I have a very overweight 11 year old. I know a lot of her weight has come from emotional eating and sneaking food. I was in a really bad marriage and it was terrible for her.

She is actually now losing weight doing lc with me and we go to the ymca instead of watching tv. She hates going outside to exercise. Kind of sad I think.

Do you think, by any chance, that one of the reasons there are so many fat teenage girls is due to emotional problems? In my own observation, life for many teenagers just seems filled with anxiety. I am not talking about obvious stuff like bad home life. I think that constant texting, social networking, TV shows geared to tweens, etc, just causes stress. I think it outwardly appears to be "fun," but I think it ultimately is anxiety-inducing. To me, a 14 year-old girl needs to be able to come home from school or soccer practice, and just relax either alone or with her family. Instead she is texting or calling friends, or is on facebook. It just seems overwhelming. If I were in that level of constant contact with my social group, I think I would rip my hair out.

Maybe half these kids problem with weight is caused by constant elevated cortisol levels. Would not surprise me.

I too have noticed that obesity in kids and teens has become more commonplace. I know this thread started with a discussion of fat teen girls - I wonder if it's the same with boys? Are the numbers of fat boys growing as well? I live near a high school, and from my brief and not very keen observations, the most obese students are typically female. Honestly, I don't really look at people too hard or think, "Gee, he or she is FAT" very much, so I might be missing something. But it does seem like it is the girls who are getting fatter earlier.

Honestly, the growing acceptance of fatness is something I am grateful for in many ways. Teens have enough issues to put up with as it is without people making them feel worse about their bodies. My teen cousin (a girl) is maybe a size or two bigger than I used to be in high school - a size 14-15. Not fat, but definitely not thin. Don't get me wrong - she is an adorable girl. The thing is, her size isn't an issue at all for her. When I was in high school in the late 90's, I was taunted endlessly for my weight. I can still hear the echoes of people screaming "HEIFER" at me as I walked down the hall. At 5'5" and 140 lbs, I was sized out of most junior clothing and could barely find something age appropriate to wear. (A size 11 was a rare find, and I am pretty sure the size 13-15-17s were not even made back then.) She has a cute (and thin) boyfriend and seems to face no social stigma. She can find fashionable, affordable clothes in her size at any mainstream store, and feels perfectly comfortable rocking a pair of itty bitty shorts. And why not, right?

So even though it is disturbing to see the younger generation getting bigger, it's also nice to see that a young person can live happily in a body that would have been considered gross or deviant less than 15 years ago.

I graduated in the 70's....Idont remember anyone in our class being obese...we were very physically active...rarely had fastfood or "convenience foods" dessert occasionally.....junk food rarely... soda? very rarely...if we were hungry between meals? fruit...veggies or cheese...
as I type this I realize how very different it was!

I really think that obesity in children happens from a multitude of factors. I don't believe it's all bad behavior or bad parenting. Surely some of it is, but the sheer number of overweight/obese kids out there point to more than just happy meals and streaming 24-kids programming on TV.

I have two kids and the least active one is the thinnest. I've always worried about his weight; my husband recommended that we push him for more exercise so he'd put on some weight. I was totally confused; but alas, we spent a summer doing just that the kid filled out a little bit.

It's always been at the back of my mind... like... why am I exercising again? Can exercise be a solution for both underweights and overweights?

Get a couple of Thermos-style food containers for her lunch. (search on "vaccuum insulated food jar") Some of the wide-mouthed ones are great for food you need to use a fork for.

I can tell you what has changed, besides what has been discussed here: it's the macronutrient ratios.

According to the American Heart Association, as of 2001: The current average macronutrient composition of the American diet is 17% of calories from protein, 34% from fat, and 49% from carbohydrate.

How far back can I find another such data item for comparison? I found data from 1965-66 quoted in a paper devoted to the macronutrient composition of the American diet:

The protein:fat:carbohydrate distribution of energy was found to be 18:44:38%.

That's a lot of difference. Going from 38% to 49% carbohydrate is huge.

Add in the sugary stuff everyone eats and drinks constantly; and it's a real mess.

Hormones in dairy, beef, chicken, nearly everything. Girls are now having periods at 8-9 yrs (used to be like13-16) and have you noticed all the moobs on the younger boys? Aside from the generally craptastic corn
and wheat filled everything, add HFCS to most everything else and then add hormones to genetically modify our dairy and meats. That's the problem. How much of that stuff can a child ingest without modifying the body?

Absolutely. I was in grade school in the 70's (I'm in my late 40's) and of course did not have texting, social networking,etc., in fact I was the unpopular girl, and was living under terrible anxiety caused by an emotionally abusive home environment. I started gaining weight when I had to move from my wonderful grandmother's home to my mom/stepfather's "home". I did increase my eating, but I didn't have access to the huge amount of carbs that you see now. I would, for instance, buy an extra pack of cookies 2 or 3 times a week at school, but I wasn't allowed to have any extra cash of my own other than that and we didn't have much junk food at home. My eating was constantly monitored. It had to be elevated cortisol. When I got to high school, I was carrying 30 or 40 extra pounds. Kids are under a LOT of stress from school and peer expectations, which seem to be so much worse than they were then, and it was no picnic. I wonder if we did a poll how many of us would find junior high (middle school) or high school to be the worst times of our lives.

*hugs* I feel for you. My experience wasn't dissimilar, although it frankly wasn't as bad as yours. My adulthood hasn't exactly been a picnic, but it was infinitely better than childhood.

So, another thing that might be contributing to the increase is how much plastic touches our food. A few years ago I read that the traces of plastic which get into our bodies from our food being in plastic containers messes up our hormones in a way that contributes to various problems, including obesity. (I might note that I am not the only soft drink lover I know who insists that soda from cans tastes better than soda in plastic bottles.) For a couple of weeks after that I tried not to eat anything that had been touched by plastic, but quickly discovered that it was pretty much impossible. I do eat as much food fresh as possible, instead of frozen/in a can/processed somehow, but even the wraps and bags we use to keep stuff from drying out is plastic.

So true. For 3 years I fed my son stoneyfield organic whole milk plain yogurt and for sweetener, I would simmer prunes or apricots in water to soften and then puree the fruit and put through the food mill to get the skins out. A huge pain but he ate yogurt that was as good as it gets. Now I'm just too busy/lazy to do it anymore so I feed him the yobaby yogurt. It's sweetened but at least it's with cane sugar and fruit and not corn syrup. I still feel guilty about it.

Although I am also glad that other teenagers are not as mean to fat kids as they used to be, I do not think that accepting fat as the norm is a positive thing at all. I do not believe that any of these girls are going to be laying in a hospital bed at 40, losing their vision from diabetes, and struggling just to breathe and move properly are going to be happy because they can look back and remember having a boyfriend in high school.

And I do not think I am exaggerating when I use this future as an example. If you're an obese teenager, the chances that you're only going to get WORSE is extremely high. To me this is an extremely serious problem, and the worst part of it is that no one really seems all that bothered by it. As a matter fact, the feeling I am getting is that many people are PROUD of these girls because they are happy even though they are fat. I am all for people being happy, but these girls are going down a path of serious health problems and a shortened lifespan.

Finally, I do not really believe that any teenage girl is truly that happy if they are obese. Maybe there is not as much external negativity projected their way, but I bet the inner turmoil is still pretty bad.

My girls were excellent to their "fluffier" friends and did not say anything bad to them to discourage them from things like majorette tryouts or cheerleading. I was so proud of my girls. But when someone is phydically active yet overweight, you know it is their eating lifestyle and not an incative lifestyle that is causing the problem.

This is a fascinating discussion, and I don't really have much to add to it that has not already been said. I basically agree with what every one of you has said. Our society has changed so incredibly much since many of us were younger, beyond just food issues. It is indeed scary to see younger and younger girls out there with all kinds of fat rolls hanging out of their clothes. I was shopping for my 9 year old daughter the other week and I actually noticed a clothing category on the racks for girls that was like the old 'husky' in Sears jeans for boys...I know you all remember 'husky' jeans...I can't for the life of me remember what this category was called for girls. It just made me so sad seeing it.

It's very scary to think that if overweight is totally acceptable when they are teens, then will morbidly obese be acceptable when they are adults? And OMG I don't even want to think about how this would affect our health care coverage costs (THAT'S a whole 'nother discussion...).

And here's a funny: my family is moving very soon and when we tell ppl where we are moving (the neighborhood) everyone says to my kids: "oh, you will be right by McDonalds, isn't that great"...I have had to coach my kids not to say 'oh we don't eat that junk', and now they just kind of nod their heads and go 'Yah, they have free Wi-Fi'....

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I enjoyed reading this discussion.

2mm

Yeah, that is how this whole talk got started. Jenn noticed that a lot of the dancers she saw were fat, and that in order to dance at the skill level they had, they would have had to be training very hard. I also agree that the biggest problem must lie somewhere in the diet or environment (by environment I mean things like plastic, medication, etc). I played volleyball as a teenager, but I also recall me and my friends spending plenty of time just hanging around. I do not believe that teenagers' activity levels have dropped off that much in the last 15 years.

Anyway, I really wish this was taken a little more seriously. Whenever I see a woman with a muffin top, or a flabby stomach, I know she has the same problem I have, namely, an issue with insulin sensitivity. Something seems to be making these girls have a very low insulin sensitivity at a VERY young age. I am not 100% sure what has caused, but I do know the best ways to help heal it: no sodas (not even diet), sugar only on RARE occasions, and no processed junk food. These girls are still young. I see my cousin (who is obese) drink 44 oz cokes pretty much daily. She could drop that ONE habit and see a big difference. I know many people on this board are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s and complain that too many eggs causes weight gain, or one carb-heavy dinner adds five pounds. But these girls are still teenagers! They likely can lose the weight relatively easily and without much hardship just by making a few key changes.