Was your mother the first dieter in your life?

Moms get a bad rap. After all, the woman who taught us how to deal with our bodies, the woman who was probably our first glimpse at a diet in action, the weird way that deprivation becomes some kind of moral imperative, it was probably good old Mom, right? Sarah Hepola (confession: one of my HUGE blogger crushes) revealed that she was 9 years old when she first started dieting because it was a way to be cool and sophisticated, a way to distance herself from gummy bears and Big League Chew with the simple phrase, "Do you know how many calories are in those?" Myself, I was five, but unlike Sarah, mine was not self-imposed and I was not trying to emulate my beautiful naturally slender mom. My sister, who looks entirely normal (whatever that means) and inherited a lot of my mother's body type (although, much to her chagrin, missed out on some of her metabolism), started dieting when she was 11, although I always thought it was because she was emulating her best friend, who loved to indoctrinate Amy into all things illicit and cool. Unprompted, my 9-year-old niece recently told me, "It's okay if I eat some cookies, because I've lost some weight playing so much basketball," which sent my poor overly-sensitive brain into a frenzy trying to think of a way to suggest that cookies aren't a reward for good behavior, they're just cookies. The statistics on little girls starting to seriously diet are staggering, but not only will this behavior mess with their heads but it also messes with their little bodies: kids who experience periods of dieting and binge eating might be reducing their life span. I don't know what is more sad--the idea that kids are dieting or that it's so prevalent there is a study on the phenomenon. by Weetabix, Elastic Waist