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Growing up not out. A weight management guide for families. Kate Steinbeck. Sydney: Simon and Schuster 1998 (vi + 194 pp.). ISBN: 0 7318 0633 6. |
Everyone has an
opinion about why people are fat, and those who use the conventional medical model have to struggle hard to compete with the advice in glossy magazines. So it takes a postmodern medical Joan of Arc to shine the clear light of commonsense science on the vexed topic of how parents can manage overweight adolescents. This book is a valiant step in bridging the gulf between the scientist's world of the role of leptin and the Ob gene in obesity, and the clinician sitting in a hot office trying to give helpful advice to the mother of a fat, surly 14-year-old whose idea of vigorous exercise is a 15-minute walk with the dog. Dr Kate Steinbeck is a physician with vast experience in adolescent medicine. She has written an engaging, clear, unambiguous account of the biological, heritable and environmental factors which are important in the aetiology of adipose tissue growth and obesity. Myths are debunked, and the reader is drawn in by vignettes, lists, and practical tips which illustrate each point in a way that allows a parent to read the book with or to an adolescent or upper primary school aged child. The final chapter, "Putting it into practice", forms the family's own self-help manual, with a sequence of pragmatic steps which require the family to join in on planning. I can imagine this book being used as the central part of the therapeutic process. A chapter could be discussed during each visit with the family, and a practical plan drawn up on the basis of the chapter, on topics such as family eating, daily routines, and after-school activities. My copy will never gather dust on the bookshelf -- it is already on loan to the mother of one of my teenage patients. T John Boulton
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