My stepdaughter gave me some perspective

So, yes, I am overweight. I've bounced back and forth between the top end of healthy up through overweight and back again most of my adult life. I've accepted that I need to consistently exercise and eat mindfully to keep it under control. And I'm ok with that. But then this happened:

I was in my bathroom brushing my teeth and my ten year old stepdaughter came in. She saw my scale and asked if she could weigh herself. I said sure. She jumped on, and the little digital number "89 lbs" came up. She looked at it and then looked at me and asked, "Is that good or bad?"

Is that "good" or "bad"? I had a split second to figure out the right answer. I looked right at her and said, "It's just a number, not good or bad." She said, "OK" , and bounded off into the other room to play a video game with her dad.

Since then, some people have told me that I should have taken the opportunity to tell her of the dangers of obesity and the importance of maintaining a healthy weight. I considered that point, a lot, thinking maybe I'd missed a teaching moment. Then I realised, she's only ten. She is constantly told of the danger of this and the danger of that by parents, step-parents, teachers and the world at large. She's not overweight, though she does occasionally get a bit pudgy before a growth spurt, which is entirely normal. I don't want her to be afraid of yet another thing, especially not the food that nourishes and sustains her while she grows up. I don't want her to ever judge herself "good" or "bad" based on what a scale says. And for the love of God, I don't want her to think that the weight she is at age ten is "good" and try to stay at 89 pounds for the rest of her life.

We did talk to her later about healthy weight, and showed her where on the BMI scale for kids she was (normal) and where her dad and I were (which was hard for me because I'm the "slightly overweight" bit). But I told her that I was working on that by eating more healthy food, less unhealthy food and exercising more regularly, and that regular exercise was really important. That is an area she does need to work on, because she's not a terribly active kid. And now she's cycling and walking the dog more, and learning yoga from me and qui gong from her mum and martial arts from her dad. But I have learned so much from this: she could have seen me weighing myself every day and measuring out my food and taken the entirely wrong message from it. I will be much more mindful now of the messages I send to her about health and well-being, and sometimes I'll have an ice cream with her.