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At first the doctor thought the baby was ill.

It was totally emaciated, with hardly any fat on its tiny, skeletal frame. The baby wasn't sick, however. He was on a diet. A weight-reduction diet, courtesy of his mother. Dr. Ito Yoshiya, who works as an assistant pediatrician at Asahigawa Hospital, tells Shukan Asahi that the baby's chart revealed that at some point in time the infant completely stopped growing in height. Not surprisingly, that period coincided with the start of the diet. After the doctor's persistent questionings, the mother finally confessed, "I watched the baby continue gaining weight and got really worried about the baby being too fat, so I started diluting the milk by half."

Dr. Ito pointed out to the mother that infant formula is designed to provide all the nutrients that a baby needs, that this is the time in its life that the baby most rapidly grows, and that depriving the baby of its milk is only causing him to become malnourished. But the doctor is afraid that his admonitions fell on deaf ears. "The mother looked anorexic. The state of the baby's body probably reflects the mother's feelings."

Shukan Asahi reports that more mothers than ever are putting infants under 1 year of age on weight-reduction diets, a conclusion shared by pediatricians. Spurred by a diet boom, these weight-obsessed mothers are projecting their distorted body image onto their hapless babes. According to the pediatricians, the worried mothers attempt to reduce their infants' caloric intake by cutting back on the number of feedings, cutting the milk with water, and by taking the bottle away before the baby is finished. They also grab the limbs of the sleeping baby and force it to exercise by stretching and contracting the arms and legs. To burn off the calories, of course.

One 27-year-old mother of a 7-month-old says that a neighbor expressed concern that the baby was too fat. When the proud mom happily replied that her baby had a good appetite, the other woman was alarmed and gave her diet recipes for the baby, along with a stern warning to cut back on the calories before it was too late. In fact, the infant falls well within the healthy norm. Says the bemused mother, "All the other babies in the nursery school are much thinner than mine. They have thin faces and small butts like a model."

"Some mothers are excessively worried," comments Toshiko Shibamoto, editor in chief of "Hiyoko Club," a magazine about child rearing. "If people even joke about the baby being plump, they get frantic. They don't seem to take individual differences into account."

Not to say that excessive weight isn't a problem, even for toddlers. According to statistics published by the Ministry of Education, in 1980, slightly under 3 percent of 6-year-old boys were overweight, but in the '90s the figure jumped to 4 percent. And Dr. Ito warns, odds are good that a fat child will grow into a fat adult.

The reason, according to Dr. Mitsuhiko Hara, who sees outpatients for obesity at the Pediatrics Department of Hiroo Hospital, is that a child's taste preferences are determined by 5 months of age, and children nowadays are primed to like soft and high-fat foods like curry, hamburger and spaghetti.

Parents should not, however, worry that a nursing infant is too fat, reassures Dr. Hara. They can be concerned about what a toddler eats, but babies need their milk. When they start moving around, all that fat will melt away. After all, isn't that what baby fat is? (Cheryl Chow, contributing writer)