Moms, did you catch Fitsmi on the Dr. Oz show?

Finally we see overweight teens beyond their bodies, and enjoy that they all have diverse personalities and plotlines.  Their weight is originally shocking, especially in the first episode when the main character Will (played by Nikki Blonsky), at first loath to get her "before" picture taken in a bathing suit, zooms in the other direction and does an outrageous and angry strip tease.  But because everyone is fat (except for the counselors and the infuriatingly indecisive camp headmistress), the characters quickly emerge and take centerstage.  Fatness -- so scandalous at first -- becomes a background theme like any other, from the Korean War in M*A*S*H to the hospital in Grey's Anatomy.  And because this series is produced by the talented Winnie Holzman (Wicked, My So-Called Life, Once & Again) and daughter Savannah Dooley, it's better than the average teen soap on ABC Family.

If you've missed the first three HUGE episodes (Mondays, 9pm EST, on ABCFamily), you can watch recaps and the latest episode on the HUGE website.

While we agree with media critic and ShapingYouth blogger Amy Jussel when she says "I'm going give it more episodes before I FULLY 'weigh in'" (see her excellent analysis of HUGE's potential part one and part two), we're pretty pleased with HUGE so far.  Where else can you find overweight teens on TV playing basketball, grooming crushes, larping (kind of like a Dungeons+Dragons dramatic improv), wrestling with family problems, or doing yoga?

If you're tuned into HUGE, Fitsmi for Moms would love to know what you think.  Are you watching it with your teen?  Do you both have the same take on it?  Do you think the show is having a positive effect, or not?  Let us know what you think by sending an email to fitsmiformoms@fitsmi.com.

Dr. Boutelle, Ph.D., is a psychologist at UC San Diego who specializes in the causes, characterization, prevention, and treatment of childhood and adolescent obesity and eating disorders.  Read up on the advice she gave on the Dr. Oz show and learn more of her tips in her post, Top Ten Worst Things Parents Do to Overweight Teens.

Two Moms, holistic health coach Angelle Batten, MEd, HHC, and pediatrician Susan McCreadie, MD, teamed up to create NourishMD.com to show parents how to feed their children REAL food every day and solve health problems holistically.   Recently they sat down to discuss food and kids with Fitsmi for Moms.

Poptart or Pop Art?

It can be upsetting to read the headlines out there on obesity -- 1 out of 5 pregnant women obese; growing rates of overweight and obese kids; growing rates of type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol in children who may face shorter life expectancies than their parents.  Are we truly in the middle of an "epidemic," a life-and-death situation?  And how did we get here so fast?

Yes, our children are in a health crisis.  It has been building over the last four or five decades as our food supply changed dramatically.  Food companies have incorporated more and more non-food ingredients like high fructose corn syrup (HCFS), artificial colorings and flavorings, and addictive chemicals like MSG that make us crave those products over and over again.  Also, families have really gotten out of the habit of sitting down and eating meals together.  Dinner has traditionally been a time when people relaxed and shared their day. Parents could model good eating habits and families would connect over a meal.  Over time, fast food has become the norm for many of us, and unfortunately fast food servings are extremely large and loaded with unhealthy ingredients.

The good news is that there are many people from all areas of life who recognize that we need to ‘back up the truck’. We need to head down a different road if we want to have a healthier society, which is the foundation of a great society.

Where do most diets go wrong and why do they have such poor rates of long-term success for most people?

Diets focus on deprivation.  That is just not sustainable.  People don’t want to be deprived.  Changing your diet at all will usually get you some results, but often they are not long-term.  Adding REAL foods helps us to not feel deprived and the REAL food begins to crowd out the unhealthy foods we are eating too much of.

What is “REAL food”?

REAL food is food in its most natural state:  animal protein from healthy, grass-fed animals; organic & local fruits and vegetables; legumes, nuts, seeds and whole grains. 

How strict should parents be about what foods are eaten at home?  Is it better to be a purist or to be a compromiser?

An analogy that we use to help explain this concept is gassing up your car.  If you decided one day, for cost and/or convenience, to put water in your gas tank, obviously you wouldn’t get very far because most cars run on gasoline.  For people, REAL food is our fuel.  Unfortunately, many of us have gotten into the habit of putting the wrong fuel into our bodies – what we call “fake foods”.  These include animal products from factory-farmed animals, which are loaded with antibiotics, steroids, and hormones; heavily sprayed and genetically modified fruits and vegetables; processed grains in the form of white flour products like pasta, bagels and breads.  Last but not least, fake foods are loaded with additives like HFCS; artificial sweeteners, colors and flavors; MSG and other neurotoxins used to add flavor; preservatives – and more.

Aren't all salads good for you?

Fake foods are readily available and heavily advertised, but they are the wrong fuel for our bodies.  They clog up the system.  Not only does your body not get the nutrient-dense food it needs to thrive, but it has to process all the chemicals and added non-food ingredients.  Our bodies are amazing, but they get bogged down with neutralizing and/or clearing out all these toxins.

In short, while it’s impossible to eat REAL food 100% of the time, it’s very important to work toward eating REAL food 80% of the time and mainly REAL food at home.  Our children need limits, guidance, and modeling.  Just as you wouldn’t let your child smoke because it is a habit that will cause serious health problems over time, don’t condone donuts, soda pop, potato chips and other fake foods.   They are not harmful if eaten once in a while; but when eaten habitually they contribute to serious health problems down the road.

Do you ever worry that banning or limiting certain foods that will engender a backlash in terms of kids craving what is forbidden?

Yes and no.  Unfortunately right now you’re in the minority when you try to feed your child REAL food.  Kids get bombarded with fake foods that are tempting in many ways.  We don’t believe in saying no all the time to everything, although it would be better for our children’s bodies.  But we do believe that this is a parenting issue – you can’t just “go with the flow” of the powerful food industry or the eye-catching temptations in the grocery aisle.  Diet and lifestyle issues are responsible for more deaths than smoking according to many experts.  Just like other health and safety issues, parents need to take responsibility.

Educating our children is key.  For instance, we don’t let our children drink soda, but we explain to them why we have that rule and we follow it ourselves as parents.

What about kids who have normal BMIs but who have relatively the same diets (in terms of type of food, not necessarily amounts) as kids with weight problems?

We often think if someone is thin they are healthy.  Unfortunately that’s not always the case.

Some children have normal weight but are still at risk from a poor diet.  They often exhibit allergies, asthma, ADD, ADHD, learning disabilities, eczema, fatigue, thyroid issues, depression, heart disease, cancer and more.  While diet is not exclusively responsible, our health is always influenced by the food we eat.  Eating REAL food tips the scale toward living a healthier life, regardless of weight.

What are the top three things that a Mom can do to improve her family's health according to your plan?

At NourishMD.com, our One Easy System helps you get REAL food on the table REAL fast.  The bottom line is if we don’t have a plan for how we are going to feed our children (and ourselves) REAL food everyday then we’re not going to be successful.  So Step One is Planning Made Simple.  Using our free form, Moms plan out 4 or 5 meals and snacks each week, which include Powerful Proteins, Friendly Fats and Colorful Carbohydrates.  Eating the right foods together at regular times helps to keep blood sugar stable, which is key to lessening inflammation and controlling weight.

Step Two is Shopping Made Simple.  Once filled out, you can use your plan to create your shopping list.  In the grocery store, you stick to the list so you aren’t as tempted to buy something just because it’s on sale or the packaging looks good.

Step Three is Prepping Made Simple, the key to success.  It’s the way chefs get lots of food to many people quickly.  After you shop, set aside time to prep food for the week.  Boil some eggs, cook some taco meat, wash and chop your veggies, make a batch of ranch dip, and put together some trail mix.  Have food ready to go so that it’s easy to pull together a meal or grab REAL food snacks on your way out the door.

A teen on Fitsmi who lost weight through calorie and grain restriction said, "To this day, I sometimes view food as something I should keep away from. I hope that eventually I can change this perception and appreciate the nutritional value of food, rather than feeling like it is working against me."  How does your approach help to combat the "food is my enemy" feeling that many dieters and ex-dieters have?

When you focus on eating REAL food, giving your body the right fuel, your body often comes into balance.  You start to notice when you are really hungry as opposed to feeling bored, lonely, or sad.  You appreciate the tastes and textures and smells of REAL food, especially when you are sharing it with family or friends during a sit-down meal.

If you’ve been living on fake foods, processed low-fat (and often high-sugar) foods, and foods devoid of nutrition, your body is sending you messages to eat more partially because it’s not getting the nutrients it needs.  When you start eating nutrient-dense whole foods – fat and all – your body gets the nutrients it needs and starts to relax.  It takes time – it’s a re-learning process.

Do you think we're a turning point in this country on weight issues, and if so, what do you see as dangerous or hopeful trends for the future?

Growing up on 'Dunks.

I think the focus Michelle Obama and people like Jamie Oliver of The Food Revolution are bringing to this issue is creating an amazing opportunity for all of us.  Obesity has been a growing problem for our children for some time but we haven’t really made a concerted effort as a country until now.  Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign is focusing and organizing many people and organizations to create change.  We are very hopeful that people are returning to the basics when it comes to food – eating more fresh, local, and organic food – and learning how to cook and prepare these foods.

If your child or teen is addicted to a particular "fake food," i.e. sugar-glazed Dunkin donuts -- should you try and wean them from this treat and if so, how?

In a word, yes.  Donuts, sodapop, and French fries – are almost universally acknowledged to cause health problems when eaten on a regular basis.  In terms of “once in a while,” consider again whether you would allow your child to light up a cigarette “every now and then”.  Would one cigarette cause serious health problems?  Probably not.  But is smoking a cigarette or two worth the risk given the highly addictive nature of nicotine and the habit-forming stimulation?

You might say, wait a minute, a donut is not an addictive drug.  But, according to a study on rats showing eerie similarities between fast food and cocaine addiction, maybe it is.  At the very least, there is much evidence that fast foods are engineered specifically to override the body’s self-regulating mechanisms, so that you “can’t have just one.”  See David Kessler’s The End of Overeating, for example.

In approaching your kids’ eating habits, look at yourself first.  Often we are struggling with getting our own bad habits under control.  We don’t want to give up our own pop, coffee drinks, or donuts, so we don’t feel we can tell our kids no.  If that’s the case, work on yourself first.  Eat more REAL food yourself and deal with whatever issues are causing you to eat the wrong foods.  Take some time to consider, take advantage of the materials on websites like FitmsmiforMoms.com and NourishMD.com, and decide what your rules are when it comes to your child.  Then be consistent, and educate your kids so they understand your point of view is serious, not random.  When you have a big enough ‘Why,’ the ‘How’ doesn’t matter – you’ll do whatever it takes.

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Photos courtesy of oskay, Orin Zebest, and abkfenris

Blueberry Mini Muffins

Ingredients:

Muffins

3/4 cup whole-wheat flour

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup toasted wheat germ

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2/3 cup brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup skim milk

1/4 cup 1% milk*

1/4 cup applesauce

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cup blueberries (preferably fresh)

*Note: You can use any kind of milk you like – just make sure the total amount of milk is 3/4 cup. I prefer to use low-fat or fat-free milk, almond milk works too!

Oat Topping

2 tablespoons toasted wheat germ

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1/4 cup rolled oats

Preparations:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray two 24-cup mini muffin pans with nonstick spray.

2. In a bowl, whisk together both flours, wheat germ, baking powder, cinnamon, sugar and salt. Make a well in the center of the bowl and add milk, eggs, applesauce and vanilla extract. Mix until just incorporated. Fold in blueberries.

3. Divide batter among muffin cups. Combine all ingredients for oat topping (wheat germ, sugar and oats) in a small bowl and sprinkle over tops of muffins. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean – about 15 minutes. Let sit in pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to rack to cool completely. Yields about 3 dozen mini muffins.

For the original Blueberry Health Muffins recipe, check out the July/August issue of Whole Living – on stands now!

After interviewing hundreds of parents and kids for my book, Teenage Waistland: A Former Fat Kid Weighs in on Living Large, Losing Weight and How Parents Can (and Can’t) Help, I came up with the following list of things you should absolutely, unequivocally, 110 percent keep in mind when trying to help your kids. Granted, this is not easy. A lot of the stuff on this list requires you take a good long hard look at your own behaviors, your own feelings about weight and food, before you can truly help your child.  I think of these as the Ten Commandments to Helping Families--and in the process, helping yourself.

1.  Exorcise (Exercise) Your Inner Demons: The most confounding challenge for parents who want to help their kids be thinner is that kids and parents are often conflicted in themselves-- and with each other--about food, weight, and weight loss. Most of the parents I interviewed wrestled with weight issues their whole lives, and unwittingly passed on their problems to their kids. The struggles come in myriad shapes and forms--some are obsessed with being thin; others were fat and have devoted their life to maintaining their weight loss; some still are fat and hate themselves for it; while others have wrestled with eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia.  Learning how to help your kids is a process, and it involves honesty about your own relationship to food, weight, health, self-esteem, shame and fear. Find out what is making you stuck/wrestle with your own ambivalence, get help if you need to, so that you can move forward clearly and confidently.

2.   Beware The Charismatic Cure-All: Kids are fat for different, often complicated reasons: physical, psychological, emotional, cultural, and financial.  The path to change is complex and unique for each person. While some teens are successful with structured programs like Weight Watchers or fat camps, others can lose weight simply by switching from soda to water and skipping dessert every other night. Still others may need to make more radical changes in their diet to get where they’d like to go. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.

3. Curb Thy Parental Ego: It goes like this. You do everything right, your house is a pillar of health and well being, you exercise regularly, your kid exercises regularly—and still, she's overweight. Is she sneaking food behind your back? Probably. It’s enough to make you pull out your hair strand by strand. Or hole up with a vat of ice cream. But guess what? No longer are you the sole responsible party.  Your teen needs to decide on the “when, if, and how” questions about losing weight herself.  You can encourage and support her, but you can’t control her. Indeed, while very young children may take direction from parents without struggle or controversy, this is rarely the case with ‘tweens and teens. That’s why it’s so important to be a healthy, positive role model while they’re young. After a certain age, it’s HER decision to change, not yours-- so don't beat yourself up.

4. Fear Not the Winding Path: Many teens--heck, many PEOPLE-- lose and regain weight several times before it finally “sticks." In fact, it's normal to fail at least a couple of times before you succeed.  The more educated you are about why most popular diets fail, the more you can avoid the dreaded “yo-yo” effect and gain some permanent weight-loss traction.  Try to use every setback as a positive learning opportunity and keep moving forward.

5. Be Open To Real Change: Good health is a whole-self deal, involving mind as well as body. Very few kids—indeed very few adults—will achieve long-lasting life change unless the change is mental and spiritual as well as physical. Just ask Oprah, who has struggled mightily with her weight, and, it seems, finally come to a place of real acceptance about her physique., (trying to thing of someone  who only achieved lasting change after the mental/spiritual revolution)

6. If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say...Shut Up! Fear and shame NEVER inspire change in the long run—whether they’re overt or covert, or whether they come from family or from society.  A parents’ shame about his/her kid’s fatness can actually contribute to the child remaining fat. Why? Because they feel bad and punish you--and themselves--by overeating.   Shame erodes the self-confidence, persistence, and sense of efficacy required to surmount the challenging frustrations and deprivations of weight loss.  It can also lead to unhealthy approaches to dieting  and even eating disorders.  Check out our list of things NOT to say.

8.  Love Her For Who She Is Now:  Many of the health risks of obesity are real (though some of the hysteria and many of the statistics are disputed), but disapproval of fatness for aesthetic, moral, or shame-based reasons often hides behind a ‘health’-based disguise.  Don't let your love for her be molded by some insane beauty notion that 99.8 percent of the world does not embody.

9. Practice What You Preach: To be helpful, parents have to be open to changing themselves, and not just lecture and fret.  What you do/who you are is often far more influential than anything you say.  (Remember, teens only listen to a small percentage of what you say and their Bullshit Meter is hyper sensitive, especially around YOU!)

10. Take it Day by Day: Good health is a daily process, requiring patience, kindness, and forgiveness not only for your child, but for yourself.  Helping kids achieve good health means offering love, support, and acceptance; encouraging them to focus on doing things they enjoy rather than obsessing only on weight; and helping them change self-destructive habits of behavior and of thought inch by inch, pound by pound, day by day.

__________________

Photo courtesy of tiennox22

Julie's daughter Diandra.

Two years ago, Julie Douglis’s 16-year-old daughter, Diandra, a serious tennis player, injured herself and couldn’t work out for three months. In that time, she gained 15 pounds.  “Up till then she could eat a horse a day,” says Douglis, 54, of North Houston, Texas.

Julie wanted to help.  It also happened to be her area of expertise — she’s a weight and wellness counselor, helping people reach their goals.  Still, it’s another thing when it’s your own child.

What did Julie do?

“I suggested that Diandra limit her grains to a once a day,” she says. “This meant if she had wheat toast for breakfast, no rice or pasta for lunch or dinner.”

Julie also encouraged Diandra to eat lean protein, like turkey bacon, and replace grains with plenty of veggies and fruit every day. The one exception to the one-grain rule was if the family ate out and had sushi, Diandra’s favorite.  “Then she could have carbs twice a day,” says Julie, because sushi includes rice.

Following this routine, Diandra lost the extra 15 pounds in about ten weeks. “This was not a super strict diet and it really worked for her,” says Julie.

Douglis knows about weight loss from personal experience. At 49, she was told she could no longer use birth control pills. She gained about 10 pounds in the following year: “My metabolism was slowing down, and I was downing too many Starbucks and biscotti every week,” she recalls. When she went up a dress size -- and soon THAT was getting tight -- she decided it was time to do something.  She started with an at-home exercise program. While watching her favorite TV shows, she would do leg lifts, crunches, sit ups, and so forth. She cut the Starbucks to a once-a-week treat (“I love caramel macchiato!”).  She tossed cookies from the house, and started eating breakfast so she wouldn’t snack all morning. She also changed her lunch routine.

“Now I try to eat broiled or baked fish or chicken with veggies,” she says. “No more fried or fast food.”

For the last two-and-a-half years, Julie's weight has hovered around 110-112 pounds, normal for a 5’3  “very small-boned girl.”

Julie's dedication to healthy eating then extended beyond her family to the community.  She’s now working with the head nurse of a school district in Conroe, TX to implement a pilot program in the grade school. “We want to get the parents to learn what a real healthy meal is for their kids…not rice, beans, tortillas, mac and cheese, chicken nuggets and cokes.”

MORE OF JULIE’S TIPS:

What’s the top food-related change you made in your house?

No junk food. Remember, YOU are the Mom! This is about your child’s health. Be sympathetic, but if your child was allergic to peanut butter you wouldn’t give it to them. If your child is overweight, it’s going to cause health problems sooner or later.

What’s your favorite healthy recipe?

It’s not a recipe, it’s a whole meal: broiled tuna steaks marinated in soy sauce for 10 minutes with broccoli and baby carrots, steamed lightly with maybe a cup of Japanese soup (chicken stock with a few sliced mushrooms and green onions) and rice.

What else would you like to change in your own life or your family’s?

The amount of go-go stress in our family.

What was the most important way you helped your daughter with her weight issues?

Teaching her it could be handled in a positive, non-judgmental way. We can do this!

_______________

Catch an interview with Julie's daughter Diandra on Fitsmi.com, a website for plus-sized teen girls who want to make healthy changes.

Goei’s instincts are right on. Although popular culture doesn’t actively promote the idea, fathers have an enormous influence on their daughters’ self-esteem, especially when it comes to body image. It makes sense, when you think about it---most fathers, after all, are the first man in a girl’s life. The way he interacts with her—and she with him—usually shapes her future relationships with men, for better or for worse.  Remember the ice-cream scene in the movie Little Miss Sunshine?  When her Dad suggests that Olive might not want to eat chocolate ice-cream for breakfast since it can make her “fat” and ruin her chances at the beauty contest, the whole family needs to come to her rescue before she takes a bite.

Joe Kelly and his daughters.

“Dads set the standard for what ‘man’ is and what ‘man’ values,” says Joe Kelly, the author of  Dads and Daughters: How to Inspire, Understand, and Support Your Daughter and the founder of thedadman.com. “So if a dad is conscious of the dynamic of the messages in the culture, he can use his leverage to counter this message and be a positive force in his daughter’s life.” Not, he stresses, that a father has more influence than a mother, but that a father has a “unique position of leverage that no one else has, because he’s a man.”

Meg Meeker, a pediatrician in Traverse City, Michigan and author of  Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters agrees. “Dads are huge, and they don’t get enough credit,” she says. “We know that the number one way to boost a girl’s self esteem is to receive physical affection from her dad.”  This is especially important for overweight girls, who “often have a sense that they’re untouchable,” she says. “We don’t touch and hug overweight girls like we do skinny girls. And when girls get touched and hugged, there’s a sense that they're seen, accepted, and liked -- that who they are is OK. And when a girl receives that gift from her dad, it has triple the power.”

That’s exactly what Kelly tried to do with his twin daughters, Nia and Mavis, who are now 30. He and his wife, Nancy Gruver, are the co-founders of New Moon, a magazine and web community for pre-teen and teen girls. When his daughters were growing up, he and his wife made it a point to focus on who they were as people, rather than on their appearance. “To my mind, they were incredibly beautiful, but what was important was that they were clever and liked to run around and do things,” says Kelly, who frequently lectures on fatherhood and also works at The Emily Program, an eating disorder facility in the Twin Cities.

Mavis, a grants manger at a women’s foundation in San Francisco, recalls how both of her parents handled her appearance concerns. While weight was never an issue, height was -- she’s only five feet tall, and it annoyed her when people would comment on her stature (or lack thereof).  “If I was venting, my parents would say, ‘Yeah, that’s frustrating, but it’s not the most important thing, here’s the thing to focus on,” she says.    “If we were getting dressed up and feeling happy and excited they would say ‘you look great,’ but it was always about the emotion or our accomplishments rather than the visual. Insides were more important than outsides.” That said, she knows how achingly difficult it is not to internalize the cultural messages about ideal bodies, even if you do have the most progressive parents on the planet. But “if you can step back from that, then you can be kinder to yourself,” she says.

Allrighty then. But how exactly is that done? According to Lucy Bloom, the director of Kansas City's Father-Daughter Summit for the National Center for Fathering, a one-day workshop for fathers and teen/young adult daughters, the best thing a dad can do is, well, the best thing a mom can do: Plan family activities that involve physical activity. Grocery shop together and teach her to make healthy food choices in an encouraging way. Offer healthy foods at home. When you eat out, avoid the greasy fast food restaurants and head for the fresh food options.

And, of course, model healthy diet and exercise without pressuring your offspring. “Many girls tell us that their fathers make comments about their exercise, about eating enough, or eating too much,” she says. “The unfortunate result is that daughters interpret the comments to mean that their father's approval depends on their weight and their exercise. She feels that she has to earn his love by how she looks on the outside. Many of these daughters have voiced deep disappointment and even hatred towards their fathers for judging them by how they look, rather than who they are.”

And yet—beware.  Michael Gurian, a family therapist in Spokane, WA and author of The Wonder of Girls, thinks it’s irresponsible for fathers NOT to acknowledge their daughters’ weight problem. “I know how bad it is to be obese and how dangerous it is to be overweight,” says Gurian, the father of two girls ages, 17 and 20. “You lose more self-esteem as a growing child if you end up 50 pounds overweight. As a therapist, I’m kind of ipso facto involved in a therapy movement that has convinced people that in some ways girls are very fragile, and that if you address the fact that they’re thirty or forty pounds overweight and they’re 13 it will somehow destroy their self esteem.  I don’t agree with that. We have to be as positive as possible, as much as possible, but we must tell the truth.”

Gurian has both clinical and personal experience on the topic of teens, Dads, and weight -- one of his daughters is reed thin, while the other tends to gain weight and compare herself to her slimmer sibling. “I say, ‘You’re not fat, you’re forty pounds overweight.’ We have that kind of honest dialogue,” he says. “And sometimes she gets sad, and I’ve had to say ‘Are you eating healthy?’ I always make it a health thing, rather than a concern with appearance. My classic line with my daughters was, ‘You're beautiful, of course!  And are you also feeling healthy?’ They laugh at me now, but it shows my science-based, health-based, and both/and approach to their issues as they grew up.”

Like many other parenting challenges, balance may be key.  And when all else fails, remember that your fatherly love and affection is a powerful force for the good in your daughter’s life.  Polly Payne, a digital marketing assistant in New York, is a vivid example. Her father has been her strongest advocate, she says. “My dad has always been able to make me feel better,” says Payne, 22.  “Like with any young woman, I definitely get insecure about my body image. He always sends me words of encouragement and cards to remind me how proud he is. His words of encouragement and love have brought me to tears.” He’s also sensitive: After spending the summer in Europe, she gained about 15 pounds and was really depressed. But when her father saw her he said, “You just look like you ate well!’ and then told her that she was still so pretty and “any guy would be lucky to know me,” she says.  “He also reminds me that my beauty is inner, which lasts much longer.”

My husband won't leave my 13yo daughter alone. He thinks she's overweight and doesn't exercise enough. He's constantly saying things like, "Haven't you had enough?" and "Are you sure you want to eat THAT?" He went berserk the other day when he saw her eating a Hershey's bar. And last weekend he took her out on a jog and came home furious because she wouldn't cooperate. I've told him that he's not helping but he just steamrolls over me saying, "If she doesn't exercise NOW, she NEVER will." or "If she doesn't get her weight under control, it's going to be ten times harder later on." Maybe he's right. But all I see happening is our daughter pulling away from him and eating when he's not looking.

A better relationship one step at a time.

So your husband’s anxious about your daughter’s weight, he’s making things worse, and he’s ready to lash out at you if you disagree with him.  Challenging!  What you need to do is defuse the situation gently, mustering all of your tact and wisdom, so that he can relax his defenses and consider your (well-researched) point of view.  Maybe he’ll even come to you one day saying, “You know, I think there’s a better way to go about this,” and then go on to state your ideas as if they were HIS.  Victory to you either way, and bonus points if you can avoid saying “I told you so!”

So, what to do?  First, admire the best in your husband – he cares deeply about your daughter – and then arm yourself with this knowledge:  Study after study of parenting shows that nagging and hounding typically has the opposite effect on our children.  Especially when it comes to weight management and teens! The three things that have the most impact on kids’ healthy decisions are good self esteem, good modeling by parents, and family meals.  (Check out Ten Things Teens Wished Their Parents Knew About Weight Loss and Worst Things Parents Do To Overweight Teens)

So how do you get your husband to understand that his intrusive and critical approach is doing more harm than good?

A few suggestions:

Try talking with your husband at a peaceful time when your daughter is not around.  Compliment him for how much he appears to care for your daughter’s welfare.  Then gently observe that the things you are BOTH doing don’t seem to be having much impact.  Finally, problem solve together about how to:

1.  Improve the food environment in your home:  make a point of having family meals together at least three times a week, more if possible.  Family meals are so powerful that it doesn’t even matter what you eat so much as that you are all together.  Cook healthy meals for everyone – don’t single out your daughter -- and stock your fridge and pantry with healthy snacks that are easy to grab-and-go.  Don’t play food police, but try to structure snack and meal-times so that nobody has to think about food in between (i.e. try to avoid mindless “grazing”).  Don’t eliminate treats, but try not to let them compete with nutritious foods.  Be a model by eating healthy yourself.

2. Model good exercise: go for evening walks together and invite her: park at the far end of the parking lot at the mall so you walk a little; walk to the store; make sure that you do a half hour of movement every day (can be broken up into three ten-minute chunks), and don’t complain about it, instead comment out loud about how it energizes you and makes you feel good.  Don’t tell her that she should exercise too, but invite her occasionally, and accept whatever level of exercise she does. Find family activities that are fun and at least involve standing up…like visiting the zoo, gardening,  hula hooping, or playing tennis, badminton or bocce ball.

3. Boost your daughter’s self esteem: Show an interest in her schoolwork and social life and compliment her on good decisions she makes in life, on her manners, and on her loyalty to her friends.  Have fun with her and show her that she is loved. Compliment her appearance when she grooms herself well or dresses nicely (don’t add the ‘but’ about how much nicer she would look if her were thinner). Make sure that when you are together, you don’t focus on the things she hasn’t done, or should do, but on the things she has accomplished.

End the conversation with your husband with an action plan, a mutual vow to avoid nagging and negativity, and a joint understanding that changes take time.  Plan to get together again in a week or so to compare notes and see how you are doing.

Still having problems?

Many parents need the help of a professional to figure out how to work better together for their children’s welfare.  If you’re still stuck after trying the above, you may want to seek out a counselor or psychologist with good knowledge of adolescents and weight issues to help you two find a consolidated approach.  The American Psychological Association has a search engine to help you find an appropriate person, as does Psychology Today’s website. You might propose to your husband that since you two cannot seem to agree on an approach, and since your differences are probably making the situation worse rather than better, consulting with a professional to help you find common ground might be a good investment.

Last but not least, remember that even if you can’t get your husband on board, if YOU educate yourself and feel confident about the best approach, live healthy, and work with your family in these more positive ways, your daughter will be more resilient.

Ryan and his daughter Helena

When your daughter complained her belly was fat, did she actually have a weight problem?

I don't think so. I'm no expert and don't know her BMI or anything, but she didn't seem overweight to me. On the other hand, her sister was always very skinny so in comparison Helena was fuller, but not fat, just thicker than Grace.

What was your first reaction when she asked you about her stomach sticking out at such a young age?

I was mortified, and very saddened that she might be thinking about body image at age four. That just seemed unfathomable to me. I expected it much later. I kept thinking, what have we done to make her think about such things so young. After she said it, many flags starting flying for me. I became acutely aware of how much all of us talk and make jokes about weight. Even people we love dearly are constantly talking about how fat they are and how they are not going to wear a bathing suit this summer, or how they need to start exercising, or shouldn't eat that cookie, etc.

Did your other child do the same thing?

Grace never did but she only lived to be seven years old. We have a two-and-a-half year old, Eve. She never has... yet. And we have a six-month-old, Liam. He hasn't said ANYTHING yet!

What did you tell your daughter -- and what did your WIFE tell her?

We told her that everybody has his or her own body and that it isn't worth comparing. We tried to refocus her on health instead of weight, saying things like, "If you eat healthfully and stay active, then your body will take on its own healthy shape and everyone has a different healthy shape." Later we started to talk about how the media (TV, movies, Barbies, etc.) only show one body type and talk about how that sometimes makes people feel that they are not good enough. Now that she is almost nine, we also talk about the motives of people in the media (i.e., that they want to try and make you feel badly about yourself to get you to buy more of their product that 'will' make you feel better!).

Do you think it makes a different how a father responds to his daughter versus her mother?

I'm not sure how the mother and father influences differ, but I take my role as father in her life very seriously. I try always to focus my own attention away from body and body image comments so that my daughter not only knows I don't think about her in that way, but that I don't think about anyone in that way, male or female. It's actually much harder than I had hoped it would be!!

How are fathers in a unique position to help their daughters overcome weight/body image concerns? How did you overcome it?

Well, every father is probably in a slightly different position, but Helena and I are very close and we talk about a lot of things. Last summer I encouraged her to run a triathlon with me. She and I trained together and she ran her first one last August. She wants to do another this summer. I like to focus on keeping her body active and making it stronger and healthier, not better looking or changing its shape. I also hope that she sees me, as a man, not treating women as body objects so that she learns to love the nature of a man who sees more than just bodies. I pray that helps her. I also feel very confident telling others when they are making these comments (in most cases family) that we try not to think about and discuss body image issues because we don't feel it is healthy for our girls. They might not appreciate it, but as Helena's father I feel it is my job to stand up and help create an environment that allows her to transcend her body a bit, no matter how it fits or breaks the normative expectations.

What's the one thing you wish other dads of daughters knew?

Geez. I'm no expert here. I hate to offer recommendations because I'm just learning as I go. My instinct tells me that the best way to help my children with body image issues (and any other life issue for that matter) is to learn how to connect with them. At all costs, break down your expectations, your scheduling needs, your habits, your tech needs -- whatever they might be -- and learn to cut yourself bare into your child's world. You don't even really have to speak about weight or body image. I think just learning to connect meaningfully with your child is the key to pushing them along toward a healthier life trajectory all around. I wish that were easy, but at least for me, this takes physical and mental daily labor. I have to work to connect. I think dads should know that connection won't just happen to you because you're an overall good guy and people like you. You have to make it happen by thinking actively about how to connect day-to-day with your daughter and then learning to translate those thoughts into behavior that works and is maintainable. I was working in that direction relatively well, then four years ago, June 9, our eldest, Grace was killed in a car accident. Since then it's been harder, more work, but I keep trying. Life (or death in this case) can't get in the way of your connecting with your living children.

Is there something you wish you knew before you became a dad?

I wish I knew how hard it was going to be. Just to be prepared for how much effort and thought it takes to do this right. It's not like you have to plan a million things to be a good dad. But I do have to plan my life (or construct my life) so that I have the best chance of 'reaching' my children, or connecting with them in their young worlds. I always thought it would come naturally, but something is always there waiting to get in the way. It's much harder than I expected.