In a controversial article appearing in the April issue of Vogue magazine, author Dara-Lynn Weiss writes about the strict diet she imposed upon her daughter after a pediatrician suggested she was clinically obese.
Bea, who stood 4-feet, 4-inches tall, weighed 93 pounds was not necessarily obese, but fat, according to Weiss, who admits to having issues with food for the past 30 years.
- Dara-Lynn Weiss, writing for Vogue Magazine
Growing up in an affluent, achievement-driven suburb, I had suffered through my own issues with food, eating and weight, Weiss wrote. Though the rest of my family had a seemingly healthy relationship to food, I was constantly battling weight gain and asking my mother to lock-up the peanut butter jar. Whether I weighed 105 pounds or 145 pounds hardly mattered. I hated how my body looked and devoted an inordinate amount of time to trying to change it.
Weiss added that she once even begged a doctor to write her a prescription for appetite suppressant fen-phen, even after it was found to cause heart valve defects and pulmonary hypertension.
Weiss article talks about the increase in childhood obesity in todays society and cites a survey that revealed parents are more comfortable talking to their kids about sex than weight.
The author admitted she wasnt very consistent with how she served Bea food sometimes Beas after school snack was a slice of pizza or a chicken gyro from a street vendor. Other days I forced her to choose low-fat soup or a single hard-boiled egg. Occasionally, Id give in to her pleas for a square of coffee cake, mainly because I wanted to eat half of it.
Starting the diet
When a kid at school called Bea fat and made her cry, Weiss took matters into her own hands, scheduling an appointment with child-obesity specialist Dr. Joanna Dolgoff, who assigns a red light to bad foods and green light to good foods. Weiss said she joined her daughter in dieting, and the two embarked upon a low-fat, low-cal, and reduced-portion diet.
Bea had to start exercising too she joined karate and in the summer, swam once a week.
Follow this link:
Mother’s strict diet for 7-year-old raises controversy, criticism
