Health and weight (young people)

Yep I have, I’ve spoken, actually I’ve done it via the back door actually last time she went to see the doctor, she actually got mastitis, which at 12 was very unusual so I was keeping quite a close eye on that.  I spoke to the doctor afterwards and the doctor just said “Well, you know, she’s still growing, you know, it could change,” I thought okay, fine fair enough, it was a female doctor. I spoke to the school nurse who I actually know very, very well  and I asked her what she thought, I asked her what she thought and she said “Well, you know, they’re still growing and you don’t want to be putting them on diets,” and I’m thinking that’s what we’re saying, we’re saying do nothing… you know, when do you do something? Do you wait until they are, you know, horribly obese, morbidly obese before you do something, because that’s what they’re suggesting? And they’re talking about kids and no exercise and this that and the other, and yet that’s a huge thing, but these kids don’t want to exercise, you know, when I was enormous, you know, I didn’t particularly want to go pounding the streets, I didn’t want to be seen out in a t-shirt and shorts, you know.

 

I think they’re only just waking up to it, and I don’t think they really realise how urgent it is. You know, that there’s a time barrier, that’s what I’m aware of there’s a time barrier here, I have a time, a window of time when, when my daughter’s old enough to be able to influence her own change and say okay yes I’m going to do this and really put some effort into it and the end of that window when, when they are set in their ways and very little will change probably for the rest of their life. And there’s that window in there at the moment and I think it’s pretty short these days because kids are growing up so fast. She’s talking to me about things at 12 years old that I didn’t think of until I was 16 [laughter] she’s, you know, she’s obsessed with boys, her entire year are obsessed with the boys, you listen to them it’s all about boys, I didn’t even think about boys until I was about 14 or 15 and I wasn’t unusual it wasn’t that I was the odd one out at school, that, that sort of cycle happens and that was about the age group we really, really started thinking about boys, certainly wasn’t, it was certainly about 13 plus, it definitely wasn’t 12 and she’s been, they’ve been like this for six months maybe a year, it’s been building for six months to a year. They’re growing up much faster, they’re becoming more body aware much faster so that the image problems are coming on much faster, we can’t wait until they’re in their 20s to deal with them, we have to find a way of dealing with them now  and how we do that, I don’t know, but things like portion sizes, one of the things I read recently was that in America portion sizes have increased by ten times, ten times, I think it’s something like four to five in the UK, ten times in the US.

Well I think there should be like, as I said like a group, or like local groups or something for overweight people. And like you don’t have to broadcast it like, “Oh, we’re fat people, like roll up roll up,” kind of thing. Like just have some sort of, some thing to make people aware of and they wouldn’t listen, if they want to hear it or not. It’s important.

 

Like , and make things more, like teenagers trying to diet don’t have much money, like stop making everything so expensive for diets. Like that’s just the one thing that really annoys me, is how, and nothing is aimed specifically at teenagers, because everything is like 16+ as well, and well not everything, but most things are 16+ and like, just like, so some people are being, they’re getting to be overweight and getting to 16 it’s too late, like, they won’t change back because being overweight has been with them since they were young, and it’s shaped the person they’ve become, so they might not want to lose weight, but they, they, they shouldn’t if they don’t want to like, but.

 

Just more help for like younger teenagers, because it’s all well and good like people my age, like 18, 19, can get the help because they can go to the meetings, like Weight Watchers and stuff, and they can use all of the gym equipment and like as you can, like the people who are 16 and plus can like can go to most of the meetings and like most, use most gyms and stuff, but I think people under 16, like kids who are getting bigger I really think they need help as well, because, but they, rather than make it something nasty and stuff like, “Oh you’re a kid, and you’re fat,” kind of thing, like be nice about it, like try and. I don’t know just, help younger children as well like, ‘cos they’re, if you, if you look like you’re gonna get big when you’re younger you’re gonna get big for your teens as well, like, that’s how I started when I was 10 I started getting big. I was big like, like I said I was one of the bigger ones, but I was tall so you couldn’t really count it out, and I was, as I sort of, I started to shrink a little bit but just sort of grew in width like. And, it’s more awareness for younger teenagers really, especially. 

Not at first, it took me a while to trust him, but just because I mean for 5 years I hadn’t told anyone.

 

So it took me a, quite a while, and also I didn’t go for the right reasons, I went to shut my friends up basically. And after a while I kind of, I actually had a really bad day, about an hour before I went to see him, so I went to see him and it just kind of all spilled out, and it just kind of kept going from then and that’s when I kind of opened up and carried on opening up, so he was really helpful after a while. He was, I remember one thing, one of the techniques he used was just to say what I’d said to him back to me, but in a different way. And I remember it just sounded so weird, I was thinking, “Did I say that?” And I did, it was just the way he said it was like, oh, and it really kind of opened my mind to mm this isn’t that great; this isn’t the best thing to be doing. One of the things he said to me was, “As a student nurse if you had to deal with a patient that had exactly the same symptoms as you, was doing the same things as you, what would you say?” And I was like, “Why are you asking me that for, you know what I’d say?” I was really annoyed but he was right, he was dead right, and I was like, oh,  “I’d be trying to convince ‘em to stop and I’d say, I’d tell ‘em all the gory details of how it was affecting them and stuff, to try to scare ‘em out of it.” But I, he was just right, it was totally on par with exactly what he should have been saying, but it just kind of like wasn’t nice to hear, ‘I suppose I was in denial.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah it was kind of the first point where I, I suppose challenged my ideas. I didn’t really believe him or want to believe him, but I, I could just hear his voice ringing in my head every time I was thinking of certain things or like, looking at how much thinner that girl was, I’d hear him you know ringing in my head, like , “not everyone’s supposed to be that size, or she may be that size but she may have other health problems,” and, you know, just little things he’d say that I’d just kind of start remembering, so I suppose that’s when I started challenging my ideas. 

I got referred to a counsellor.

 

For a bit and then it was ok after that.

 

 

It stopped after I started talking to my counsellor.

 

 

It was a bit intimidating.

 

 

I don’t like the whole professionalism type thing, of counsellors.

 

 

I had to call her Miss something as well. It wasn’t like informal.

 

It was very formal. That it didn’t help.

 

 

She’s from CAMHS [Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services]

 

 

About six months.

 

 

At least once a week.

 

 

Slightly.

 

 

Well she liked trying to build my self-esteem and stuff, things like that.

 

 

Like, encouraging me to do stuff that would build my confidence and, and talking to me about why I wanted to lose weight.