Overweight 9 year old

[Juiceey]

Hi MNers. Please don't flame me, I'm looking for help and advice not criticism.

DS (almost 10) is overweight. He is not an active child at all and hates being outside, always wanting to be indoors on electronics or drawing etc. We have to drag him out for walks or bike rides and he usually complains the whole time.

He was playing with friends having a water fight this afternoon (from within his bubble at school, in a park) and they all had their tops off and I felt just awful seeing him compared to them. I knew it was getting bad as he wears 12-13 clothes but seeing him topless with his rolls and huge boobs made me so sad.

I too am overweight but on Slimming World so we all eat SW friendly meals. He has one 'treat' a day and we argue about this incessantly as he always wants more.

I don't know what to do. I am so sad for him. I don't want him to be 'the fat one' or get bullied at secondary.

Could you find other activities he might like rather than walking or biking? Martial arts (obviously will have to wait for them to reopen) football, trampoline, tennis or badminton in the garden? Or take up geochaching or Pokemon go to make walks more fun?

I think the key is finding activities that won't be a chore to him.

Why is he overweight? Eating too big portions?too many sweets? Lack of exercise?

Regarding food, you can influence this. Don’t buy biscuits, cakes etc or only at the weekend. Swop sugary cereals for less sugar varieties (although all cereals are pretty bad). Reduce portion sizes. If he is hungry, give him fruit. If he refuses fruit, then he’s not hungry.

Also, get him to help cook foods. Kids tend to eat healthier if they’ve cooked it themselves.

A lot of kids don’t like exercise, but make it part of your daily routine. Half an hour in the evening everyday. If he complains whilst walking, ignore him. He’ll soon get bored. Or change the subject.

There’s lots of online exercise routines. Joe wicks are fairly short and family based. Maybe get a skipping rope. They’re a good form of exercise.

Even if your meals are SW friendly ones, are the portion sizes suitable for him? Obesity is largely about the amount of food eaten than exercise taken.

If he is overweight with rolls of fat, he is eating too much. The first thing you need to do is lower his calorie intake. That could be smaller food portions, lower calorie foods (veg) and removing snacking. On its own this will work over time. To speed it up, increase the calories he is using each day through exercise. Being fat as a child is no fun, makes him a target for bullies and is shortening his life. Do you have a dog? Dog walking is a great exercise for children.

I would say that daily treats is far too often.
If he wants sweet things, I would give him fruit, and keep sweets to a weekly treat.

Make exercise part of regular life. Walk more instead of taking the car etc, instead of making it all about the exercise/losing weight/getting fit.

Mainly, the whole family needs to make changes, not just him. That will make him feel less ‘different’ if everyone is doing it too.

Could you get him to join a rugby club? He won’t be the only chunky one there.

You are a good parent for acknowledging this to yourself and wanting to do something about it. I was friends with an overweight child and the parents refused to see it and it was awful for my friend.
I hope you get some really good advise here and I wish you well on your healthy journey.

We are having to work very hard on DS' diet at similar age. We have been trying for years but it is finally working because DS himself now understands that he needs to work with us on this. He better understands the importance of limiting treats, eating decent portion sizes, exercising etc.

So, what we are doing includes:

He has a small treat allowance daily, based loosely on Slimming World syns. In his case, he chooses this to be in the form of a plain digestive twice daily and a "hot chocolate" (100ml milk, 2 flat teaspoons hot chocolate and topped up with water). All other treats are banned. If he does have an additional treat, the biscuit and/or hot chocolate are cancelled. He makes this decision for himself.

We try to limit bread to a lunchtime sandwich. He has bran flakes with bananas for breakfast most days rather than toast etc.

Portion size and proportions are absolutely key. This is especially true for things like pasta etc because no one needs huge portions of carbs unless they're doing lots and lots of exercise. We eat vegetarian and fish more than half the time. Things like spaghetti bolognaise are limited, not because they're bad, but because it's harder to get the balance of pasta/non-pasta right and they're generally higher in calories and fat as a meal. When we do eat meat, it's often things like steak with some new potatoes and a big salad (oh, and he loves salad because we make them fairly interesting with avocado, pine nuts, nice dressings etc).

Movement is as important as exercise. If he doesn't like getting out and about with you as much (DS is the same), what about playdates in the park with friends? Where they're just running around and keeping moving the whole time (rather than at home where they land up playing electronics or whatever). Or trips to swimming pool etc (obviously, these are also all linked to lockdown easing). Finding a sport he likes is also helpful as at this age they start to be longer sessions which I think is incredibly healthy. Football, rugby, martial arts, parkour/gymnastics, swimming, hockey, tennis etc are all good options. I'm hoping to sign DS up to a swimming club after lockdown rather than just relying on his swimming lessons.

We have really pushed him to eat more fruit when he wants a snack. Often with fat free plain yoghurt.

Do it as a family. Have a chat about healthy eating, 5 a day, getting all the right vitamins and plenty of exercise.
Make it part of a day that everyone needs to do some exercise even if it’s just a 20 minute walk. Maybe aim for a mile a day?
If you can’t get out because of weather, there are YouTube ‘walking’ videos to help walk a mile indoors.

Look at nhs Live Well site. It’s got some good information.

I have a ds 11 who hated exercise and the beginning of lockdown was very fraught.

Then I bought him a wired bike computer and got him interested in his top speed and the distance he has cycled.
Ds barely argues when I suggest a bike ride now, and always wants a route that goes just slightly further than the last one so he can beat his own record. If it happens to have a long straight quiet downhill as well so he can try for a new top speed, he loves it.
The best £15 I’ve spent in ages

Might be worth a try.

I would check the calories in your slimming world meals. Some of them are laden with the bastards.

Reduce portion sizes. If he is hungry, give him fruit. If he refuses fruit, then he’s not hungry.

A hungry child will happily eat several pieces of fruit a day but fruit aren't 0 calories either. A medium banana is 100 calories for example. My kids would eat ten pieces of fruit a day if allowed. I'm sure the OP already gives her DS fruit.

OP I have to manage my dcs weight (same age) but I don't mention it. EVER I just say dinner is over sorry. They can have extra veg with meals.

Some kids are just hungry. Does your son find any sports enjoyable, swimming, trampolining, some kids prefer non-competitive type things.

Reduce portion sizes. If he is hungry, give him fruit. If he refuses fruit, then he’s not hungry.

Actually to echo the pp fruit is no replacement for the protein and carbs a growing child needs.

I feel your pain
Unfortunately a medical problem had meant a doctor's visit and the dreaded scales and BP measurement for DS 10.
This really opened my son's eyes (we had been trying our hardest for months to get him to understand and curb his eating but we're met with swearing and shouting when we tried talk to him gently and to reduce portion sizes and add veg).
DS has now started learning about his heart and how exercise helps his body and we are starting to turn a corner.
Perhaps your DS may find doing some research books for kids about the body and how it works interesting. Just a thought.

Hopefully you won't need to get to this stage before you start seeing results.

A sugary/fatty treat every day? Way too much.

You need to tackle this before he's a teen and able to buy his own fried chicken etc.

Diet is 80% of weight loss, exercise only 20% so you really need to watch his diet extremely carefully. If as you say his diet is healthy then you need to watch portion sizes. The longer you wait to deal with this the worse it will get, sadly. You need to be the parent here, not just stand by passively as he gets bigger.

Well done for really seeing his problem, you know sw works and that he can still eat all the types of food just cooked in the right way with at least one third speed often that's the problem they dont eat it or stuff it after which defeats the point just making tummies bigger. How is your own journey going are things creeping in? Hes obviously too young to be a member but never too young to eat healthy choices are there better treats he could have....there are some good recipes on line for syn free ice lollies and ice creams for example. B and m do the skinny whipp range he might like a lot healthier than chocolate and tastes really good.

My son is a bit older but he decided to do low carb during the lockdown. He did the research and decided what he wanted to it. The change has been impressive

What are his typical meals each day? And also what does he drink?

I think fruit is a terrible option. A piece or two a day is great, but it has a lot of natural sugars and it doesn't really fill you up.

I believe in 3 square meals. Good protein, good fat and vegetables. If you are still hungry after a good meal, that's not real hunger. Low fat and low protein will have you snacking on the wrong foods within an hour

Diet is 80% of weight loss, exercise only 20% so you really need to watch his diet extremely carefully. If as you say his diet is healthy then you need to watch portion sizes

^this. Start putting less on his plate/ give him a smaller plate/fill his plate with low calorie veg & salad so it doesn’t look too empty. An apple if he’s hungry, lean protein, fewer potatoes/pasta

www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-weight/overweight-children-advice-for-parents/

www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/what-does-100-calories-look-like/

You can definitely help him by making some changes to his diet and encouraging him to be more active. Would he wear a fit bit or equivalent to motivate him to increase his step count? Being active - rather than exercise per se- is super important for many health reasons
I’m a bit wary of kids being ‘on a diet’ and think it’s better to promote healthy eating which is more sustainable in the long term
Well done for braving asking a question on here and I hope everyone is helpful in their response

Is he drinking soda and squash?

I feel for you OP. DS is 12 and overweight.

I really don't know how to manage the 'treat' thing. DH and I are naturally healthy weights. We both love treats as much as anyone, but I don't find it particularly hard to naturally regulate what I eat (except for Whotsits, strangely, which I absolutely cannot resist) and we have tried to raise all the children to have a positive attitude to food which includes enjoying the odd treat without it being a big issue.

The younger two seem to have picked this up no problem, and are both very slim, but DS just craves carbs and junk food and simply can't be left to self-regulate. So we end up having to impose limits (e.g. you can only choose a small ice cream, you can only have ten sweets from that bag or Haribo) because if we didn't he would scoff the lot. Unsurprisingly the outcome of these restrictions is to make him even more focused on 'treat food', but I am at a loss how else to handle it. We definitely do limit what we have in the house, but I don't want to ban all junk food entirely because that doesn't seem fair on the other children, and anyway, I want him to learn to control this himself. I feel a bit despondent about it, because despite our best efforts to nurture a healthy attitude we seem to have failed spectacularly with DS.

Sorry that isn't much help, but you have my sympathy!

Also, I'm not sure at what point to tackle this head on. DH and I talk a lot to DS about the importance of being active, eating a balanced diet etc, but it doesn't seem to be going in. I wonder if we need explicitly say to DS that he is becoming/has become overweight. But I worry it might make him even more focused on food and make the problem worse.