This is the Weight and Healthcare newsletter! If you appreciate the content here, please consider supporting the newsletter by subscribing and/or sharing! I was recently one of the experts interviewed for a great article by Erin Heger about why you should not put your kids on diets, against the backdrop of the
OK, but what's also necessary in discussions like this is first establishing that fatness is NOT caused by "overeating." The question the general public is going to have is "Why not just stop fat kids from 'eating so much.'" That don't get that fat kids aren't "overeating" to begin with, that the only people who are "gluttons" are people (of all sizes) with eating disorders or people who are refeeding back to their normal setpoint after another round of dieting. They just don't get that when fat kids eat the same amounts of food as thinner people, they still wind up fat.
From casual observation, it seems as though eating disorders started with restricted eating in childhood and/or adolescence. I was surprised that it didn't seem to matter whether the restriction was chosen by the parent or the child. I don't know whether this possibility has been studied, or whether restricted eating is so common that there's no strong connection.
OK, but what's also necessary in discussions like this is first establishing that fatness is NOT caused by "overeating." The question the general public is going to have is "Why not just stop fat kids from 'eating so much.'" That don't get that fat kids aren't "overeating" to begin with, that the only people who are "gluttons" are people (of all sizes) with eating disorders or people who are refeeding back to their normal setpoint after another round of dieting. They just don't get that when fat kids eat the same amounts of food as thinner people, they still wind up fat.
From casual observation, it seems as though eating disorders started with restricted eating in childhood and/or adolescence. I was surprised that it didn't seem to matter whether the restriction was chosen by the parent or the child. I don't know whether this possibility has been studied, or whether restricted eating is so common that there's no strong connection.