7 yr old DS is morbidly obese, what to do?

[Aplone]

Mums and other carers of formerly obese kids, how did you get them to a healthy size??

A few days ago I put DS's height / weight measurements into the NHS child BMI calculator and it says he's on the 98th percentile and morbidly obese. Am ashamed and really upset. Feel incredibly guilty. I thought maybe he had some "puppy fat" but never thought he was that large. How the fuck do I get his weight down??? I don't (obviously) want to shame him or tell him he's on a diet but have made a few swaps / changes. Would really appreciate ideas. Have instigated a fruit and veg chart to get him to eat 5 a day. He has a tendancy to sneak foods so had already hidden chocolates, biscuits, etc. He always has tea at 5pm, then has a supper which always includes a glass of milk at bedtime which I have switched to skimmed (these timings are pretty non-negotiable, he is being tested for ASD and routines are v important to him). He always has breakfast which is a brioche bun or two.

His dad and I have split up and it is very acrimonious; I can't discuss this with him as he will blame me, report me to the social etc. I know that when he's at his dad's (which is 50% of the time) he does eat a lot of junk food and sweets / candy. Not trying to point fingers this is just for context for anyone reading.

For further context, he doesn't drink fizzy drinks and isn't that keen on juice, has mostly water to drink so can't do a switch here. He plays sport twice a week but cub scouts which is mostly running around so he is active.

Do I need to get a dietician involved? Will he grow out of it? More water? More exercise? I was a skinny child and I feel out of my depth. He has had one child tell him he's fat and I don't want him to be bullied.

Please be nice to me if you reply... I feel fucking terrible thank you in advance xx

Also OP, in the nicest way possible, you say "he really does like" and "he wants"..... but you can't just give him what he wants . My youngest son really does like the cheap crappy chocolate filled brioche and woukd eat 2 for breakfast every day if I let him. But I don't let him because its just not healthy. They both like pancakes with chocolate spread. They get pancakes Saturdays, sometimes with chocolate spread but always with fruit.

Things I've tried to get them to eat more variety. I make curry and rice, but keep sone plain chicken aside, and one DC had plain chicken and rice several times, before I added a bit if chicken from the curry, and built it up. He still doesn't have the sauce. But happily eats the chicken and rice now. Its taken months of regular offerings to get to that stage though!

To be absolutely honest the food you are feeding your ds isn’t that far away from what I feed my thin and muscular 6yr old ds. It’s not the doom and gloom pp might have you believe.

There are some differences, you have two brioche where mine would eat one, we’ve never eaten dominos, but then haribo and crisps feature far more in our food diary. We have a lot of hidden vegetables and overt vegetables!
Swings and roundabouts.

Mine won’t eat school dinners which I think might be the main difference.

Eating two full dinners plus pudding a day is too much.

My ds exercises a lot too, at least two miles a day on non-exercise days. So that might be the other thing to consider.

@Aplone cut of the price it’s £6.19 free postage if you have prime.

Just to add, my child has sensory issues and will eat next to nothing. I'd honestly give anything for him to eat school dinner and sausages and fish fingers etc like your boy.

We always focus on the negatives. Be pleased your son eats a variety of foods, but maybe work on just cutting out the quantity.

Ahh didn’t post at all weird.
@Aplone This plate is similar to my ds’s who is 6 and is autistic. It may encourage your ds to try new foods , particularly if like mine he doesn’t like them touching.

Do some research on calories in these foods. Lots can so easily catch you out. Is he doing 1-2 hours physical activities a day? Do you walk where you can?

Have you used my fitness pal before? It's great to log calories and see hotspots where he's going over.

You could buy some new plates and bowls etc with huge rims so smaller sized centre

However the plates and bowls still look large but the area to fit food in/on is much smaller

So therefore he will think he has same sized portion as before but it is actually smaller iyswim

My 9 year old who has ASD has put on tones over lockdown. His disability clubs have been closed due to funding cuts from the pandemic. He is off self isolating due to close contact and its incessant demands for food.

Things that help are distraction ( if he is busy he doesnt ask for food) drinking more ( another battle in itself) and bulking some foods out with protein like lentils or quorn mince. It's a low level watch, monitor and wait battle here. I sought advice from his HLW and SW but that was a big mistake as the HLW has started judging me.

I dont get the kids BMI charts. My eldest is in a healthy range at 7,13 and 5,7 but the looks of it he will be anorexic when he turns 18 in a few months. He has always been extremely thin and very healthy. My little chunk is also healthy and active.

No one would ever think to judge the eldest having a 27inch waist. But with the little one I feel very judged

That is my problem, I can't just say "here you go" because he will have a meltdown which has knock on effects of him being late for school, his little sister gets upset, I am late for work and of course it is a really horrible start for DS in the morning. It is a beige diet, I hold my hands up to that! He is a very fussy eater so my hands are quite tied. I eat quite a "normal" (whatever that means lol) varied diet and will offer DS some of what I am having but he hates it. The mealtimes split into 2 meals (1 for kids and 1 for me) because of the big difference in what we wanted to eat. Also 5 is so early for me, I just cannot eat this early. But if it gets to even 5.30 and DS hasn't eaten (e.g. days out and you lose track of the time) he goes into a meltdown. I wish I could change this time but it is a hangover from nursery which had a routine like clockwork. My own healthier diet is a massive source of shame because I hate the fact that I am eating better than him

OP, are you overweight too? What's your diet like? If your diet is similarl to his, you might find this all a bit easier if you educated yourself a little bit about the foundations of a healthy diet.

How did you get into the habit of cake for breakfast, biscuits, oven foods etc.? His DS always eaten this way, from when he was first weaned, or have vegetables, complex carbs, protein, etc. fallen out of his diet for some other reason?

Yep, the brioches (chocolate chip ones even!) are just fat and sugar with zero nutritional value. You could hardly come up with a worse, more claorific breakfast. The pain au chocolat for a snack is probably even worse in that regard. So they really do have to go. The dried fruit things are just sugar too. And yep, beige frozen oven stuff.

But you're clearly determined to change things, so good on you. Make sure the fruit bowl is full and that he can have free access to it, then have proper unsweetened bread around instead of the brioches etc. When I've been dieting I've found pita bread pretty good. It's quite filling, and I put just a smear of lemon curd or marmalade on it (no butter obv). Better still if it'sa wholemeal one. Also they're cheap - 45p a pack in tesco!

And for main meals avoid anything fatty or coated with stuff, if you can. Pasta itself isn't bad at all, as long as you don't smother it with fatty stuff. So if he needs something filling and he likes carbs, you could do worse. Though it's a shame he doesn't like tomato sauces. The cheese element undoes things a fair bit.

Good luck. There are a lot of changes needed, but I think you'll do it.

Thanks I will definitely try this!

Make the easy changes OP. Swap out 1 brioche for a banana/other fruit. Ditch the school biscuits, and cut back/change the after school snacks. Do them 1 at a time, over weeks and then months. It doesn't need to be a quick fix, but gradual changes so that this time next year, his diet is better, and he'll have grown into his weight.

To the PP who asked, DS's diet wasn't always this bland / beige / oven food but he sort of became fussy once he stopped eating in a baby-led weaning way and started eating properly his own meals. If that makes sense?

I am overweight, yeah and he is aware of this. I don't think he sees himself as overweight though (yet). I do have food issues myself in that I had bulimia for many years. I really don't want him to have this! It is awful condition.

@Isawthathaggis

To be absolutely honest the food you are feeding your ds isn’t that far away from what I feed my thin and muscular 6yr old ds. It’s not the doom and gloom pp might have you believe.

There are some differences, you have two brioche where mine would eat one, we’ve never eaten dominos, but then haribo and crisps feature far more in our food diary. We have a lot of hidden vegetables and overt vegetables!
Swings and roundabouts.

Mine won’t eat school dinners which I think might be the main difference.

Eating two full dinners plus pudding a day is too much.

My ds exercises a lot too, at least two miles a day on non-exercise days. So that might be the other thing to consider.

A sensible answer. There's nothing he's eating that's particularly shocking, he just doesn't need two cooked meals plus pudding a day. He probably gets pudding after school dinners as well yeah? So you need to lighten the lunchtime or dinner time meal. Shouldn't be too hard to do this as it's summer so you'll maybe not be cooking as many hot meals and also with school holidays coming up you can use that to make a change and maybe get into a habit of taking soup or sandwiches/wrap for one of his main meals.

Having said that upping activity is the most important thing you can do for him. Does he get a run around the playground? Maybe you can start an active hobby together like open water swimming or cycling.

@Aplone

Off the top of my head food diary would be for a week when he is with me

Mon - Fri
AM Brioche w choc chips (1 or 2)
Small glass water

School - snack - 2 plain biscuits, "Bear" dried fruit spiral thingys

School - school dinners

After school snack (this is quite painful to write tbh ) - pain au chocolate or 3 biscuits - glass water - more dried fruit snacks or sometimes apple chopped up - yoghurt (2 x petit filous or similar type)

Dinner - any combination of
2 x vegetarian sausage or vegetarian nuggets or 2 x fish fingers and veg (usually carrots and sweetcorn) and 2 x potato waffles or mashed potato
Or
Oven pizza and cucumber sticks
Or (occasionally) rice and vegetarian sausage chopped up with it

Pudding
Banana with honey and ice cream usually

Bedtime
Glass milk
Toast and jam (though am giving without jam now) or brioche

Saturday/Sunday
Breakfast - brioches or occasionally cereal ("kids" cereal e.g. crunchy nut / honey cheerios) or pancakes

Lunch - sandwiches or cheese toastie or scrambled egg on toast or dippy egg and banana and yoghurt for pudding

Snacks - biscuits / kit kat.
Maybe croissant or pain au chocolate if we go for a walk (we live near lots of Costa / Cafe Nero / Starbucks etc.

More snacks mid afternoon - fruit, crackers

Dinner - varies - either same sort of oven foods as in the week or Dominos

Bedtime - glass milk and toast if he says he is hungry.

I feel horrible typing this out

Cut down on the obvious stodge. About 200 calories in a choc chip brioche bin but they're not very filling.

Could you encourage him to chew and eat his food as slowly as possible

I mean that the slower he eats the more chance there is of the signal getting from stomach to his brain to say I am full up

Like with a timer etc

If he eats quickly the signal gets to the brain but he has already eaten more then needed

What happens with meal timings when he does sport or Cubs?

I would love to do a hobby with him or sign him up for an extra sports club but as he is with dad for alternate weeks it is very hard as dad won't take him to any more clubs so he would be going half the time only, and most clubs want more commitment.

I have been looking at school dinner menus and they do indeed come with a pudding e.g jam roly poly every day. This is the last year of free school meals (keystage1) so might just make a clean break and switch to pack lunch in September.

The school advice for snacks is plain biscuits and fruit. No chocolate - it will be confiscated. You can have biscuits with fruit in e.g. fig rolls or squashed fly biscuits.

Another thought is to get him involved in making dinner. Would he enjoy making toast?

Have you tried him with pancakes? He could help make those.

There is nothing wrong with 2 cooked meals a day. That is one of a number of insane mumsnet opinions.

The content of meals is what matters. Not whether or not they are hot.

OP, he needs to see you eating. He isnt going to eat new things because he sits and eats alone/with his sister. There is no example for him to follow. No one to watch enjoying a poached salmon and salad. He isnt seeing it.

Is the issue with not cooling properly for him because you dont want to cool 2 meals at different times each day? So the kids get freezer food and you get proper food? That needs reconsidering.

Humans have taste buds and we enjoy fatty, fried, processed food. Some people dont, but on the whole, it is attractive to our taste buds. When kids stop being toddlers, and start having some control, they will often choose those types of food. It is your job to say no.

It comes across very much like you just want to give him what he wants and he has learned that tantrums work. His diet needs to change though so no more, "oh, but he really likes it".

Feeding a child with ASD can be a challenge.

Often they prefer very processed food because it has a consistent taste. Each blueberry or apple may taste slightly different but each MacDonalds chicken nugget tastes exactly the same.

Things my DS has liked which are slightly better than chocolate chip brioche would be French toast, bacon, weetabix and flapjacks.

We had the opposite problem though in that rather than never feeling full he never felt hungry and because he has low muscle tone chewing is just a lot of effort.

Involving the child in cooking if you can does help.

@SUBisYodrethwhenLarping

What happens with meal timings when he does sport or Cubs?

Sport is always after dinner then supper when he gets in. Same for cubs. Weekend sports is after breakfast but before lunch. Ironically the day he's most likely to miss having his elevenses. It is always very, very rushed. Which probably doesnt help

School puddings are not the same as puddings from the shop. They need to adhere to strict rules around sugar and fat content.
Theyll call it a jam roll poly or a sponge cake with custard, but it's not what we would all call a sponge cake. They are made to be as low in sugar as they can be.