I would say that there are not many parents who do it with their children, but there are probably some left reminiscent of the past, of those who believe that to promote changes you have to annoy and bite the children, making them feel bad, and although in some situations It can take effect, as when you expect your child to get something in a short space of time, a short-term goal, if the thing is long term the technique can end up being a disaster.
In the long term it is the change that overweight children have to make to stop having it, and it seems that Treating them with little respect and making them feel bad not only does not help them lose weight, but can make them gain even more weightsays a recent investigation.
Study Data
Today I can not pass the link to the study, as I always do, because the data have been released before publication (it will be published in the journal Obesity). For the study, almost 3,000 adults with ages above 50 years were followed for four years. At that time they were asked if they had ever felt discriminated against because of their weight, age, sex or ethnicity.
5% of them all explained that they had been discriminated against because of their weight. Of that percentage, those with normal weight were 1%, while those with morbid obesity formed 36%.
Seeing what happened over the years, they saw that those who had been discriminated against because of their weight gained more weight than those who had not received criticism for it.
They came to account for the differences and saw that overweight people who had been discriminated against had increased by almost a kilo of average, while those who had not been had lost an average of 0.7 kilos.
Being an observational study, the authors do not venture to affirm that there is causality, but they do believe that in case of discrimination, the battle against obesity is harder to win.
Jane Wardle, director of the Center for Health Behavior at Cancer Research UK and author of the study said the following:
Our study clearly shows that weight discrimination is part of the problem of obesity, and not the solution ... Weight prejudice has not only been documented in the general public, but also among healthcare professionals, and many obese patients. They report being treated with little respect for doctors because of their weight. Everyone, including doctors, should stop blaming and embarrassing people for their weight and offer support, and when appropriate, treatment.
And children?
Children work the same, with an aggravating factor: they are still forming in their mind the concept of self-image. They try to know themselves, try to know how they are compared to other children and try to be part of peer groups (other children their age) being accepted.
Weight discrimination, making them feel bad about their body, how they are, in something that requires time, motivation and patience to solve, can hurt (almost death) your self-esteem, your relationship with people who discriminate against you and even your relationship with your classmates or games. In fact, it is often said that "children are very cruel" because they are able to laugh at other children for being the exception, but if adults, on whom children should be able to lean, do the same, make them feel bad about their weight , the result is loneliness and absolute rejection. It happens then that they feel alone, not accepted by anyone and, in their discomfort, seek refuge and comfort in food.
On the other hand, knowing that you are heavier, slower, less agile and tired before, due to your weight, causes children to lose confidence in their competitive abilities and many children end up seeing exercise and sports as something that is not for them, because they can never compete with other children. This makes many reject the exercise, or even end up hating it.
Consequently, it seems that The most advisable thing is to educate parents and adults so that, instead of blaming the children, they help them, starting with the example. Ojiplático I stayed a few days ago when I told a mother (thin) that she had to change her habits so that her son (overweight) began to eat well, and she told me "but whoever has extra pounds is him, no to me ", because she did not eat balanced, and neither did her son, but she maintained the weight, but her son did not.
