How Doctors Inadvertently Fat-Shame Kids

When Beth Nathan was 10 years old, her pediatrician grabbed her belly and said, “OK! Time to switch to skim milk!” Nathan estimates that she weighed “maybe four pounds more” than her friends at school at that point. Until then, she had never thought much about her body. But the doctor’s comment hit its mark. Nathan began thinking about her weight more and went on her first diet in high school. Though she never met the criteria for an eating disorder, she also never shook the expectation that she should be thinner. She continued dieting off and on through college and medical school. And then, Nathan (not her real name; she asked to use a pseudonym to protect her employment status) became a pediatrician herself. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] As Dr. Nathan, she now works in a busy private practice in New Rochelle, N.Y., which means she looks at growth charts and thinks about weight and body mass index (BMI) every day. She’s never grabbed a kid’s belly, of course. “I think having some sensitivity to being gentle and nice is how most pediatricians roll,” she says. But for many years, she advised parents to cut down on snacks between meals. “My general line was, ‘This has nothing to do with how you look, you are beautiful, you are wonderful, I just want to make sure blah blah blah,’” she says. “But I knew it landed flat. Kids are clever.” They knew she was prescribing weight los...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Books Excerpt freelance society-team Source Type: news