I have an (almost) obese brother & need advice!

st476 wrote: »

I have one question for everyone. A lot of parents choose to feed their children mostly healthy food, or don't let them have fast food more than once a year and they're called amazing parents. I want my brother to eat MOSTLY healthy food (as much as he needs to feel full) and not eat fast food unless it's necessary and apparently that's wrong? I'm sure he likes the fried food more but what's so wrong with swapping that with healthier options? He is a CHILD after all. Children don't know better and people who supervise them are supposed to make sure they are given what's good for them. I don't think I should give him anything and everything he wants just because he wants it. Now that's not to say that he can't have a serving of chips or a serving of this and that, but I just don't understand what's so bad about not giving a kid McDonald's twice a week just because he wants it. As adults, I'm sure all of you would love to have fast food for every meal but sometimes it's just not the better option. A child can't make those decisions for himself.

Part of the issue is that an 11 year old is smart enough to know the difference between eating what they always have (be that healthy foods or junk food 24/7) and having the type and amount of food they're eating radically changed suddenly because their family thinks they're fat.

It's really not that the food you're feeding your brother is bad for him- far from it, although that sounds like a pretty dull menu to me personally, it's certainly nutritious, and great if he likes it (although I agree with the other posters who say that if he's sneaking food around meals and not finishing them, he may not actually like it as much as he tells you, the sister he loves and wants to please). It's that the entire scenario- his insecurity about being the fattest one in the row at graduation, his obese mother who says she wants him to lose weight but feeds him high-calorie junk food, his mom pushing nutritional responsibilities off on to his sister, his sister losing weight (and possibly getting praise for it from family/friends?), his sister changing his diet as part of a plan to make him lose weight, snacks that he's already feeling compelled to lie and hide about... this is all SUPER emotionally charged stuff that is tough for adults to handle, let alone 11 year olds.

Toss in the other elements you've mentioned, including it sounds like a dad who might be a challenge of his own? You're both in a rough spot on a lot of levels. But you get to leave and go back to college, and you're becoming an adult with your own autonomy. He isn't even close to that yet. He's got a lot going on, and his body is changing in ways out of his control. Explicit messages about obesity and dieting right now are almost definitely doing more harm than good. He's not actually sticking to this meal plan even in the first week, with the sister he wants to please in the home to help- do you think it's likely that he will do better when you leave? Yet the messages he's learning- that eating healthy is complicated and different than eating that you enjoy, that eating food you don't prefer is necessary to make the people who love you happy, that lying about food and eating in secret is a viable strategy, that his family isn't satisfied with his body- these lessons are *sticky*. They *really last* and can cause enormous damage, often even after someone has grown up in to a healthy weight (check out these boards and you'll see so many people share their similar childhood stories).

The absolute best thing you can do for your brother right now is *not* make meal-by-meal plans (that aren't working anyway) for him, but model some simple behaviors that have some hope of taking root alongside the dysfunctional lessons he's already internalized.

Teach him to cook some meals, and teach him how to read the nutrition information (not in a "and we need to do this to see if we're allowed to eat this" way- it's okay if the meal is something high in calories- the important thing here is that he'll learn cooking skills and basic nutritional literacy, something your parents are not teaching him, and things which are associated with healthy eating in adulthood). Don't make this about "healthy eating", just make this about spending time together and learning some basic kitchen skills.

Take him outside. Go for walks, take him to a park. Even if they're just short walks around the neighborhood every day, teach him that spending time outdoors with his sister is fun. Let him talk to you about what's going on in his life.

Love him and don't talk about his weight. This can feel counterproductive but it is *so important*. This poor kid is already plenty aware that he's fat. Having one unconditionally loving, reliable family member who isn't constantly giving him mixed signals about his weight might be the lifeline necessary to get him through to adulthood without permanent emotional damage to his relationship with his body and food.

Finally, for yourself: when you get back to school, check out the counseling center, they will almost certainly have free counselors for students to talk to. Your family sounds like they're offloading far more responsibility on your than is reasonable to expect, and the comments about your parents made my heart hurt for you. As a young adult, you deserve better consistency and support from your family than you're getting, and while you can't change them, you can get a safe space to talk about it and some tools for handling the difficult situations your parents have forced on you. You're doing the best you can, and it's admirable that you love your little brother so much and want to help him, but the dynamic your parents have created is not fair to either of you, and it's okay to need help with this stuff.