The nightmare of "slimming sessions" returns even after years. "For dinner, there were boiled cabbage leaves"

Paulina Socha-Jakubowska, "Wprost": I typed the phrase "children's slimming camps" into the search engine and a few, maybe even a dozen or so offers popped up. Of course, I can't verify each one, but I have to admit that the very fact that such trips were organized surprised me. I remember perfectly well how fashionable so-called slimming camps for children were in the 90s.

Anna Sankowska-Dobrowolska: It's hard for me to comment on how such "camps" are organized today, what they involve and what is served to children there, but the stories of my patients treated for obesity, who, for example, as teenagers were sent to "slimming camps", are often chilling.

Women talk about it as a trauma?

Yes. I have patients who, because of this, and also because of the long-term consequences of such "sessions", are currently undergoing psychotherapy. We are talking about people who grew up in the 80s and 90s, when such sessions were popular. Adults did not know how to deal with childhood obesity, and besides, there were not as many children with obesity as today, knowledge was at a completely different level, so such systemic offers of "help" were used.

And no one took into account whether the child wanted to go on such a stay, and it is hard to be surprised, since family life was reduced to the then common principle of "children and fish have no say". No one asked an obese child if he wanted to go. He was simply "sent" and that was it.

Moreover, such children felt excluded even in their families.

The crude comments and ratings did their job.

Yes. But on top of all that, there were methods like: It's the holidays, the whole family sits down to feast, and the obese child gets some unpalatable but "diet" meal alternative. I have a patient who says that she still hates the holidays because she associates them with exclusion, harassment, and that's from the closest family.

Fortunately, today, thanks to the development of psychology and psychodietetics, we know that such actions bring the opposite effect than intended.

Read also: "Nobody will touch such a pig." Shocking confessions of "fat people"

Just like "slimming courses" instead of helping children resulted in lifelong traumas. And an endless battle with weight.

First of all, the nutrition during the "terms" was a kind of starvation, a version of Dr. Dąbrowska's diet.

While teaching children to eat vegetables and fruit is good practice, basing their diet solely on vegetables and fruit is not.

Besides, if we want the child to reduce body mass, we should take into account that the child grows and in children we do not introduce a typical reducing diet like in adults, such as 500 calories less than the general requirement. In children, we rather strive to remain in the so-called normocalorie, i.e. the child eats as much as the dietician calculates that he should eat. It does not necessarily have to be a deep calorie deficit.