How can I help my teen daughter lose weight

I never said they should. I just said they aren't a particularly good source of protein, which they aren't.

See your role as educator not the food police - show her what a balanced meal looks like and how her hunger can be satisfied in healthier ways. If she is hungry she should eat, but she needs to understand which foods help nourish hunger and keep cravings under control, and which foods will not.

Understand too that exercise increases hunger so it’s really important that she is choosing low calorie foods that she can eat in high volumes in order to meet her needs.

Is she going out with her friends a lot at weekends? My dds at that age would be going out a lot and drinking alcohol and getting cheesy chips on the way home etc, or snacks from the vending machines at school. It all adds up, particularly at 17 when they have usually stopped growing so they tend to ‘fill out’ a little more.

Potato provides the majority of the UKs vitamin C intake btw. It’s low in fat, has minerals and fibre. It doesn’t lack nutritional value at all…

Calories in vs calories out.
It doesn't matter what type of food she is eating, if you eat too much of ANYTHING that your body doesn't burn you gain weight.

If she is comfortable doing this, maybe you could get her to log what she eats over a week, just to see how many calories she is consuming a day. Then she can reduce them slowly until she is in a deficit and she will lose weight.

For example, if you know you maintain a weight of say 10 stone eating 2000 calories a day, and you then reduce that to say 1800 cals you will start to lose weight.

The British Nutrition Foundation RNI value which is deemed adequate for meeting the nutritional protein needs of 97.5% of the healthy population.

0.75g protein per kg of weight.

Clearly we disagree here but either way beans and peas are not something that should need to be avoided or chosen over other carbs (cereals/starches) by a 17 year old who exercises for 2 hours a day in order for her to lose weight. I’m sure we can agree on that.

you can't out train a bad diet but if she exercises 2 hours a day then she's also probably hungry! If she's exercising to that extent then she probably needs proper nutritionist advice, I definitely wouldn't advocate low carb or she'll be passing out!
Have you tried tracking everything she eats in my fitness pal or similar? You need to be very honest about it and weigh portions of everything.

Hello, I gained a lot of weight at 19 which was dismissed for ages by doctors. It turned out I had serious thyroid issues, I would ask to get that checked especially if her diet and exercise haven't changed.

Look into a low carb diet. I’d be more worried about the potato not the cheese, same with weetabix, both lack any real nutrition. Same with the advice to use skimmed milk. A low fat diet is very outdated advice.

Have a look at the ketogenic diet. But basically reduce carbs and eat good quality proteins and fats.

Can you pinpoint what changed just before she started gaining weight?
snacking on fruit and vegetables isn’t the calorie free option that a lot of people think, depending on what shes having.
If nothing else has changed maybe it’s as straightforward as portion control

And ignore the faddy advice here about not having jacket potatoes with cheese and salad, or not eating peas and beans. Portions are important but she shouldn't need to be cutting perfectly normal food out. It's much easier to lose weight when you are young and active, with a few tweaks to diet. I suspect it's going to be adjusting portion sizes and a few swaps as it was for me at that age. And it doesn't have to be diet perfection. I am a healthy weight at 50, cholesterol, blood pressure, resting heart rate, blood sugar all good, and eat crisps and chocolate in moderation, drink alcohol and have a takeaway every Friday.

Don't bother the GP until you've got her to do a proper food diary and worked out her TDEE. Being active doesn't mean a person can't eat above their TDEE. You're hearing hooves and thinking zebras, not horses. She's almost definitely eating slightly above her TDEE on a daily basis.

Where did you get that protein figure from? NHS again? The figures they use are simply to prevent protein deficiency, not for optimal health. To maintain muscle mass a person needs at the very least 1g of protein per kilo of body weight. To gain new muscle it should be 1.25g. 4.5g protein is neither here nor there really. It's not a bad thing to eat but it's not a significant amount of daily protein needs for anyone.

50g of kidney beans = 4.5g protein, 11g carbs, 60 calories.

Hardly a deadly amount of carbs or calories and about 1/10th of the necessary daily protein for a person of 60kg.

I'd get her to start tracking eating and exercise - there are lots of online apps where you can do it easily. Do it for two weeks without actively changing anything so you can see what her base line is. Its going to reveal either that she's consuming more calories than she needs or that she shouldn't be gaining weight, in which case you've got good evidence for the GP appointment.

For me, it's always been portion size rather than the specific foods and tracking really helped me understand that.

I would complete an honest food diary for a week so you have some objective data. You could suggest doing it together to avoid any awkward feelings. Up the protein, reduce the carbs and fruit, and increase the veg would be my starting point.

When I was 17 I went on Femodene AND lost weight. It's not necessarily the pill that's the issue. And I wouldn't recommend the copper coil, I got endometriosis after having one for five years.

I'd book her to have her thyroid checked and also take her off birth control. Condoms and a copper coil would be better. I gained alot of weight when I went on the depo injection. Sounds like she's eating well. Could she introduce more protein? To feel fuller for longer?

I would advise her to log what she's eating on Nutracheck which will give her a good breakdown of what she's eating now. Nothing too faddy, it's just going to be making sure she has say 80g protein a day, maybe keep carbs to 150g say, nothing too low, and try to have 25g+ of fibre. It costs about £30-£40 a year for the app and it's easy to record your food on your phone, and it's based on UK supermarkets and restaurants.

If say she is eating 2500 calories a day now maybe cut to 2100 and see how she goes. I wouldn't go below 1800 at her age if she is very active as well.

Though I have to say I lost a stone at 17 by joining the football team at college and going to aerobics 3 x a week. Food wise I cut out some of the snacking I'd been doing on chocolate and crisps at school. I wasn't very overweight, only half a stone over normal BMI say and I lost a stone and was more like BMI 22/23. At college I looked at what my slimmer friends ate at lunch time and noticed they had things with salad or beans instead of chips. So making swaps like that really helped. I put on half a stone at university but then lost it again after Christmas in my first year by starting going to aerobics there and cutting down on the takeaways! After that in my second year I joined the gym and always kept my weight down. I became very lean in my 20s after I took up running.

And she doesn't need to worry about eating beans and peas, she's not a menopausal woman who only has to look at a packet of crisps to put a pound on.

NHS nutrition advice is shit. Beans are high in carb and low in protein proportionately. You'd have to eat lots of them to get a good portion of protein and that would also be a very high amount of calories and carbs.

Beans and peas are actually in the protein category not carbs if you’re following NHS advice.

That’s a difficult age for weight loss. Could you afford to see a dietitian to get individualised advice that keeps her age in mind?

When I was 18, I lost 2 stone in a few months by walking on a high incline treadmill for an hour a day… so she may be better off if she increases her exercise rather than drastically cutting her intake down.

A book like the Carb & Calorie Counter is useful for visualising how many calories are in different foods but I wouldn’t want her to become obsessive.

If she’s generally eating healthily and doing two hours exercise a day then the GP would be my first port of call. Medical issues such as thyroid problems and PCOS can cause sudden weight gain. If you get that ruled out then you can start on portion control and whatever else. I’d be hesitant to risk getting her to obsess over food and calories before checking if anything else is going on.

Model good choices? Balanced meals with half of a plate filled with vegetables, 1/4 with carbs and 1/4 with protein sources. Things like potatoes, beans or peas belong in the carb category. If she eats well 80% of the time she is going to have less room for snacks.

Do lots of activities together, hiking, walking, sightseeing…

I rarely see sporty, active families with a single overweight person. If the whole family follow healthy lifestyle, some of it sticks with children.