Entries Tagged 'early puberty' ↓

President Barack Obama announced that Michelle Obama, First Lady and mother of two First Daughters Sasha and Malia, will be taking on Childhood Obesity as her pet cause. In this MSNBC story Michelle Obama admits to a very similar story as the one I’ve told here on The Girl Revolution – the doctor says, “Hey your kids are in a risky place BMI-wise.”

I could not have been more thrilled. You know, Tribe, that I am very concerned with the negative consequences resulting from apathetically allowing obesity to consume our daughters: early puberty, higher insurance premiums, preexisting conditions like diabetes, higher risks of breast cancer, infertility, and those are just the gender-specific risks.

I recently read an article in The New Yorker about the fact that the military is having a problem finding youth who meet the physical requirements of enlisting to defend our country. It’s never happened before in the history of America.

I remind my own kids, “Did you get your hour of play today?”

From the MSNBC article, Michelle tells us how she handle the shocking news that her daughters were too high on the BMI charts,

‘Small changes, big results’
The first lady said that over the next few months she made some small changes that got her daughters back on track. No more weekday TV. More attention to portion sizes. Low-fat milk. Water bottles in the lunch boxes. Grapes on the breakfast table. Apple slices at lunch. Colorful vegetables on the dinner table. “It was really very minor stuff, but these small changes resulted in some really significant improvements, and I didn’t know it would,” Mrs. Obama said.

It’s true. Small changes do lead to big results. I know it from my own health, my kids’ health, my lifestyle changes. Small changes are easy and achievable and if you do them often enough you do get big lifestyle changes.

I am so happy children will have a champion for the very important cause of childhood obesity. There could not be a more visible champion.

There’s more to this childhood obesity epidemic than our kids are too lazy, we’re not good enough police about what goes in our kids mouths and our little people don’t get enough play and exercise though.

I just saw Food, Inc. on the Watch It Now feature on Netflix.

It really highlights facts like these: if all the animals we eat consume corn and they feed them corn to make them fatter faster . . . .does it surprise us then that we and our children are also fatter faster? Not to mention all the other products, around 80% of what’s in the grocery store, are made of . . . corn, corn syrup, and other corn sugars?

Food, Inc. does one thing well. Outline just how seriously our government is involved in what we’re eating – which flows into the rising costs in our inefficient health care system – and just how much influence a few Corporations have over our childhood obesity problem, our national obesity problem.

Happily, and the movie highlights this truth very well in the end: it is ultimately CONSUMERS (read parents who buy their kids’ foods) who decide what supermarkets carry, what farmers farm and what corporations sell.

If you’re feeling a little powerless as you fork over the extra dough for the healthier foods let me point out one tiny little trend which should raise your feelings of empowerment: When I began writing about the issue of early puberty the issue of hormones in the milk supply came up, non-hormone milk cost quite a bit more than milk from cows given growth hormones. It was worth it. Not just to me, but to enough people that Walmart – the biggest retailer in the world – doesn’t carry growth hormone milk anymore. They don’t even stock it.

We – PARENTS, CONSUMERS – stopped the practice of feeding growth hormones to milk cows by refusing to buy that milk.

That’s how capitalism works every.single.time.

Next on the chopping block – high fructose corn syrup, a product that’s probably in 80% of the food supply and that’s making us and our kids fatter faster.

Michelle said she plans to roll out her childhood obesity campaign over the next few weeks. I am sure she’ll be planting the garden in the spring too. I can’t wait!

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Listen, I took some slack for The Girl Revolution: Fit Girl Series I ran last year. Too obsessive, one reader said in her email.

The thing is, childhood obesity has very serious health consequences for our children. Especially for our daughters who reach puberty between 100 and 110 pounds, whether that happens at 6 or 12. Outward signs of puberty are beginning in some girls as early as 6 and still being considered medically normal.

You know, and I know, that we have listened to adult men claim they have a right to have sex with children because they look older than they are, “She looked like a grown up, look what she was wearing!” I’m ashamed to say which of my own friends and family members have said this about junior high girls.

We’ve listened to this disgusting and inexcusable line from men who have sex with 12-18 year olds.

These girls’ crimes? They grew breasts. Visible signs of “looking older.”

Nothing cultural has changed – men are still using this piss-poor excuse for inexcusable behavior, and we’re still letting them get away with it because the girls look “sexual” as soon as breasts appear on their bodies. But now girls are looking older earlier than ever before it’s time to decide whether we’ve heard enough “she looked older” B.S.

You tell me if it’s a serious concern that 8-year-olds develop breasts because they are gaining weight too fast. Think back: bra snapping, cat calls, harassment in school, older men asking if you “need a ride,” inappropriate touching, sexual name-calling, attempts to seduce, etc. Yeah, you were there.

Add to that the serious concerns about future breast cancer risks (increases if she starts her period early, doesn’t have a child before age 30 and doesn’t breast feed), diabetes, rising health care costs, pre-existing conditions of the health insurance industry (they’re blatantly rejecting obese children).

Tribe, we have a problem that needs serious addressing.

Visit the Obesity Thunder website to see all sorts of videos around the issue.

Fit Girl Series: Whose Body Is It Anyway

Fit Girl Series: We Did It

Fit Girl Series: Accept Your Body

Fit Girl Series: Friends, Strangers With Candy

Fit Girl Series: Comparing Children

Fit Girl Series: Exercise Poll

Fit Girl Series: Eat This, Not That!

Fit Girl Series: BIG FAT LIARS!

Fit Girl Series: Obese Teens on Oprah

Fit Girl Series: Weight = Moral Failure

Fit Family = Fit Girl

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I read all these stories that suggest Kate Moss should be burned at the stake for saying her motto is, “Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.” Sarah and the Goon Squad has a funny, light-hearted and compelling post about it. Instead of being outraged, I seriously considered adopting the motto, repeating it to my daughter as often as, “did you brush your teeth?” and taping it to my fridge to help my whole family stop rationalizing the junk food that goes into our mouths.

Here’s the thing: No one in this family is at risk for becoming Anorexic or Bulimic. In fact, to put the “fears” about our food issues into perspective: Only 1-3 percent of girls in this country suffer from anorexia nervosa and another 1 percent suffer from bulimia nervosa.

Conversely, 16 percent of girls are overweight and another 15 percent are tipping the scales in high risk weight categories (meaning one or two more “yeses” to the stop at McDonalds will push them into the next category up.) There is an Obesity Epidemic in this country. There is a Childhood Obesity Epidemic in this country. This is a serious personal concern as well as a national concern for the well-being of one-third of our children. Not to mention the future of America as these children join the approximately 127 million adults in the U.S. are overweight, 60 million obese, and 9 million severely obese. That’s 64.5 percent of U.S. adults, age 20 years and older, who are overweight and 30.5 percent of us are obese.

My thinking is that if the motto, “Nothing tastes as good as thin feels” is effective, (and judging by the size of Kate Moss, it just might be) it wouldn’t kill America to adapt it as our National Freaking Motto.

The 2-4 percent of us who fall victim to becoming too thin and suffering from anorexia and bulimia should obviously seek treatment for those tragic diseases. Why shouldn’t the majority of Americans, who face the opposite eating disorder, yet just as damaging and far more expensive (health insurance and national health cost crisis, anyone?) seek treatment ? Or at least not have a hissy fit over the motto of a skinny girl as we ask our children to “pass the Cheetos?”

It’s a little like never letting our kids go outside to play so we can keep them “safe,” even though there is only 1 in a million chances that something terrible and irreversible will ever happen to them. One in a Million. All the while, saddling them with an obesity problem they’ll have to combat for the rest of their lives, not to mention the higher health insurance premiums they’ll have to pay.

* Statistics from American Obesity Association, and here.

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I was at a Toastmasters Contest Saturday when I smelled something. I smelled it again. Unmistakable, that’s B.O.

Sniff. Whiff. I made a personal armpit check. Not me. Phew.

To my left I leaned in for a discrete snort of my husband’s pits. Freshly showered. Not him.

I looked at the 20-something chicks in front of me – they seemed perfectly groomed. Doubtful …

My daughter lifted her arm to whisper something in my ear.

Whiff. Sniff. P.U.!

You?

There I sat, wondering how the unmistakable smell of teen spirit was already coming from my 7-year-old little girl. Her only bad smell used to be “kid-who-played-too-much.”

I did some mental math. I was 12 years old and on my way to Junior High when I finally asked my mother for a stick of deodorant. It happened around the same time that I got my first bra and finally got permission to shave my legs, wear lipstick. Around the time I started my period. Most of this became necessary because I had to be naked in front of all the other girls in the locker room after gym.

I thought I had another four or five years before I had to have the, “you’re coming to an age when you start to smell a little funky and need to step up the showering. Oh, and use this natural salt crystal,” talk.

Then I flashed back on my a few of my friends telling me their similar-aged sons are smelling pretty funky. Just last week I heard Jenny McCarthy say her 6 year old is growing armpit hair and has the beginning of a mustache. Oddly enough, Ali Wentworth agreed with this mysterious new development in her own 6 or 7 year old girl. That was Friday’s Oprah.

This is becoming so universal that doctors are calling it “Normal.” Universal defines normal.

It’s a symptom of the early puberty so common that it’s not referred to as early puberty anymore. It’s just puberty. At 7 years old.

If the doctors are calling this prematurish puberty “normal.” Then what is left for parents to do, except have the same conversation you were intending to have – but several years earlier than you were expecting?

My only advice is this: Don’t make your kid feel like a freak.

Be shocked in the bedroom when you freak out with your equally stunned spouse or stammer about it on the phone with your mystified best friend.

Then, put on your best poker face when you’re explaining things you thought you had four more years to prepare yourself for.

I do have a question for The Girl Revolution readers – if the armpit hair is coming in any second are we encouraging shaving or au’natural?

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You can never, ever, not-in-a-million years, love and accept yourself from the couch.

If feelings were math “accepting your body” is a mathematical impossibility if you are not in touch with and caring for your body.

It’s not only ineffective, it’s dangerous advice that glamorizes, justifies and promotes obesity. It’s time to get over it America.

Accept what is and then love yourself.

Love yourself enough to make effort. Love yourself enough to care about what feeling is behind your eating. Love yourself enough to get off the couch and hit the gym or go to the track. Love yourself enough to make the time. Love yourself enough to find the money. Love yourself enough to make it a priority. Love yourself enough to go to an Over-eaters Anonymous meeting or Weight Watchers. Love yourself enough to put one foot in front of the other. Love yourself enough to break a sweat. Love yourself enough to read the packaging and labels. Love yourself enough to learn what you don’t know.

Love is not a feeling.

Love an action verb.

You can not teach what you don’t know.

Love your kid enough to go first.

Love your kid enough to say no.

Otherwise, otherwise, it’s just talk.

Fit Girl Series: Friends, Strangers With Candy

Fit Girl Series: Comparing Children

Fit Girl Series: Exercise Poll

Fit Girl Series: Eat This, Not That!

Fit Girl Series: BIG FAT LIARS!

Fit Girl Series: Obese Teens on Oprah

Fit Girl Series: Weight = Moral Failure

Fit Family = Fit Girl

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