I've had two friends post recently about the struggles of thin girls, and I have another friend who has been thin her entire life and I've witnessed first-hand the teasing she received due to being a "stick", and other euphemisms for being too thin. I've also watched her, sometimes, eat more at a sitting than I do, and I know for a fact she's not starving herself. Yes, we need to stop this teasing, and certainly not assume that any girl who is "too thin" must have an eating disorder. This is just plain wrong and can be just as hurtful as any other name calling and stereotypical statements. I don't mean for anything I write that follows to diminish that, because we do indeed all have our struggles, whether those are things that folks can see, like being "too thin", or unseen things that only we know about.
But, there is a difference between being "too thin" and "too heavy". When you are being teased about being "too thin", it is often about jealousy. It is something that most women aspire to. Millions of women diet every year, just to try to get thinner. Millions more exercise regularly in an attempt to be fit (and yes, a bit thinner as well, for the most part). Most of the rest of us are at least trying to maintain our current fit and thin level. Even if we were considered "too thin" when we were young (as I was, so I speak from experience here), we now struggle to stay in the "normal" BMI category as we sail through our 30s and producing babies, and even more so as we begin our 40s. Regardless, you don't wake up one day thinking, "I wish I were fat," even if you are among those underweight few. And while it's true that being underweight can be just as much of a health risk as being overweight, the every day person in this country doesn't think of that, or probably in most cases even realize that.
Most of us, even if overweight now, had a time in our lives when we were considered thin. Like her paternal grandparents, my daughter has never really had that. (Which makes me wonder how much more difficult it must have been for them when they were young, because in that day, there were certainly less overweight people in this country.)
While she was born normal weight, my daughter did not lose weight at first like most babies do. In fact, she weighed 2 pounds more at her very first check-up at 2 weeks of age (when most babies have just gained back the weight they lose soon after birth). By three months of age, she weighed 16 pounds. Most babies just double their birth weight by one year of age, while my girl did that by 3 months old.
In the countless studies extolling the benefits of breastfeeding, we are told that fewer breastfed babies have weight issues later, and that they better learn to tell when they are full if they are fed on demand, etc., etc., etc. I do still believe breastfeeding is best if you are able to do it (and no, I'm not trying to question your choices if you didn't), but I am only left to wonder if my daughter's weight management would have been any different had she not been exclusively breast fed for over 4 months, and still nursed until 13 months.
Maybe you wonder how I fed her otherwise those first few formative years? To this day, I am teased by my family about how her first birthday cake did not contain sugar. I made homemade cake (sweetened with apple sauce) and icing (made with unflavored gelatin), among my many efforts to feed my daughter well and limit sugar and other junk food. To this day, she is my child with much more of a sweet tooth, so I can only wonder if this early effort completely backfired. I can tell you that she's the pregnancy I had sweet and fruit cravings with, while with my son I craved meats and fat (including red meat, which I typically avoid).
I won't claim that we adhere to perfectly healthy eating. My husband insists on junk food being around, but I have always tried very hard to limit it for the kids and myself. I watered down their juice when they were little, only allowed soft drinks when we were eating out (and only sometimes and those without caffeine at that), I learned to cook from scratch much more as they grew to eat adult food, I researched which additives, preservatives, and other products were best to avoid, etc.
And still I had one (noticeably quite thin female) pediatrician accuse me of letting my daughter have dessert every day and presumably eat too much fruit. Yes, my daughter was picky and still prefers carbs, but certainly when she was young I forced on her all the good eating habits I could muster, always making her try her veggies and limiting her access to too many carbs and too many empty calories. And still the pediatrician was very accusatory and said she was just too heavy, RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY 8-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER! If she had pulled me aside to discuss this, I would have totally understood. But discussing it like that right in front of my very intelligent girl? Totally inappropriate, and perhaps even causing body issues much earlier than need be. Obviously we never saw that pediatrician again.
The only other possible "cause" I can point to is that my daughter had a lot of ear infections as a baby and all through her early years (needing tubes in her ears to help for a while). I have seen a few studies suggest that can cause a change in taste buds, and perhaps even be related to increased weight gain among children. Interestingly, her never-thin grandfather also had a long history of ear infections.
Here she is, cute as a button...
And lest you think I'm blaming only one side of the family, several other relatives on both sides tended towards being overweight much of their lives, so that's not the case. I know that being overweight is not an entirely genetic trait, but I must believe in my daughter's case that it was largely inherited. She watches friends who can drink pop and eat junk food seemingly all they want, some who are so thin their parents even encourage it at times, all while watching what she eats ALL THE TIME not so she can be thin like them, but just so she does not get even heavier. She can work out 20+ hours per week, eat healthy, and still she will not be considered thin (and, yes, she has done this, although not always staying so fit). She has to watch the thin girls get most of the attention from boys, because high school boys just don't know any better, in my opinion. She has to pass clothes down to her smaller mother. She has to watch her little brother eat like a horse and still need pants with an adjustable waist so they don't fall right off his thin frame. And it all makes me ache inside, because I see it hurting her.
I should also say that I don't think anyone could, or should, call my girl fat. (And if you do, I may punch you - fair warning.) If she were a boy, folks may have called her husky, or something similar. Once around age 10 or 11, when she insisted that she was fat, I made her try on plus sized kids' clothes to prove my point (not saying there is anything wrong with wearing plus-sized clothes either, just that this was needed to improve my girl's self-esteem). They fell off of her, much like regular-sized clothes would fall off of her brother. Even today fully grown, she wears size 6, 8 or 9 to my 4, 6, or 7 (oh, the woes of women's clothes sizing and how it varies by brand, but that's an entirely separate issue!). She has wide shoulders to my narrow ones. And so on.
But, despite probably always bordering on and sometimes even being considered overweight, my daughter is so much more beautiful than I've ever been. Her smile lights up her eyes. She is extremely photogenic. Her hair is thick and luxurious. She has hips and a female figure! (Even when I gained weight, I'm still not all that shapely.) And she has a quick wit and can hold her own in just about any conversation (despite still being a teenager). She's a Christian with a good heart. I hope she surrounds herself with people who know just how great she is her whole life, and I hope she helps others realize how great they are as well.
And here she is, all grown and beautiful...
Because, as I've said many times, we all have issues. We all have insecurities real or imagined. We all have the hand we were dealt. It's how we play it and the kind of person we become inside that matters most. Because that shows through more than some of us realizes. Thin or heavy. Tall or short. High IQ or not so high. White or black. Sinner or saint. And everything in between. We all just get this one life. Let's make it great.
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