I have a Y7 DD who used to be very slim up until age 8. She did lots of sport and at age 8 her brother died and we kind of let go of all the sports and things went down hill in terms of diet. We pretty much let her have whatever she wanted. This led to a lot of weight gain but mainly by her stomach. Since age 10 she has got back into sport, mainly street dance. At one point her belly got huge, she looked pregnant. It is still very big and she says it doesn't hurt or anything otherwise we'd test for gluten etc.
At the moment she does: 1hr theatre on Tuesday for which she walks up a huge hill to after school and takes 30 mins, 1hr of basketball on Wednesday, 2,5 hrs of dance on Thursday (same walk up the hill as Tuesday) and 2 hrs of PE as normal. Her school takes PE very seriously so she always complains they have to run loads. She is sore every week. This has been the routine for a year now and she is slowly losing weight but it doesn't seem to be proportionate to now much she does. She now weighs 56kg and is 148cm tall. When they did her height and weight in Y6 (this Jan) she was nearly obese and weighed more than now but was about 6cm shorter.
Reason I'm posting this is she's never really cared about it till now. She's joined a new school with no one from primary and her new friends are all slim and sporty. Her friends in primary were 2 tiny girls but she didn't seem to care. She's starting to really hate her stomach and is becoming obsessed with comparing her body. It is so hard because she is doing so much exercise, eating healthily and it's still not working. We have never told her to lose weight, but to make healthier choices and to get fitter. We have had bad eating disorders in my family so I have always been very wary about this. It is breaking my heart a little that she is feeling this way though, as weirdly it is just her belly that's so big. We went jeans shopping and she just sobbed in the fitting rooms because everything that fit around her waist was huge on her legs. Her legs are very toned from all the dancing but her upper body is complete opposite, she can't even do a plank.
Does anyone have any experience of this? I'm sure if she keeps up a good diet and all this exercise it'll even out as she grows but in the meantime I feel I'm walking on egg shells and don't want to say anything that will make it worse. For context, she is 11 (12 in April) and not showing any signs of developing yet.