22-02-2025
- Health
- South China Morning Post
Parents who shed 50kg to be role models for son ‘feel like winners'
Published: 7:45am, 23 Feb 2025
When her seven-year-old son returned from school and announced, 'I am very stressed, I want pizza for lunch,' Chinchak Satapathy was stunned. 'I realised that my son had begun associating food with coping with stress ' from watching his parents, she says. 'I thought, 'What are we teaching our child'?'
The moment, in October 2023, was a wake-up call for Satapathy and her husband, Himanshu Thakur. The corporate executives had moved with their then-toddler Ameya to Hong Kong from New Delhi in India in 2018. Both had been physically active while growing up, but began putting on the pounds once they started working – and even more during the Covid-19 pandemic . Himanshu Thakur weighed 110kg in this photo taken in March 2023. Photo: Chinchak Satapathy Chinchak Satapathy weighed 72kg in this photo taken in October 2022. Photo: Chinchak Satapathy
'We were stuck at home and found ourselves trapped in a cycle of stress and unhealthy eating. The stress fuelled the unhealthy eating, and the unhealthy eating created more stress,' Satapathy says. They were drinking alcohol three to four times a week either socially or alone at home.
