The mom who put her 7-year-old on a diet actually feared for her life after the public backlash, according to a Feb. 3 CTV News report. On Feb. 5, the mother talked with Anderson Cooper about her experience and the resulting book called "The Heavy."
Dara-Lynn Weiss wrote about her experience in putting her 7-year-old on a diet in "Vogue" magazine last year. She chose to put her young daughter, Bea, on a strict diet because her daughter suffered high blood pressure.
Of the firestorm of negative attention she received after writing the "Vogue" piece, Dara-Lynn Weiss said,
"I did not anticipate the level to which people would respond so emotionally and so personally and so negatively. I knew, as a mother, we're all subject to criticism and judgment in our choices and this is a particularly fraught issue -- weight and our children. But it really went beyond the small criticisms and debates that I expected."
When Weiss realized that her 7-year-old was clinically obese, she tried to make small changes to turn things around, but that did not work. The diet she put her daughter on was incredibly strict, especially for a child so young.
One positive thing that came out of this besides the book "The Heavy" is that Bea lost 16 pounds and grew two inches during the year of the incredibly strict diet. Obesity in children is obviously a serious problem. However, most families probably could not put a child this young on an incredibly strict diet.
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