A mum wants you and me to pay for her child to go to a fat camp. The child says it’s her mother’s fault she is overweight. The child might be right. Fat is a family issue. The fat camps will probably look at the family system and should not just be used to take fat off the child. The child is about to hit puberty anyway, a time of weight gain, and it looks like mum is struggling too.
There are thousands of overweight children in the UK with parents who were overweight well before birth, passing on a dangerous legacy to their children. There is no quick fix for this. I have some really bad news to pass to the mother, if you can find her. The evidence is that children who lose weight often put it back on at a dangerous rate unless something in the family changes. The family will need to change their diet and lifestyle – FOREVER. They will need a great deal of help, to manage an obesogenic food environment, they will need to change their ways of having fun, and they will need new ways of bonding together with other people who don’t care about eating healthy food. Its an enormous ask.
So, if you can get hold of this mother, get her to talk to me first. I will help her to understand that the fat camp isn’t a quick fix. The mother needs more help than the child right now. Get her to give me a call.
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