To think it’s possible for child to be overweight BMI but not unhealthy?

The OP already knows that according to official guidance her son's weight is not in the healthy range, so the opinions of lay people judging from a photo shouldn't really influence her either way.

What the OP asked is AIBU to think it’s possible for child to be overweight BMI but not unhealthy?

The answer to which is a resounding ‘yes’ of course because he is an eight year old child. The worry is that he will continue to bear the excess weight into adulthood and middle age when weight related illnesses can become a problem. The variables are that not every overweight child becomes an overweight adult, not every slim child remains slim and not every overweight adult gets weight related illnesses.

If you are feeding him a sensible diet and he gets exercise then it is likely that he will grow upwards and things will balance out over time. This often happens.

But .... being overweight can brew up problems for later in life, especially if he gets a bad diet.

I stand corrected. I just plugged weight and height given by Op into the BMI calculator and got a BMI of 94. I think I may have been thinking of where both height and weight are on the 99th centile (basically alll the outliers) where the BMI would not necessarily be 50%.

Focus more on his lifestyle than his weight to determine if he is healthy

• what is his diet like?
• does he get enough sleep
• does he get an hour at least per day of exercise

Children can look chubby at times, then have a growth spurt and stretch out. Or they can look incredibly skinny but have a great appetite, eat good nourishing food but just burn it all off. I have one of each of these - oldest looked chubby but then grew and stretched out, and our youngest - the GP asked us 'does she eat' as she is all sticky out ribs. Both eat same food, with good quality nourishing meals and occasional treats, but look completely different.

Nope. There can be no such thing as the 100th percentile, because the maximum data point considered is still part of the sample space.

Anyway, it's a side-track. If a child's parent has been told their child is at the 100th percentile (which basically means the 99.something percentile) then they are obese and that's a massive concern.

My BMI is really low, but I think that's partly as I have really hollow bones/osteoporosis. I used to weigh more when I was 20 but looked way skinnier? I think with children if they're pretty active then they can still be healthy if a bit heavy. But if their eating habits are causing weight gain then eventually it probably will catch up with them when they stop growing.

This is even the case with pets, there are posters at the vet setting out how you should be able to feel your cat or dogs ribs. Fat nation, fat children, fat pets

If OP had come on with the same level of underweight as overweight for her son, people would be pulling her apart as a neglectful parent and poor child

But because he is overweight its tolerated and advised to ignore.

I agree. As adults we have the autonomy to cherry pick from health advice those aspects that make us feel better, more reassured, and support the choices we want to make. Don't want to diet but enjoy excercise? Feel free to decide excercise is the important part and ignore BMI. Eat clean, perfect BMI and drink a bottle of wine 4 nights a week? By all means decide that overall you're healthy enough. But when it comes to our children, I don't think we do have the right to come at it from our subjective viewpoint. If the guidance says there's an issue, I think our responsibility is to act in accordance with it, because I don't think we've the right to override official advice with our own opinion when it comes to someone else's health.

You should be able to see the ribs on a 9 year old. Unfortunately people's idea of healthy weight has been skewed by a largely over weight population.

This is an article talking about how parents don't recognise obesity in their children.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12226744

My son is 11 and has got same bmi- he is not fat at all. He is well built and actually quite muscular for a child (typical rugby build) - so it depends on the build. My partner is the same - muscular, 32inch waist, but only 5ft 7 so according to his bmi he is a stone overweight! It’s one way of measuring but certainly not the only factor - waist to height ratio I feel is a better indicator.

That's not true. The 100th percentile is where the 100th person would fall in a typical sample of the population, but there will be plenty of outliers. For example, we don't set the 100th centile at 8'11" which is the record height for a man, and nor do we set the 0th to allow for people with forms of dwarfism.

There are far too many woman on mumsnet with disordered eating. I suggest you treat their advice with some caution

Considering that in the western world, the concern is childhood obesity rather than children being too slim, I think you should also take the opposite advice, talking about sturdy and plum as desireable, with caution.

Possibly depends on just 9 or nearly 10 and u may well be right, I was in a rush! I think I mainly.looked where it was in the middle ISH of the green zone! (i.e. healthy weight range!) I think we can agree that if height and weight plod along the SAME percentile, then the child is in the healthy weight range according to all the NHS BMI measures.

To be overweight the weight needs to be in a range above the height.

BMI is about weight and whether it is proportional to height given age and gender.

I have two boys - one was 50th centile height, 50th centile weight and unsurprisingly therefore 50th centile BMI.

The other is tallllllllll... I can't remember the exact figures but something like 98th centile height, 75th centile weight and BMI was in normal range but low end (because his weight was lower than his height curve).

Personally, I'm around 50th centile height, but my weight is above that! So my BMI skirts around the top of the healthy BMI (sometimes creeps into overweight if I let rip on the custard creams!)

I think knowing BMI is helpful.

There is so much talk on this thread about rugby players! Let's face it, very few kids who have a high BMI are professional level athletes or even club level athletes. Most kids with a high BMI are just average kids. In which case the BMI is a helpful guide to let parents know the weight of their kid has crept up and they'd b wise to do.aomething about it.

Its not meant to say anything about general lifestyle or health. Its a rough guide indicator for the majority of the population about their weight vs height. Thats what its provides. Used in conjunction with other measures like waist size, bloods etc its very useful.

But of course read any thread on here and everyone is an outlier.

Its also adjusted for different ethnicities as the risk factor for some BAME communities are higher at lower levels of being overweight than some Caucasians

I don’t think you’re reading the chart right- 91st height and 91st weight comes out at about the 75th for bmi on the one I’ve got.

To hit the 50th centile on the 91st for height you need to be around the 75th for weight.

BMI is quoted as a percentile for children in the NHS. Based on the measurements given, OP's DS is on the 95th percentile if he turns 8 today and the 92nd if he turns 9 today. The overweight range is the 91st percentile up, so he is overweight, and given he's 8 and not likely to be a professional athlete and OP hasn't mentioned any underlying health conditions, it's like that it's just plain old overweight.

Likewise, BMI is actually a pretty decent tool for most adults. I know for me the healthy range is a distant memory very broad and goes from very very slim to a weight where I'm just starting to feel ever so slightly pudgey but would kill to be again.

However, weight is just one measure of health, and OP has an active kid with a healthy diet as 8yos go. Worth keeping an eye on and slowly correcting, as we all know how tough it can be to get weight under control in adulthood, but not at crisis point yet either.

@Whoyergonnacall By the same token, the OP should treat the advice of those saying he doesn't 'look unhealthy' with similar caution. Weight is an emotive issue, and for every person who's views are skewed by an unhealthy relationship with food and a desire to be 'teeny tiny' you're going to get several who are above a healthy wright with children who are heavier, who are coming at it from their equally skewed perspective. You are correct, the only advice OP should take is from experts. They may not be perfect, there may not be full consensus of opinion, but the guidance is at least impartial, official and not emotionally driven. The OP already knows that according to official guidance her son's weight is not in the healthy range, so the opinions of lay people judging from a photo shouldn't really influence her either way.

They're only horrible if you equate size with value as a person and that fat = bad. This is your issue, not the posters I'm afraid.

No one is saying DC is bad / horrible / ugly / disgusting / mean / lazy / nasty.

Some of them are saying they are overweight / chubby / have belly overhang. These are objective statements about physical shape and size - they are not good / bad. They are just a description of reality.

But it does work like that! BMI is a calculation based on weight and height.

According to the NHS, a 9 year old child on the 91st centile for height and the 91st centile for weight, is around the 50th centile for BMI. I had a brief moment of doubting myself, so just checked!

I think one of your kids measurements is off. Either their height is lower than 90th centile or their weight is higher than 90th centile or you have got their BMI wrong.

There are far too many woman on mumsnet with disordered eating. You know who I mean - the teeny tinies that eat nothing but massive salads and have “delicate wrists.” You appear to have a good number on this thread talking about flabby tummies and belly overhangs which aren’t there. I suggest you treat their advice with some caution because you could end up being quite harmful to your son but do speak to a doctor or your school nurse if you are concerned because you’re likely to hear from someone with experience and not someone addled with orthorexic views.

And how many threads about Mounjaro? Bloody loads. So this works the opposite way too. Many people have forgotten what 'normal' or 'healthy' looks like.

My DS is 10 and is about 135/136 cm tall and is about 28kg. I haven’t seen the pic but I’d say it sounds like your DS is probably a little overweight.

Wtf?

I looked up the OP’s child on the separate height and weight charts which I think can be more helpful than BMI. It does depend on exact age but broadly speaking

At 8 - 135cm would be 91st for height but 98th for weight at 135

At 81/2 135cm would be around 75th centile for height and 91st centile for weight.

At both points, his weight is in a higher centile than the height but the older 8 he is, the less likely you can just say it’s because he’s tall that he’s a bit heavier

BMI/ centiles are a decent ballpark guide but not a complete picture.

Then consider body shape. Ribs should be visible not totally covered over. Prepubescent children should have straight body shapes. There shouldn't be obvious surplus fat at the belly, hips or chest- children are different shapes to adults.

What are their genes like? Are they following the way their parents and other family members have grown? Are they following their own growth patterns? When have family tended to hit puberty?

What is their diet like? Do they end up aquiring additional sweet treats from here there and everywhere? What do they eat/ drink when out and about? It's quite easy to have a decent diet at home but end up being tipped into a surplus by additional extras that find their way into a child's life.

What are their activity levels like? Do they have a lot of incidental exercise? Are they generally active or naturally slow and ploddy? How much movement do they actually get at their sporting activities? What's their functional movement like? Can they sprint? Have they got good stamina? Can they get up and down easily and move in a variety of motions? Can they climb easily? Have they got strength relative to their build? (I know some secondary age children that by late primary age were struggling to move functionally)

Some children concertina as they grow. My two tend to change face shape but there's little obvious difference in the body. Some children are more obvious. The awkward part of assuming they'll grow into their mass if their diet is continuously unbalanced for their needs is that you don't know when they'll stop growing and then the surpluses will accumulate. I've known heavy y7s stretch out through y8-9 then get heavy again once they stop growing- plus their appetites increased while growing rapidly.

Does being overweight matter? It's not a moral failing or weakness. Long term it is a significant trigger (or correlation) with poor health. That generally doesn't show up until middle age, but excessive fat (especially visceral fat) does stress the body's systems, and having that stress through youth is very far from ideal. Youth is when people's template for themselves is set- "fat" youths expect themselves to be "fat" adults. Their habits and activity levels are set then, and while they can be changed, that is very difficult to do and sustain. It's very difficult to reset to healthy weights after sustained periods of being extremely overweight. It's also just harder to move and less comfortable to be active when there is surplus weight.

Making sure children are in good health and making modest tweaks if needed is much easier than letting problems escalate into the late teen years and adulthood.

How old is your younger one? Toddlers/preschoolers are supposed to be a different shape to school aged children. And what is his bmi?

Im afraid I disagree on the body shape point. If you Google images of school children in the 60s and 70s they were all slim and actually skinny looking compared to today’s children. People have completely lost all sense of what children should look like as obesity is sadly so common.