Does this sound like gluten intolerance?

[dutchmanhattan67]

DD has gained a lot of weight recently, she's currently in the obese range for her height. Almost all her weight is on her tummy, the rest of her looks (to me) fairly average. She does overeat and we've overindulged her a lot with sweet treats, fast food etc as a family, so I've been putting it down to diet.

We ended up talking about her weight this evening (brought up by her) and she's told me her tummy often feels 'full and heavy' during lunch break at school, and in the evenings after she's eaten. She says it doesn't hurt, I think she means more solid. It doesn't look like she's bloated, it looks like fat.

I'm going to try to get her a GP appointment anyway, but could her symptoms be an issue with gluten?

How old is she?

No. My DH and DS are coeliac. If they eat gluten based foods they lose a drastic amount of weight, very quickly.

She's 11.

I'm a fat coeliac who was fat even when I was undiagnosed — it's possible to have it and not lose weight. I mean technically it's possible to eat gluten, be apparently completely asymptomatic and still be coeliac. But nothing's really screaming gluten about what you're saying. It sounds like maybe she eats too fast, without giving her stomach time to send the message that it's full, and ends up eating an uncomfortable amount.

Sorry that sounds more like she's eating too much at every meal.
Gluten intolerance can involve bloating but more often is about coming out the other end within a few minutes of eating gluten.

I hadn't actually thought she might be feeling bloated just from eating too much It sounds like it probably isn't gluten then.

No need to rule it out at this stage. It's not what my symptoms are but people vary a lot. The test for coeliac disease is really easy and coeliac is v under-diagnosed, so it's absolutely worth raising, but it's really important that she keeps eating gluten daily until she is tested.

It sounds like chronic constipation could be a possibility with the bloating. With the weight gain some children of this age do get puppy fat before a massive growth spurt. Hard to know whether they are connected.

I do wonder if she might be constipated from what she’s saying. Her tum tends to be less protruding in the mornings than it is in the evenings.