When I first heard about The Heavy by Dara-Lynn Weiss, I had mixed feelings about reading it. Would it bring back bad memories about my experiences as an overweight child? Would it rekindle my own food neurosis?
If anything, it helped me put my past in perspective and realize how far I’ve come.
A snippet from the official synopsis on Amazon:
When a doctor pronounced Dara-Lynn Weiss’s daughter Bea obese at age seven, the mother of two knew she had to take action. But how could a woman with her own food and body issues—not to mention spotty eating habits—successfully parent a little girl around the issue of obesity?
….
Compounding the challenge were eating environments—from school to restaurants to birthday parties—that set Bea up to fail, and unwelcome judgments from fellow parents. Childhood obesity, Weiss discovered, is a crucible not just for the child but also for parents. She was criticized as readily for enabling Bea’s condition as she was for enforcing the rigid limits necessary to address it. Never before had Weiss been made to feel so wrong for trying to do the right thing.
Overall, The Heavy made me sad. Sad for Dara-Lynn and her personal battles. Sad for what she put through Bea through. Sad for other obese children who are facing a lifetime of struggling with their weight.
The parts that made me cringe the most were the parts that could have been me if I put a child through what I put myself through in my early dieting days–favoring low calorie food over nutritious food, panicking if I exceeded my allotted daily calories, measuring my accomplishments on the scale. Thank goodness I kept those things to myself–and got past them.
The parts that made me mad were Dara-Lynn’s dismissal of the importance of exercise and the lack of guidance she seemed to get from healthcare professionals. By focusing only on the calories burned during an hour of exercise, Dara-Lynn overlooked the many other benefits–like building muscle, gaining self-confidence, and improving mood. I don’t know if Dara-Lynn didn’t get detailed nutrition advice from the nutrition counselor, or just didn’t follow it, but she should have been told the importance of whole foods, whole grains, and lean protein, and warned that, yes, many hundred calories of fruit a day might be too much for a child who needs to lose weight!
The parts that I agreed with relate to Dara-Lynn’s observations about how much our culture immerses children in junk food. From school lunches to play dates to birthday parties, we foist sugary, salty processed foods with little nutritional value on our kids from morning until night, and the few parents who object are viewed as paranoid extremists who need to lighten up. Hopefully the current attention these issues are getting will have a lasting impact.
Have you heard about The Heavy?
Have you ever been concerned about your child’s weight?
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