The latest in how we all hate fat people (I am a fat person) is a medievil magnetic structure to prevent your mouth opening more than like 2mm – here’s the Guardian article and back to school weigh ins in September. It’s all a load of absolute bullshit. 2mm? Is that some sort of liquid diet from now on then? The issue isn’t a complete lack of control about shoving food in all day long it’s all complex and has so many varients that will cost money to fix but we have a hoarding, greedy government that only want short term solutions. They don’t care about your issues or problems or disorders or poverty that cause many people problems when it comes to food so instead they are, yet again, going to shame fat people, parents of children being weighed and compared to a BMI scale thats outdated.
My Issue With School Weigh Ins
My daughter is going through her hormone things. I mean it’s a battle to get her to eat fruit and vegetables but she does. She has a relatively healthy diet despite changing her mind what she will eat on a bi-weekly basis. She has a healthy portion, she has a school dinner and she’s tried a variety of foods. She has some issues but I try really hard to make all kinds of food accessible to her. Now she’s getting closer and closer to her teens she’s had another massive growth spurt, she’s filling out in a perfectly healthy way and that means she has some fat to her body. Finding clothes to fit her has started to become a problem and she mostly has to buy things aged 12-14 depending on where we shop. Things don’t fit her well in the length and of course in every shop sizing is different. We tried her in ‘adult’ sizes and she was a size six to eight. Perfectly healthy for a growing preteen body that is filling out and getting taller.
If I am told in September that she is ‘at risk’ of being overweight or obese I will scream. I am genuinely worried about what it will do to her self confidence. I really try to be size inclusive, talk positively and I don’t comment on her body. I try not to restrict food in an unhealthy way and as a result my daughter doesn’t binge the way I do. I could absolutely do better but I could also do worse. I want to promote a healthy, varied relationship with food and joyous movement. I want to promote a positive body attitude and reiterate that fat is a normal, healthy part of your body growing and changing. I don’t want my daughter to get caught out thinking a size 12, 14 or 16 is unhealthy like I did and as a result have binge eating, disordered eating and a terrible relationship with my body and food.
I worry that school weigh ins will shame parents that are from poorer backgrounds especially like I was because there is a huge link between poverty and obesity but why would the Tories want to fix that? They hate the poor!
Things that SHOULD happen instead of shaming parents, school weigh ins and mouth torture devices
- Allow children to see all different body shapes and sizes moving, happy, living their best lives and existing.
- Allow children to see all different body shapes and sizes exercising. That kind of has to start with me really, the fat woman doing yoga and lifting weights and swimming like I used to.
- Teach children proper nutrition and how to cook from scratch not just cake baking. Change the curriculum to include making sauces, trying lots of different fruit and vegetables, meal planning for a family and finding new favourite flavours.
- Stop labelling food as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ choices because that develops into guilt and shame. Food is food.
- Talk about eating disorders and the problems they cause and where they can come from. It’s not just binge and purge.
- Talk about emotional eating and finding nourishment. When we figure out the craving or emotion we can turn to something else rather than food.
- Stop talking about taking things out of meals but instead what we can put in? What will give us more nourishment, more nutrition, more colour to our plates?
- Stop promoting slimming clubs outside schools. Children don’t need to diet and they don’t need to see those kind of advertisements reminding them that they’re not good enough, not skinny enough, not slim enough and not someone they’ve never mets ideal beauty standard. Actively be anti-diet
- Offer therapy for eating disorder patients including the fat ones. Believe fat people when they say they have a problem with food or an eating disorder.
- Offer children a variety of sports at school so they can find something they enjoy. Give them choice. Stop making them play endless games (I’m looking at you, Rounders) that they hate playing.
- Teach children that another person’s body has nothing to do with them, to be kind as bodies around them change and grow.
- Make healthy food choices more appealing and accessible. Stop shops discounting processed food which is affordable and instead focus on things like fruit and vegetable boxes.
Ultimately it’s a lot of work from parents and what teachers have to teach. It’s changing the attitude. It’s stopping using an out dated system to measure health. It’s getting to the root cause of the issue – why does this problem have an issue with food? How can we help them overcome this issue? This is a mental health problem just as much, if not more, than it is a physical one. If loosing weight was just as simple as not opening your mouth then we would all be thin all the time. It’s also important to remember thiness does not autimatically equal health, just as fatness does not automatically equal lack of self control.
