Weight Tracking App For Kids, What The Actual F*#%?????

I’m a person who has been chubby, zoftig, pleasingly plump, husky, chunky, plus sized, or fat my entire life. Well that isn’t exactly true, I was a premie so technically I was under weight at some point in this life, but I digress. I think I know a thing or two about dieting, after all I was a lifetime member of Weight Watchers when I was in the 6th grade, and in my late 20s I was treated for bulimia. Imagine my horror this week, when I realized that my old pals at WW introduced a new weight tracking app for children between the ages of 8 and 17. WTF!!

This new app is designed to help kids, in WW words, ” make healthier food choices and build healthy habits, day by day” or in my words “make food the most important aspect of your life for EVER. The app divides food into green/good, yellow/caution and red/STOP YOU PIG categories. Teaching young people that food is the enemy or that if you can’t resist those “red foods” you are somehow bad. Can you tell I think this new app is a really terrible idea.

Don’t get me wrong, eating healthy is important, but to what end. Having children as young as 8 focus so intently on their weight is damaging to their self-esteem. I know, I was that kid, and it has taken the better portion of 57 years to be happy with who I am.

I would like to propose a different app for children, it’s called, YOU ARE GREAT JUST THE WAY YOU ARE! Every day you get an uplifting message from cute puppies. Who wouldn’t love that… Teach kids to love the person they are, not who society thinks they should be.

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