How to lose weight without giving your kids body image issues

[Anonymous]

Tell him he needs to get taller not skinnier, and exercise will make him taller.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You're definitely doing something or saying something around him that he's picking up on. Is there someone else in the house who can notice what you're saying?

This! I’ve lost 50 lbs in the last year and haven’t said a word about it in front of my DD8.5 and she hasn’t said anything. I doubt she’s even noticed.

[Anonymous]

I'm doing Noom. Nobody knows. It's free with some Care First plans.

[Anonymous]

Wow I’m kind of surprised with how harsh the average response is. You just need to lose weight entirely covertly OP! Everyone is doing it.

It actually sounds really hard to hide. Isn’t WW all about counting calories?

Can you have an honest talk with him about what made him say that? Is it your dieting or something else?

[Anonymous]

No one has yet to mention one very obvious fact: your teens, and tweens, and elementary school kids are not just influenced by… you. Your son could have picked this up from a buddy at school, a coach, the media, a friend’s parent.
So maybe ask him next time what triggered this line of thinking before you go down the road of worrying it’s due to your diet! If he explicitly says it’s your talk about dieting, then put it into context. “I’m dieting because I gained too much weight and need to prevent cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, etc so I can live to be around for you. But YOU are a teen boy who needs to grow and so your nutritional needs are different.”

[Anonymous]

Mounjaro

Don’t tell kids

[Anonymous]

I agree with others the general advice is you should never, ever talk about weight loss in front of your kids. Or adjusting your food or restricting. It is a recipe for issues. All isn’t lost op. You need to have an honest conversation with him that you made a mistake, dieting is not something to strive for and that you are going to be focusing on feeling strong and healthy in your body, not on restricting what you eat because that can have a host of problems and he needs to know that.

And do not teach him about calories and logging in your app, no. I know someone mentioned this but please, no. This is not a good lesson. Teach him how to live a full life with foods that fuel his body and make him feel good, how to move his body in ways that make him feel strong. This is a much better path to health than just thinking it’s all about cutting calories.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Focus on HEALTH and not looks. "I am eating a salad tonight because it makes me feel energized so we can play tonight". Everyone's eating ice cream "Is ice cream healthy? No. Should we never eat it? NO!" and have a small bite. You can also teach them what calories mean on boxes and how you log it in your app.

Or just don't day any of these things. Just eat without making statements or judgements. Please god don't teach a child about calories and logging them.

This is so misguided I'm wondering if the satire went over my head.

+1 goodness please don’t do what pp said! Don’t give food so much value. Eat a variety of foods and not too much and don’t talk about it. It’s just food - we need it to live and different foods make us feel different things at different times.

[Anonymous]

Didn’t read the whole thread but I am surprised how much kids notice. My 5 year old asked me why I never get ice cream when she does at the ice cream place. I don’t because I in general watch my weight and don’t need those calories. I just tell her I am nit hungry. Like once I have gotten ice cream this year and it was a big deal she commented on it. (It was because they had the new pumpkin flavor and basic me loves that stuff so I told her I was really excited to try it)