If you’re over your rage quota for the day I recommend reading this later. A person who profits from pushing the Keto diet posted before and after pictures of a 6-year-old-girl. She was celebrating that the little girl had lost “27lbs in 20 weeks!”
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
First of all, if you think I’m linking to this nonsense you can think again. I will tell you that people in the comments seem to think the second picture was photoshopped. I don’t know about that, I can say that it seems to use all the classic trickery of a before and after. Sad look in the first picture, big smile (with bright and shiny hair accessories and elastics) in the second. It appears that in her “before” picture someone told her to stick her adorable tummy out as far as it could go – her back is arched. In the first picture she is wearing a bathing suit top and bike shorts rolled under her tummy – leaving it out. In the second shot is taken in a black, form-fitting full-length shirt and bike shorts.
The experts tell us that putting kids on diets of any kind is a recipe for creating unhealthy relationships with food, movement, and their bodies – including eating disorders. This little girl seems to have been placed on a diet the seriously restricts carbohydrates which can create its own health problems including nutritional deficiencies, weak bones, and kidney stones.
This situation is just complete and total bullshit start-to-finish. The idea that you would take before and after weight loss pictures of a first-grade child is absolutely horrific. The idea that you would give them to an Instagram personality who sells dieting to share with the world is unthinkable. Teaching a child that t she should like her body more if it is smaller before she has learned to add two-digit numbers is unconscionable. Don’t forget that she’s also learned that other people’s bodies are less good if they are larger and more good if they are smaller.
What happens when she, almost inevitably, regains her weight and is now completely secure in the knowledge that her parents and half the internet like her more when she is thinner? She is now set up for a lifetime of body hatred, disordered relationships with food, movement, and her body, and weight cycling and all the health risks that come with that.
We can help kids learn to take care of their bodies, instead of learning to hate them and fear weight gain – especially since weight gain is incredibly normal through life stages.
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