How can I help my teen daughter lose weight

Change the meals to more protein dense. Instead if weetabix have some quark with fruit. Instead of Jacket potatoes have some salad and chicken. Or have aome coronation chicken with the Jacket so it will keep you full longer etc.

If she does sports 2h/day (that is a lot) then to have energy she needs to really consider what to eat.

Have meals together, wat often so potions don't get too high, don't nag, keep a food diary together, make sure veggies are available all the time to fill the plate, meal prep together

Please don't ask this. People shouldn't publish their kids' private details online.

She asked for your help so I think it would absolutely worth telling her that she is eating portions that are too big. 4 weetabix for breakfast is a lot and must be expensive (apart from the calories!).

Are you comfortable telling us her height and weight? Could be lots of muscle from so much sport?

Exercise is not the answer to weight loss

ive just lost 2 stone using my fitness pal. Calorie counting is the only way (and I have done all of the diets over the years. Ultimately that’s all that has worked).

edit: I realised I was eating far too much pasta, butter and cheese!

I eat 3 healthy meals a day plus snacks, such as poached egg and beans on toast, jacket potato with beans and coleslaw, vegetable chilli and rice with nachos. Snacks are usually chocolate. All weighed and counted and added to MFP. I’m now the slimmest I’ve been since before I was pregnant (size 8).

Well if she tracks for a week or two she'd know. If she's genuinely not over consuming then there's data to go back to GP with. But conditions which cause weight gain are not medically super-common. Otherwise there would have been fat people coming out of POW camps.

Statistically far more likely the little extras here and there and bigger than needed portions are more likely the root cause as they are for most.

Hmmmm. Well. Yes and no. Definitely some mental advice on here. But if someone is slowly gaining weight at this age, it just gets harder to lose it over time when habits are embedded, so I don't think a 'just ignore it and it'll sort itself out' method is necessarily best. Eating healthily and in balance is a great way to not get overweight in the first place. But once you're already there (as a person who has been!) you do have to do some hard yards in the form of a calorie deficit to get back to a place where just being sensible will do the job.

Obesity is a leading cause of ill health in the UK, so I'd see our helping our children not go on that path is just as important as helping them not to take up smoking or drugs or other damaging behavior.

5kg isn’t much though. Let her be and figure it out on her own.

Get her into pulses? Filling, stabilise blood sugar and cheap= good for students. Start with a basic red lentil soup. It was be flavoured loads of different ways once she's mastered it. I can relate to her situation, pulses sorted me out. (If she gets into it, an Instant Pot would help her cook at uni).

And is she getting enough sleep?

Cheese isnt bad. She needs lots of protein. How overweight is she?
Feel awful even saying this but is she definitely not pregnant?

How overweight is she? I think my approach would be different for over a stone or under a stone overweight.

But @Slinketypokey you say you weren't losing weight, which is completely different from putting ON a lot of weight like the OP's DD. I think there's something else going on here.

I agree you following her round reminding her of good and bad food choices is a no-no. Definitely don't want to encourage disordered eating.

Could you set her up with a trainer who can help with a meal plan? An independent third party can help with just some pointers around things like fruit is still full of sugar so eating loads of it isn't a great plan, focussing on lean protein and veg etc. My trainer had me use an app, just for a week, to track everything that went into my gob. OMG it was a revelation. All those milky coffees, those little snacking apples and bananas, the odd biscuit, a piece of cheese here and there added to a 500 calorie a day surplus over the course of the week. NO WONDER I wasn't losing weight despite exercising loads.

If you can't figure out the trainer bit you could still help her with the app and make it just as an experiment for data. That way it's the app giving her factual info and not anything that can be thrown back in your face later.

Knowledge is power in these things.

Like other posters, I'd be a bit surprised if she's put on a lot of weight from eating weetabix, jacket potatoes and fruit, even if her portion sizes are big. Are you sure she's not snacking on sweets and processed food when you're not there? I have skinny teens and they regularly eat 4 weetabix in one sitting, loads of cheese etc.

So don’t police her food - I’d hate that.
Sit down with her and work out her TDEE. Tell her she needs to eat less that that on a consistent basis to lose weight. And she needs to measure and weigh things to see what an actual serving size is. Cut down on snack - or what helps me is preparing snack in advance, say 100 calories of this or that, and have those available.
Then perhaps suggest you go for a daily walk together? Or a something a bit more active?

If she's actually asking for help, I don't think pointing out 4 Weetabix is probably double what she needs is nagging but I get why you're reluctant to seem like you are criticising her. Not maybe while she's eating but cereal especially is easy to over do, the portion sizes they base the serving suggestions on are tiny!

Has she recently gone on the pill, that could be affecting her? Also at 17 she is probably maturing out of the young girl, can eat anything to her more adult body where you do need to be more mindful. I remember constantly being at the tuck shop as a young teen and skinny as anything, then suddenly finding around 20 that I couldn't do that.

More water, more protein. And walking everywhere you can, even if it seems far at first.

I'm a volume eater too so I sympathise - a small plate of something, however nutritious, just doesn't do it for me! Try and load up the plate with protein and lots and lots of veg to make the meal plentiful and allow lots of mouthfuls. I love broccoli so I use almost a whole head when I'm making dinner - it really helps trick my brain into thinking I've eaten a large portion. Try and get her to eat protein first, veg next, carbs last.

Is there anywhere you habitually drive to that could be walked instead? Leaving 20 minutes earlier to walk to one of her clubs for example? If you walk together it'll seem like much less of a chore

Carbs make you hungry. Get her to try something like a cheese and tomato omelette in the morning instead of cereal. A low carb diet would shift the weight and stop her from feeling hungry all the time.

Would she be open to doing a Programme with a nutritionist? To learn health eating and about regulating here eating and not controlling it?
It would likely be expensive but in the long term could help her a lot.
Agree that high protein is definitely helpful.

This was me 40 odd years ago but what my mum didn’t know was I would polish off a packet of crisp &/or bar of chocolate in between the bus stop and home most days! And if I was out with friends at the weekend, we’d invariably end up in a wimpy or equivalent. And whilst standing the kitchen waiting for my toast, I’d eat a slice of buttered bread…not hard to see why I put in weight but my mum was
perplexed. If she’s doing two hours exercise a day, eating a healthy diet with plenty of fruit and veg & there’s no medical issue, there’s some eating going on out of sight that’s she either hiding or just not considering properly.

Yet another demonstration of how insane it is to ask for dietary advice on MN 🤯

She doesn’t need to start cutting out entire food groups, “low carbing”, inducing ketone poisoning or avoiding perfectly sensible nutritious foods like cheese, potatoes and pulses. She doesn’t need to calculate her TDEE or start counting every calorie at 17 either. It’s depressing to see once again how many MNers are firmly locked into a lifetime of toxic diet culture, and are happily setting their daughters on the same path.

Just support her to watch her portion sizes, make sure she’s drinking enough water and eating enough protein - and enough good food generally - to support her exercise and keep her satisfied so she doesn’t turn to junk food too often to fill a gap. She’s probably stopped growing and will even out over the next couple of years anyway.

Start with her just logging what she is eating and when.

Fruit can be high in sugar, fruit juice is so high it is recommended to only have a max of 1 glass a day.

I love soft fruits, melon, mango etc but they are quite high in sugar compared to say an apple.

Does she graze? I think many teens do so they don't learn how to recognise hunger. Can she go two hours between meals and snacks?

Introduce regular meal and snack times so maybe:

7.00am breakfast
10.00am snack
12.00pm lunch
4.00pm snack
6.30pm dinner