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Adolescence
Don't Talk to Your Overweight Teen—Act!
The shame and pain of being an overweight teen.
Posted June 30, 2013 Reviewed by Ekua Hagan
Among the obesity headlines of the week is a report — made by Ashley Barrient, MEd, LPC, RD, LDN, dietician and bariatric counselor at Loyola Center for Metabolic Surgery and Bariatric Care, and published in the Journal of American Medical Association Pediatrics — that says that kids are overwhelmed by talk of weight and dieting and feel they cannot change the numbers.
I have to agree with Barrient on this. She goes on to recommend that the family approach healthy eating as a team, which I also concur with.
As someone who was obese from early childhood and is still struggling in my mid-50s, I’d like to add some thoughts to this poignant and very painful problem.
Parents have to do everything they can to educate themselves not only about nutrition but about binge eating disorder and obesity in general. By doing so, they will learn that highly processed foods are as addictive as cocaine or alcohol, and that the addiction is lifelong, even after the apparent weight problem has disappeared.
Knowing that your child has a lifelong illness, like Crohn’s Disease or epilepsy, can help the parent avoid quick fixes or encourage the quick fixes their teens may go to. I lost 36 pounds the summer between my freshman and sophomore year by eating 500 calories and engaging in four hours of exercise a day, which my parents thought was great.
It wasn’t. Once I returned to school, the junk food culture gripped my dreams of skinny clothes and I gained it all back and then some. A child of 15 can’t live on that kind of regimen and my parents didn’t know that they should have encouraged me to eat in the range of 1200-1500 calories a day in order to get the nutrition I needed to grow.
When I finished that six-week stint, I was a size 18 and when I returned to school, I was defeated also by all the skinny girls who seemed to weigh 115-120 pounds. That 120 pounds (I am 5’8”) haunted me for years. Reasonable expectations were missing. I don’t blame my parents for this but I do blame a culture which, even in 1972, emphasized the ultra-skinny.
Pam Peeke, MD, in The Hunger Fix, writes, “Substance abuse researchers say that the brain adaptions that result from regularly eating so-called hyper-palatable foods — foods that layer salt, fat, and sweet flavors, proven to increase consumption — are likely to be more difficult to change than those from cocaine or alcohol because they involve many more neural pathways. Almost 90 percent of the dopamine receptors in the reward center…of the brain are activated in response to food cues.
“Brand-new research also shows direct evidence of lasting and fundamental injuries to a part of the brain that helps us regulate our food intake … Within three days of being placed on a high-fat diet, a rat’s hypothalamus (the area of the brain that responds to the hormones that signal hunger and satiety, pair and maternal bonding and certain social behavior) shows increased inflammation; within a week, researchers see evidence of permanent scarring and neuron injury in an area of the brain crucial for weight control. Brain scans of obese men and women show this exact pattern as well.”
The new information we have gleaned from fMRI and PET scans tells us that food addicts suffer from a paucity of dopamine receptors, which means that, in my case, motivation and reward were severely impaired. I was an indifferent student. I made few friends. I was deeply depressed. I lived in an agony of envy and self-hatred that only more food could obviate.
In looking back at that miserable time, I have a few suggestions I’d like to offer.
Parents should investigate every possible form of exercise available in their area and, if financially possible, offer their child whatever interests them. My parents were golfers and nothing could bore me more. Had they offered me tennis, year-round swimming, horseback riding and dance lessons, I would have been thrilled. In the summer, they were sailors and as much as I enjoyed being on the boats with them, no one taught me to sail as they did my older brothers. I never picked up the knack of water skiing but if my overweight child also struggled with that sport, I think I would buy a water toboggan.
1. Teens live on thrills, speed, joy. A toboggan would have answered that and those sensations would have ramped up my dopamine system considerably.
Sometimes parents may have to take the bull by the horns when it comes to physical activity as well. I took ballet in high school but was obviously overlooked for the future ballerinas in the class. Could they have arranged private lessons for me? Were there other movement classes where my size would not have been such a disadvantage? Could they have actually organized such groups or pressed my high school to encourage the physically less fit without embarrassing them?
My hometown didn’t have a gym in those days, but I would certainly consider taking my special teen to a personal trainer in these days of plentiful gym opportunities, and I would tell the trainer to keep the emphasis on strength training and on any sports my teen might want to pursue outside the gym. At 240 pounds, I flunked P.E. when I walked into the gym one day and found balance beams and uneven bars set up for the quarter. I walked out only to return as a junior.
2. We were a family who tried to at least eat dinner together and our common condiment was telling jokes. I recommend doing this as much as possible and to keep the conversation positive and neutral. Laughter is a dopamine-positive thing. Keep it strong.
3. As much as possible, keep an open house for your overweight teen and his/her friends. Have plenty of healthy snacks available. Curtail as much television and computer time as possible. Stock the house with board games and music and outdoor games such as croquet, horseshoes, badminton, and water games. These aren’t tremendously competitive sports and while they aren’t the most calorie-burning activities in the world, they are vertical and away from food. And they’re good dopamine work-outs with the emphasis on fun, laughter, and challenge.
4. When special events come up for which your teen is unfortunately excluded, whether because of his/her weight or not, find other ways to celebrate. Rent a cabin for the weekend or buy him/her something s/he has wanted for a hobby. Go out to dinner or go to the theater. Make it a yes-but day or night to remember.
5. Watch for signs of depression. When you see them, visit therapists with your teen until s/he finds the one s/he feels comfortable with.
6. Emphasize all that is positive in your teen. If s/he is a good student, or good in one area, talented in sewing or woodworking, a reader, funny, etc., let that be the subject of conversation rather than food or, God forbid, weight. If your child is a reader, ask him/her to read to the family after he or she has finished eating (part of the pathology of the disease is to eat faster and take longer to feel full).
7. Make no promises about “when you are thin.” Cute clothes are so much more readily available now. Try to encourage your teen to dress flatteringly, not to follow trends too rigorously, but don’t deny them the joy of clothes. If it’s a travel opportunity you'd dangle, take it now!
8. Keep up with other typical teen problems. Your daughter may have problems with her periods because of her weight. Have her doctor work with her but forbid him or her in advance from using the F-word. Contact lenses and a good dermatologist can work wonders, as can regular visits to a good hairdresser and manicurist.
9. Enroll your teen in meditation classes. Meditation has strong empirical evidence of increasing the muscularity of executive function in the brain, including will power.
10. Your teen is old enough to care for a pet and bonding with animals is another dopamine (and serotonin and oxytocin) high. Walking a dog is… walking!
11. Look for adventures! As embarrassed as I was at how I had to be forced into a life jacket, white water rafting was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. Will your child fit a zip line harness or carnival rides? Find out ahead of time before humiliation sets in but if they do, go for it! If these things scare you, find a Big Brother or Big Sister substitute to take them instead.
12. Encourage your child to dream. Where would s/he like to travel? What is his/her bucket list? Encourage him/her to write it down or collage it so that the dreams can be readily accessed without editorializing about weight or casting a shadow on his/her future with weight.
13. Is your child interested in classical music or musical comedy or basketball or rodeo? Take him/her places. Often the food is bad and minimal but the spectator experience is instructive and fun.
14. When the topic does come up, I beg of you, take the attitude that my own parents did: “When the time is right, you’ll take care of this. I know you will. You are a strong person. And I will help if you ask.”
And let your kid know you love and accept him/her without condition. Chances are, a third of those skinny popular kids you may wish your child was part of are going to gain weight too.
