A little concerned about the amount of weight threads at the moment

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rubysmum

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And yes, I do understand that many have been a reaction to recent press things, but, one of the many reasons I was very happy that my daughter was a pony girl was that the children she spent time with had generally healthy attitudes to their bodies and eating.
I cannot help thinking that this will push more young, and not so young, women to become anxious about their bodies .
 
Unless a young person / child was on a small light pony or something that is just too small for them, I would be concerned about their health if they were pushing the 20% figure. Sometimes even the young need to be aware of their weight and it's impact on their life.
 
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Clava said:
Unless a young person / child was on a small light pony or something that is just too small for them, I would be concerned about their health if they were pushing the 20% figure. Sometimes even the young need to be aware of their weight and it's impact on their life.
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Young girls will not read the 20% bit. They will see the 10% bit and panic. I know, because that's exactly what I did until I managed to give myself a good mental shake up!
 
I mean I agree with Rubys mum.Plus have you noticed that there are no men or boys posting on here asking if they are too heavy for their pony/horse?
 
Am I the only one who thinks its no bad thing for overweight children to get a bit of inspiration to slim down?

This issue really gets to me. People are forever making excuses for, and sparing the feelings of people who are overweight, often at the expense of others.

I DON'T believe children should be taught to 'love your weight, whatever you are,' because being overweight is limiting and unhealthy.
I believe it's cruelty on the parents part to allow a child to become overweight.

All these weight threads really annoy me.
 
eahotson said:
I mean I agree with Rubys mum.Plus have you noticed that there are no men or boys posting on here asking if they are too heavy for their pony/horse?
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Yep, very true. The bloke looked at me like I was insane when I wailed that there was no horse in the world large enough to carry a 10.5 stone porker like myself:o:D He had no idea what I was on about, and certainly has no worries about his own riding weight, despite being taller and heavier than myself!
 
Patterdale said:
Am I the only one who thinks its no bad thing for overweight children to get a bit of inspiration to slim down?

This issue really gets to me. People are forever making excuses for, and sparing the feelings of people who are overweight, often at the expense of others.

I DON'T believe children should be taught to 'love your weight, whatever you are,' because being overweight is limiting and unhealthy.
I believe it's cruelty on the parents part to allow a child to become overweight.

All these weight threads really annoy me.
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Which is what I was saying. Obesity is a major problem and most of us carry too much weight so awareness in young people who are engaged in a sport where it makes a difference to the horses is no bad thing.
 
Patterdale said:
Am I the only one who thinks its no bad thing for overweight children to get a bit of inspiration to slim down?

This issue really gets to me. People are forever making excuses for, and sparing the feelings of people who are overweight, often at the expense of others.

I DON'T believe children should be taught to 'love your weight, whatever you are,' because being overweight is limiting and unhealthy.
I believe it's cruelty on the parents part to allow a child to become overweight.

All these weight threads really annoy me.
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Do you honestly think that people are talking about overweight children on this thread? The concern here is for those children - girls, let's face it - who are a good and healthy weight but who are more than 10% (but less than 20%, obviously) of their horse's weight.

Honestly, if you have never been a young girl skipping meal after meal to lose that 'extra weight' (i.e. a normally developing teenage body) then I am happy for you. I have been, and it is no fun. I would have skipped a few more if I had read this at the time.
 
Spudlet said:
Do you honestly think that people are talking about overweight children on this thread? The concern here is for those children - girls, let's face it - who are a good and healthy weight but who are more than 10% (but less than 20%, obviously) of their horse's weight.

Honestly, if you have never been a young girl skipping meal after meal to lose that 'extra weight' (i.e. a normally developing teenage body) then I am happy for you. I have been, and it is no fun. I would have skipped a few more if I had read this at the time.
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But childhood obesity is on the rise, society is not dealing with an outbreak of very thin children. Yes some take things to extremes but I suspect that will be down to other issues not just a good weight for riding. 10% is ridiculous I totally agree and should be disputed, but 15% was regarded as satisfactory...20% too much - there is a range to be happy in.
 
Patterdale said:
Am I the only one who thinks its no bad thing for overweight children to get a bit of inspiration to slim down?

This issue really gets to me. People are forever making excuses for, and sparing the feelings of people who are overweight, often at the expense of others.

I DON'T believe children should be taught to 'love your weight, whatever you are,' because being overweight is limiting and unhealthy.
I believe it's cruelty on the parents part to allow a child to become overweight.

All these weight threads really annoy me.
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I agree. It is the parents responsibility to keep their children a healthy weight so that they won't have to face these fears. It is child abuse IMO to allow your chiild to become obese.
 
This reminds me of a few years ago when I was helping out at a small, local riding school.

We had two sisters come to ride. One was about 7, the other younger. We had them on lead rein, but the 7yo was a nervous rider and asked if she could walk with the pony to begin with (we were just walking round the fields / tracks). We got about half way round, and she still hadn't got on. I asked her if she wanted to, she said she couldn't mount from the ground. I told her I'd give her a leg up, she refused, turned to me and claimed (quite sincerely): "I'm too fat for you to do that...".

She was 7. Not mention she was skinny. It made me rather sad that a girl that age would be obsessing over her weight that much.
 
Patterdale said:
I don't know many children who are capable of working out 10% of their horses weight and converting to stones and pounds so I'm not too worried tbh.
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Really, my 10 yr old does far more complicated sums as homework at his local primary school. No need to convert if they work in kilos which they do.
 
I would never have found 'satisfactory' to be satisfactory. I want optimum.... so will many others. When I was younger and more vulnerable, I would have gone a long way for optimum. I still want optimum now. 'Satisfactory' is simply not good enough. That is just a fact for me. I don't think I'm unique in that. And I am no longer so daft as to skip meals - but that's partly because I have someone watching now who would start asking awkward questions, and that is also a fact. I don't think I'm unique in that either.

There is a huge dichotomy between the healthy reality of developing into a woman, and the ideal body image that is constantly pushed onto young girls. Honestly, unless one wanders about with a bag on one's head, I'm not sure who it is possible to be unaware of this. I have to also say that outside of the media reports, I see a lot of healthy looking children in these parts and very few overweight children. Maybe Norfolk is just unique in missing out on this crisis, but the evidence of my eyes tells me that there are as many slim young girls as ever there were. What is lacking, in my opinion, is anything to promote a healthy body image and relationship with food - it's all so extreme. You're either too fat and stuffing junk food, or you eat nothing over and above a salad. Where is the moderate middle ground in all this?
 
Sadly, this is nothing new. Horse riding, along with things like gymnastics and ballet, has always been linked to eating disorders and poor body image. FWIW though, I agree with the OP. Young girls are bombarded from all sides with information about weight, and dieting, and beauty standards. The last thing they need is to worry about being too heavy to ride. And while I agree with those saying that it is a health issue, I think that it's important to recognize that weight doesn't link to health in any meaningful way - of course it's unhealthy to be obese, but factors like body build and muscle play a huge factor in how much you weigh, and people are just different sizes. In an ideal world, weight would be an entirely unemotive issue, and we could talk about it objectively. But the fact is that in the world we live in, weight is intrinsically linked to moral judgements and ideas about attractiveness and self-worth, particularly for women. You might sit a child down and explain that being overweight is unhealthy and that eating healthily will help her to lose some weight and feel better. Great. She'll then pick up any number of magazines which tell her that being overweight, even slightly, is in fact disgusting and wrong and ugly, and makes her a lesser person. Personally, I'd rather just buy a bigger pony.

I mean I agree with Rubys mum.Plus have you noticed that there are no men or boys posting on here asking if they are too heavy for their pony/horse?
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I was horrified at a recent post where the OP was about 13 stone, and asking if that was too heavy. The early responses were along the lines of "yes, you should lose at least three stone if you want to be healthy". When the OP clarified that he was a man, suddenly it changed to "ohhhh, then you're fine". Not sure that a horse can tell the difference between the weight of a man and the weight of a woman, but there you go.
 
Clava said:
Really, my 10 yr old does far more complicated sums as homework at his local primary school. No need to convert if they work in kilos which they do.
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My 10 yr old found it extremely easy to work out that under the 10% rule he is apparently too heavy for his pony so I'm pretty sure a 13yr old girl would be just as capable. My son is not over weight by the way, if anything he could do with gaining a bit more.
Childhood obesity may be on the rise but so is childhood anorexia and studies like this will affect the wrong children unfortunately.
 
Spudlet said:
Do you honestly think that people are talking about overweight children on this thread? The concern here is for those children - girls, let's face it - who are a good and healthy weight but who are more than 10% (but less than 20%, obviously) of their horse's weight.

Honestly, if you have never been a young girl skipping meal after meal to lose that 'extra weight' (i.e. a normally developing teenage body) then I am happy for you. I have been, and it is no fun. I would have skipped a few more if I had read this at the time.
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i agree with this.

there is a problem with childhood obesity on the increase, BUT there is also an increase in the number of young girls in this country suffering from anorexia and bulimia, we need to find a happy medium.
 
Spiritedly said:
My 10 yr old found it extremely easy to work out that under the 10% rule he is apparently too heavy for his pony so I'm pretty sure a 13yr old girl would be just as capable. My son is not over weight by the way, if anything he could do with gaining a bit more.
Childhood obesity may be on the rise but so is childhood anorexia and studies like this will affect the wrong children unfortunately.
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and it is up to the parents to teach them common sense that 10% is unrealistic. I know plenty of fat children and very few skinny ones so I suspect that obesity is the far greater problem on the whole.

I don't believe 30 % of children are anorexic but 30% of children are obese. https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/reducing-obesity-and-improving-diet
 
my daughter is 17, 5'7 and about 8 stone. she has always been tall and slim with very long legs (so she looks about 5'9!)
I agree about some sports, she was a regional gymnast in her younger years:eek: her and the other girls trained over 12 hours a week. however they were never going to be at the next olympics, yet she came home one day at the age of about 12 saying that 'most' of the girls had had a 1/2 hour lecture on being over weight (I can assure you most of them were average weight and not fat, they live in a leotard so its easy to tell) they were told what they could and couldnt eat and basically that they were too big! my impression of the lecture (I wasnt there but know the mentality of the person who did it) was not that it was about what your body needs for sport etc, but was tackled in a vey insensitive way. Also to leave the slimmer girls out? my daughter was quite capable of eating rubbish, she should have been told about healthy eating for sport just as much as the others.
Luckily she had a good head on her shoulders and said they were out of order.

she recently lost weight due to A levels and less riding and other sport. far from her being happy at dropping to a size 6 she was not happy and wanted her bottom back.

we looked at foods good for this (I'd have opted for chocolate but she didnt :D) and helped her eat well for weight gain etc

so i supose I'm saying all this outside influence doesnt need to have a bad effect, if we as parents work on a healthy image.

at 8 stone I'm not sure if she fits the 10% rule on our 420kg cob (I know I dont!:o) but theres no way I'd want her to weigh less. she's right at the edge of her BMI being healthy and to drop any more she would not be in the healthy range.

there is far too much bitchiness in some sports, discussing weight. its a shame, but in my experience (which i admit is limited) in gymnastics it came from coaches not friends or parents however on a yard it comes from friends!
 
Clava said:
and it is up to the parents to teach them common sense that 10% is unrealistic. I know plenty of fat children and very few skinny ones so I suspect that obesity is the far greater problem on the whole.

I don't believe 30 % of children are anorexic but 30% of children are obese. https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/reducing-obesity-and-improving-diet
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I never said that the percentage was the same only that anorexia was also on the rise, and yes it is up to the parents to teach them that 10% is unrealistic, I explained to my son that there was no way he was too heavy, the same way that it is up to parents to teach them that magazine images are altered, but what we teach and what they believe are not always the same thing.
You may know more fat children than skinny ones but my experience is the other way round and I know more slim than overweight but that may be due to most of the children I know are into riding /dance /football /swimming etc so are always on the go.
 
Patterdale said:
Am I the only one who thinks its no bad thing for overweight children to get a bit of inspiration to slim down?

This issue really gets to me. People are forever making excuses for, and sparing the feelings of people who are overweight, often at the expense of others.

I DON'T believe children should be taught to 'love your weight, whatever you are,' because being overweight is limiting and unhealthy.
I believe it's cruelty on the parents part to allow a child to become overweight.

All these weight threads really annoy me.
Click to expand...

Agreed great post
 
It's also worth remembering in the world of school, where most children live, the term satisfactory has been re-ordered, in that satisfactory in OFSTED speak means bad, so even if a young person sees the 15%satisfactory figure, they may have a very different understanding of the word.

Incidentally, I wasn't for a second saying that we shouldn't help our children have a healthy relationship with food and weight, just that the 10% guideline might encourage children, and others, ( myself included) to aim for very low body weights
 
rubysmum said:
It's also worth remembering in the world of school, where most children live, the term satisfactory has been re-ordered, in that satisfactory in OFSTED speak means bad, so even if a young person sees the 15%satisfactory figure, they may have a very different understanding of the word.
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Comprehending the word "satisfactory" is again education, to believe it means "bad" in the general sense of the word is ridiculous.
 
I read a lot of grown up women panicking and possible getting obsessed / depressed about the numbers in the 10% thread.

I am sure there would have been some young minds reading it also, and it having a similar or even more drastic effect.


The thing is, when your a kid or a teen, you look for figures. You have not developed your sense of self awareness yet. You look to see what size cheryl cole is, how much rhianna weighs. Its all figures. 10% figure on a horse gives them another to worry about, even obsess over. Or to the point of bullying of other young girls?


Sure I 100% agree the horses welfare comes first, we all must choose a sensible sized horse for us. I dont think thats the point here, we all agree on this. However when figures get branded about and we loose touch with just some common sense... it all goes to pot.
 
Anorexia isn't a food issue, its a symptom of depression, anxiety, low self esteem and the desire to gain some control over a part of the sufferer's life that can be fixed, while ignoring the root cause.

Advising an emotionally healthy person to eat healthily does not cause anorexia.

And to say, its ok to be obese and still ride your horse is a lie. Its not.
 
Patterdale said:
I don't know many children who are capable of working out 10% of their horses weight and converting to stones and pounds so I'm not too worried tbh.
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You must know particularly thick children then because I learnt percentages aged 11 in my first year of secondary school and never struggled with them. ;)

Never mind the fact that nearly all children have internet access, whether at home or at school, and could just type it into google anyway!
 
It's hard for someone who has struggled with eating disorders to come on here and see nothing but weight posts. Let's hope they disappear very soon.
 
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