I was big for a long time and my children, three of whom are now adults, were never overweight. Not even close. I didn't exercise, but they did, they were faction captains, and were active in all sports. I never commented on their weight (like my mother did with me) even obliquely because I loved them no matter what they looked like. So I think in my case, being overweight and having overweight children has no correlation.

Now I've lost the weight with the help of a lapband, they get annoyed with my obsession with keeping slim and fit. I love that. I LOVE that my children (and my DD is 22) don't worry about their weight. My DD various moves between a size 8 and a size 12 and she could not care less. And more importantly NOR DO I, because she is beautiful. And I will cut my arm off before I ever make her feel anything less than that.

I want to teach my kids to be active, healthy, strong-willed, ethical, determined and that's more what my focus will be than their weight. I agree with being a good role model, so I hope they model their behaviour on how I think that societal stereotypes about overweight people being any less worthy than a slim person is wrong, and from there, they can then make their own minds up about how much they want to weigh, knowing that I think they're amazing no matter what.