Hi Talon!

Wow...what a lucky girl she is to have someone who has "been there, done that" care about the situation she is in. Personally, I can only remember a brief time in my whole life (maybe 2 years) where I was not overweight or downright obese. I suffered teasing and exclusion all through my school years because of it. The advice I got from others (who had never had to struggle with a weight problem) was usually along the lines of "eat less, move more" which never helped, but left me always hungery and feeling like it was somehow my fault I was fat...I must not have been doing it right or being involved in 3 different sports wasn't enough "movement". Being an emotional eater, I turned to food for comfort which only made the whole problem worse; the more I ate (of all the wrong things) the fatter I got and the worse I felt which, of course, made me go back and eat more of all the wrong things to feel better.
There are social issues to being fat. Society tends to look down on the overweight and obese as morally inferior, lacking self-control, lazy, gluttonous and dim-witted. It's not right, but that is the perception. I've lost out on more than one job soley because of my weight even though I am a hard worker and very intelligent with nothing by high references from former employers.
More importantly, being overweight has a huge implication for current and future health. At 13, that may not seem important (teens tend to think of themselves as immortal), but what she does now will ulitmately have a huge impact on the state of her health later in life and the quality of the health she has (or doesn't have as the case may be). Being overweight and staying that way for any length of time puts us as a higher risk for a host of illnesses and diseases like diabetes, heart disease, cancer and gallbladder disease. It also makes pregnancy or any type of surgery much higher risk. Kids her age are now developing type 2 diabetes (something formerly only seen in adults and virtually unheard of in children which is why it's also called "adult onset" diabetes), so that danger may not be as far off as she'd like to think.
With all the conflicting information circulating around these days in regards to dieting and health, I can surely understand why this dear girl may be confused. I wish you good success with writing your letter and hope that she will take it the right way and not be hurt or offended, but rather encouraged that there IS a healthy way to lose weight (without starving yourself) and maintain it. With you as a role model, I'm sure that she will be able to succeed.