Children with Obesity

Obesity in children is frequently caused by anxiety after having been abused. Those young victims' bodies grow big in an attempt to try be protected from further abuses. Special diets and physical exercise plans are then inefficient as the cause for obesity is not with food, eating nor lack of physical activities.

Some incest victims turn obese :

In "Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul", Joan Fountain with Carol Kline tells her story :

"I was a cute little girl. I loved laughing and playing with my friends. Then when I was 8 I experienced the devastating trauma of incest.

In order to cope with that physical, mental and emotional nightmare, I made 2 unconscious decisions :

1- I wanted to be as ugly as possible [the opposite of anorexia with the same goal]

2- I did not want to think or feel [repressing emotions : cause for illnesses and disturbances]. I knew that if I let myself feel anything, it would be too much for me.

So I started eating. When the fear came I ate. When the pain came I ate. At 12 I was 200 pounds. Even with my brothers and sisters I felt alone. I was never asked out to a dance or whatever else. I was socially invisible.

By the time I was 25, I was 420 pounds. My Dr gave me 6 months to live, I did not leave my house for 2 years. Then I began a weight-reducing program, therapy and a 12-step program... At 35 I cried for the first time since I was 8. I continued my therapy...

When I see childhood obesity now, it breaks my heart. People tease and laugh at overweight children but they would not do that to a child in a wheelchair. We still don't understand that the weight such a child carries is the weight of that child's own pain.

Now at 46 my weight is average and I have a career I love..."

rev. 2014