If you were (unhappily) overweight as a teen, what could your parents have said/done to help, and what would make it worse?

[pastaandpesto]

DS(14) is overweight. He has an extremely sweet tooth, a penchant for carbs and spends a lot of time online gaming. He walks to school and does do a physical activity a couple of times a week (which we have to encourage), but not enough to offset the fact he is eating too much of the wrong things and is very sedentary.

For background, DH and I have never struggled with our weight. We eat healthily but not obsessively so. So DS hasn't grown up being exposed to to problem eating, at least not at home. His younger siblings are very slim.

DS has recently started eating secretly, and eating large quantities of food in a single sitting. I think he is heading in to the territory of disordered eating.

As yet, I have never spoken to him explicitly about his weight, although I have told him when I think he is making poor choices e.g. buying a massive sharing-sized bag of sweets and eating them himself in a single day (this happens regularly - as an occasional one off I wouldn't make a big deal of it). This obviously hasn't helped because he is still doing it.

I think he is unhappy about his eating/weight (and possibly in general, sadly) and I feel I need to talk to him about it, but I am very, very wary about how to approach it because I know it is such an emotionally charged subject and if I fuck it up I could make things worse. I want to support him and give him the confidence and encouragement to make changes, but I have no idea where to start.

If you recognise something of yourself in my DS, what could your parents have done to help do you think? And what should I absolutely not do?

(just to note, as he has younger siblings it is difficult to completely remove temptation from the house).

Also, sorry last thing I promise, my parents never once said to me you are beautiful, your body is strong and can do amazing things. They never encouraged me to try a sport or activity. I remember hating PE but loving a trampolining session we had at school, if I had been given the opportunity to go to a club maybe that would have helped. I'm not blaming them, they probably couldn't have afforded it anyway and I think they were busy just trying to get food in the table and pay the bills. But with hindsight I do think that could have made a huge difference.

I was a fat kid, in the Seventies, and I wish my parents had been a bit more informed on the protein -=filling equation. I think we ate a lot of carbs and so I was in a permenant eat crash eat again cycle.
I'm not a low carb advocate, but I do think protein heavy meals are the way for weightloss

It would have been more beneficial to me if my mum stopped buying the foods I was pigging out on. Donuts and cake for breakfast, noodles, waffles and mountains of white bread. If it wasn't there I wouldn't have eaten it as I didn't have the money to go buy it.
It would have also helped if we had exercised more as we did nothing at all.
I did get a grip on my weight as I got older but my mum has only gotten bigger and bigger and now has type two diabetes (hereditary) and is eating herself into an early grave 😔

I agree with this. I was raised on white bread and chocolate biscuits. Pasta, potatoes and baguettes were considered the height of healthy eating. Large portions as well.

I was in my 20s before I really started to understand calories.

I don't know what they could have said to me, but having healthier choices in the house would have been a help, as would have smaller portions with more veg.

I was also an overweight teen in the 1970's. My Mum did not see that I was really unhappy, shy and bit lonely and used food as a comfort. We had a lot of unhealthy food in the house. You mention the other siblings in the house as a reason for having high calorie food around. Now that I am a parent I have two very slim childen and a child with prader willi syndrome (this is a genetic disorder associated with constant hunger/dangerous weight gain). As a family we are all a healthy weight, we have to keep to a healthy diet, cannot have high calories foods in the home) - we do it as a family. It is good for all of us - my advice - Talk to your son - the eating comes from somewhere - look at what you are feeding everyone and make some changes. It can be done.

I became fat in my teens after being slim as a child. My parents made a big deal about how fat I was getting and that I needed to “sort it out” but didn’t show me HOW to sort it out. My DF was overweight himself and DM was slim but is one of those people who are always “on a diet” so perhaps they wouldn’t have been very helpful anyway. I think maybe if they had said something like we have noticed you’ve gained a bit of weight, we still love you but if you want to lose the weight maybe we could diet/go to the gym together. For me I think the cause was linked to control, as soon as I had the ability to control my own eating my weight spiralled.

I agree about switching to healthier food as a family without discussing it specifically too, nobody needs crisps, and unhealthy snacks, even slim people.

My DM refused to change what she bought too and just viewed it as an individual failing to over consume.