OMG I think I might be fat

Weigh to go: Dad's trying to get the girls to eat more

By Dad 

If there’s one thing the girls are not, it’s overweight.

Yet …

• 13-year-old Dora finds any excuse to skip meals.

• 10-year-old Penny complains about having “fat” legs.

• Seven-year-old Cathy hears her sisters blubbering about blubber and wonders whether she has a problem too.

Should I blame the schools, society, Tyra Banks?

While it’s just talk for now with the younger two, Dora has shed pounds she didn’t need to lose.

Denying that she's slimming, she blames her dad for serving “nothing” she likes.

But her favorite foods of one week are "disgusting" the next. Even pizza's off her current consumables list.

I learned this when I presented her with a triple-cheese pizza. I thought it was an offer she couldn't refuse.

She refused.

Who can keep pace with such chameleonic tastes?

All that Dora downs with regularity is the meat of her evening meal.

I say: “Take just a forkful of each of your veggies.” She reacts as if I'm suggesting she ingest strychnine.

With her lost pounds and appetite of an obligate carnivore, Dora could be the face of some meat-only weight-loss plan.

Maybe we’ve got something marketable here.

But I’d rather she identify the foods she likes, and stick to her decision long enough for me to buy and plate them.

For trying to please her palate without a list is like searching for a winning lottery combination – without the hope of landing a multi-million-dollar jackpot.

Complicated

While Dora's sisters are more cooperative at mealtimes, Penny's belief she has fat legs has its complications.

It spawned a new problem after I apparently shocked her to the core with a personal revelation.

As she sat on a park bench and lamented about her "wide" thighs, I explained that I was also 11 when – seated on a wooden chair playing triangle for my school band in England – I thought I had fat legs.

"The flat surface makes your legs spread out," I said. "It doesn't mean they're fat."

Her reaction was swift and blunt.

"You only played the tri-an-gle?" Penny said, exaggerating each of triangle's syllables in a way that expressed pity, disappointment and surprise all in one.

I saw immediately that my credibility was now shot for pressing her to practice her own band instrument – the clarinet.

Anyone adept enough to coordinate blowing and finger wiggling so that tunes sound out could never respect some chump who banged two pieces of metal together.

I should have listened to KISS – not the headbanger band, though at this point I was ready to bang my head on just about anything out of frustration. No, I mean KISS, the Keep-It-Simple-Stupid principle.

By keeping it simple, I'd have told Penny to just stick to sofas, period, when looking for somewhere to sit. And I certainly wouldn't have tried being the sensitive dad with stories about my past.

All of which leaves Cathy and her sister-induced worries. Being only seven, her appetite thankfully still overrides her weight concerns when dinnertime arrives and she's got a favorite dish to get stuck into.

But I'm sure it won't be too long before she's as complicated as the other two.