Weight issues whether it be obesity or too thin is always a minefield. I`ve seen one of Mr V`s granddaughters battle with anorexia which started when she was 15 and is still a battle now she`s 18 and will probably be so for the rest of her life. Her weight dropped to just 5 stone and she was a very very sick young woman.
Even now after counselling and numerous hospital appointments she still can`t eat in front of other people and at meal times her Mum can`t just serve food on a plate but has to allow the girl to choose which items she will eat and to arrange them on a plate herself. She then stands and eats alone in the kitchen when everybody else is at the dining table and it takes her ages just to eat a tiny portion of food.
She`s still classed as being underweight for her height at just under 7 stones but she`s better than she has been for a long time but the slightest hiccup could send her spiralling backwards again. She`s recently passed her driving test which has helped and she can now feel more independent and get away from the house when she feels she needs to.
Her parents, Mr V`s son and his wife divorced when she was 6, her Mum then moved in with another boyfriend she`d been secretly seeing and had another child by him and then that relationship broke up and E and her brother plus her new sister then had to adjust to yet another new boyfriend who has 2 sons which also came to live with them and E as the eldest and at that time studying for her GCSE`s felt swamped and unsettled and as if she didn`t matter.
Mr V`s son, her Dad was mortified by the whole saga but his ex wife was adamant she had custody but thankfully now E and her brother are older, she`s 18, her brother is 15, they can make up their own minds about staying with their dad especially now E has finished her education and is working.
Both of Mr V`s children, a son and a daughter have broken marriages and in both cases it`s the kids which have paid the price one way or another. His son`s wife left him for someone she was having an affair with and his daughter divorced her husband because she was having an affair with her boss. Her oldest girl went the opposite to E and piled on loads of weight because she was comfort eating because she couldn`t get to grips with not seeing her dad. She blew up from being a size 10 or 12 to a size 20 plus, wouldn`t go out of the house and lost herself in junk food.
The point I`m making with this long winded diatribe is quite often there are invisible reasons why people eat too much or too little or eat all of the wrong things. Problems they can`t or won`t talk about and problems which at that time of their life they either can`t handle or don`t know how or where to get help. They may know they are eating too much or too little or the wrong kind of food but they simply don`t have the will nor the energy to change and feel like the stuffing has been knocked out of their lives. Emotionally and psychologically they are exhausted and when you see a 15 year old who shakes with cold because her body is failing and her skin is terrible and her hair is falling out because of lack of nutrition or you see a one time pretty girl hate herself because she has gained several stones and tries to hide her young body in black baggy clothes and sits and cries and eats junk food alone in her bedroom whilst her friends go out and she can`t face going with them and she wants her dad but he`s no longer there, then you can often see the " too fat or too thin " person of tomorrow and the labels people will attach to them.
