Concerned about health and possible weight gain

[BlondeMalteser]

I have 3 children, 2 sons age 13 and 15, and a DD age 11.

DD is extremely competitive! I guess a lot of girls with older brothers are. It's just in her nature. All 3 are very sporty and she is constantly challenging them to races, wrestling etc. But another way that she is competitive is with her food.. she never actually says "I can eat more than you!" or "let's see who can eat more!" but if one of her brother's is having seconds, she will too, and I'm sure a lot of the time she is not even hungry.

I am concerned for her as she has my body type..I have always had to watch what I eat. It would upset me no end as a youngster watching all my friends scoffing pizza and sweets all the time and not gaining a single pound! I really have to work hard to maintain my weight. I gained a lot of weight in my late teens. This was mainly due to comfort eating due to being bullied and hating school, but I still had friends who ate very similarly to me and always stayed slim.

She's not chubby now, but she's not slim-slim either (she was 9lb7 when born! So always been bigger) but she certainly has the potential to gain weight. It just worries me that she always has to eat the same amount as her brothers' if not more. I try and "stop" her (for lack of a better word) for example a few days ago she asked if she could have more after DS' both wanted seconds and I said "of course sweetheart if you're still hungry"...so trying to make her think "Am I actually hungry or not?" She's at the age where her and her friends will go to the corner shop after school and I often find sweets and chocolate wrappers in her bag. I just don't know how to make her more aware of her diet without upsetting her. My mum would comment on my weight gain when I was in my teens but she was always very tactless with it and I remember countless times crying over her comments. My DH and I (him actually more so than me!) are very healthy..he is about to compete in his 5th big triathlon so is very passionate about keeping fit and eating right. He is forever shopping at Wholefoods! So we really have tried to make all of our DC's aware of healthy eating. The last thing I want to do is actually connect food to weight. Eg. I'd never want her to think I don't want her to eat more because she will gain weight, rather I want her to understand that eating more than she needs is not good for her health.

I just want her to be as healthy as possible and of course weight gain is just a horrible side effect of poor diet choices. I fear it will just creep up on her and she'll be "chubby" by her teens and I know from being a chubby teen myself it really wrecked my self-esteem. It wasn't until university when I started exercising more and developing better dietary habits that I really got my confidence back...so where should I go from here?

[Parsley1234]

Marking place my son is only child über sporty but loves junk and he has very muscly body but tummy on him

[grants1000]

A doctor once told me that children of this age grow outwards THEN upwards, so look chubbier then get taller.

[Nocomet]

DD1 grew out a fair bit and then up. (At 16 she's still wearing a top she bought when she was 12)
DD2 only started eating more after she started getting taller.

So it varies.

[Pythonesque]

It's plausible that either now or soon, a large appetite will be appropriate and reasonable for her. What you could perhaps start doing is prepare her for the fact that, depending on how active she is, once she stops growing her appetite should gradually decrease and keeping up with her brothers won't be appropriate at that point.