food, not on the child (i.e. this is bad food, not soandso can't eat this food so neither can you).

Anyway this is my 2 cent's worth (plus inflation plus tax plus exchange rate)

[QUOTE=Angeline] I think the key is to avoid singling them out (you're fat so you can't eat this) or making them feel excluded. Don't bring the junk food into the house. If the child asks why she can't have if, explain you won't bring this food in the house because it's not good for children and adults. The absolute worse thing is to have junk in the house and not allow her to eat it, even though other members of the family are permitted to have some. And if other members of the family complain, make sure the blame is put on the food, not on the child (i.e. this is bad food, not soandso can't eat this food so neither can you). /QUOTE]


My son's godmother and her family lived several hundred miles from us and I hadn't seen them in almost 2 years. I was surprised when I saw them all again (2 adults, 3 children) and they all lost weight, every one of them. I asked her what happened. She told me that her second youngest was diagnosed with diabetes at 5 years of age and therefore the whole family started a controlled carbohydrate way of eating. Everyone benefitted.

No, you're not a little girl, Kim. But you sure are a cute little thing! -- I looked at your gallery.

There are differences between what you're doing and being restricted by your parents. First, it sounds like you're doing this voluntarily. Women who have eating disorders often have control issues with their mothers. They overeat, refuse to eat, or binge and purge because they want to express freedom from their mothers' control. For example, if Mom forced me to eat, I will refuse to eat. If Mom denied me food, I binge.

Second, if you're following Atkins you are not going hungry. I think the problem comes when you diet by starvation.

When I was a child, my mother started me on a diet at 5 years old, both low fat and low calorie. I WAS HUNGRY! I learned to sneak food and to binge when no one was looking. Dieting and bingeing became habits for a lifetime and a lot of weight came with it.

Kim, I hope you have read Atkins book. Here's what happens from lowfat dieting: you replace fat with more carbohydrate. More carbohydrate leads to more insulin production and fat storage. When you keep repeating this, your insulin receptors beome insensitive so that you produce yet more insulin. This leads to diabetes. Very unhealthy.

If you don't eat enough food, you force your body into starvation mode. Your metabolism gets screwed up and you gain easily and lose slowly.

Kim, as long as you don't starve yourself and don't go on again and off again, you'll be fine.

I caught part of Maury Povich today. In the promos, they showed one Girl eating Cheetos with a Pepsi by her side. Then, her mother says on the show that she lets her eat whatever she wants, but "Its Healthy Food." Since when has Pepsi and Cheetos been "Healthy" ? One of the other mothers said she tried to help her daughter lose weight by putting her on a Diet of Beans, Fish, and Chicken, but the kid gained 3 pounds a week. The problem is that people don't understand what a Healthy Diet is. A Diet with virtually no fat like the one described by that mother is not healthy for anybody, much less young children who need lots of fat. A Lowfat diet is about the worst diet for weight-loss, because it just DOESN'T work short of eating nothing.

Maury's cool I watch him every day at nine and 12. But Cheetos aren't healthy!! I was watching an episode on overweight toddlers yesterday, and there was this one boy who weighed 60 lbs and was only 20 months old!! Parents shouldn't try and give their kids so much junk as a baby. They'll end up overweight kids and then obese adults.

My mother restricted the unhealthy/caloric foods brought into our house because I had a weight problem. This was back in the 60s when people understood that bread, pasta, and potatoes led to weight gain. But I was determined to eat frequently (not because she restricted me, but because of an inner drive). I can remember putting brown sugar into a bowl and eating it with my fingers when I couldn't find anything else interesting. I also ate a lot of cheese and whatever was leftover from dinner the night before. Short of locking the kitchen, I don't think my mother could have prevented my weight gain. I was an active child, especially in the summer. (I was also sent to weight loss camp twice, lost 20 pounds each time, and gained it back). When I was about 13 I began to understand mrore about the relationship between what I ate and my weight, and also to have motivation to be slimmer. At that point my weight was no longer my mother's responsibility, if it ever really was.

That's it! With limited nutrients, no wonder the kid is gaining weight. People always praise the healthiness of mediterranean or eastern asian diet, but what they don't realize is that they eat a much diverse variety of food than Americans. Its not that they don't eat animal fat, but they eat everything, the fat, the inerts, the weird vegetables, but very little proceed food (although unfortunately this trend is changing due to an invasion by the American fast food industry). Equally important is how they eat. There's a Chinese saying "Eat a big breakfast, a nutritious lunch, and a small diner". The big breakfast replishes you after over 10 hours without food, the nutrious lunch keeps you going in the afternoon, and the small diner provide just enough calories until you go to sleep. If we compare that to American lifestyle, everything is just the opposite. In the morning we push for time, so many people just skip breakfast, during lunch we grab what we can to save time, and we stuff ourselves at diner as a reward for having a busy day.

I actually learned how to Bake because my mom wouldn't let me have a piece of cake one day when I was a kid. It would've probably helped if we hadn't had all the ingredients I needed in the house already.

I work in a grocery store and the other day I saw a mom and little daughter shopping . The little girl was just learning how to read. The mother was giving her lessons by having the girl read ingredients and fat/calories etc. Isn't that sad. No wonder I grew up with an eating disorder, my mother had one too.

That's funny I learned to bake because, when my mother was making cake, we were always hanging 'round my mom begging for spoonful of raw dough. I never felt like I had eaten my fill.

Of course one of the first time I made cake on my own, I ate almost half the cake raw. That does not make a stomach comfortable let me tell you ! Needless to say, that cured me