11 year old DD wants to lose weight

[Corwen]

I'd like to approach this with as much care and advice as possible. DD wants to 'get thinner'. I don't know her weight/ height or BMI and I don't want to weigh her right now but she is wearing plus size school clothes and is quite chubby. I would say it's got to a point where it's making her less active and is a bit of a vicious circle.

My first thought and the first thing I said was that she is perfect as she is and that we must be careful if she does lose some weight to do it in a healthy way. I told her she's beautiful exactly as she is.

Dd has always loved food and has always eaten with great enjoyment. She likes cooking, watching cookery programmes, and she hates to feel she's missing out. She has an older brother who doesn't like many foods, is skinny and also growing fast and needs a lot of carbs as carbs are the main foods he will eat. This leads to dd eating too many carbs as I can't easily treat them differently without her getting upset.

I have been concerned about DD's weight for a while but attempts to give her a healthier diet and more exercise (whilst never mentioning my concerns) have only led her to feel she is being treated unfairly and have led her to eat in secret. To address that I have tried to increase her protein and fruit and veg intake so she feels fuller and I have stopped trying to limit intake so much as it was having the opposite effect- making her find ways of getting more food constantly.

This is the first time she has mentioned her weight and wanting to do something about it. I am aware of the danger of eating disorders and this is uppermost in my mind due to a young girl I know being in hospital currently with anorexia. However I know childhood obesity is not ideal ether.

I am reluctant to make a GP appt as I don't want her to think there is a big 'problem'.

I can't currently find a form of exercise she enjoys but I know this would be the first thing to look at.

We struggle to improve the diet and exercise for the whole family due to the fact we have an extremely picky eater and we are very busy with work and extra curriculars that are much loved and can't be scaled back easily.

Advice and experiences welcome.

Yes me too in the 90s. Heroin chic was the thing. I remember the "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels" quote. I think probably whatever parenting, role modelling and healthy lifestyle you adopt all teens have to find a way to deal with how they feel about their bodies. The girl I know who is currently in hospital with an ED is about as conventionally pretty, sporty, slim and fashionable as anyone can be and it didn't help her. I think in the end we all have to accept our perceived imperfections. No idea what she felt hers were, possibly academic pressure.

do you know where I can buy this?

Why do you think you all need to eat together? It isn't necessary and it's not doing your daughter any favours as she's wanting what her brother has.

Firstly we don't always, and secondly family mealtimes are important! If you google it you'll get plenty of research. Apparently it's even true if the mealtimes are fraught with issues 😂. As with anything I guess a bit of balance and not being to rigid about it is best

It’s not easy ! You want your teen to be a healthy normal weight as being overweight is not great and can make them unhappy yet you need to do this without triggering damaging eating disorder type behaviour. It’s really hard. As you can see any action taken by a parent to ward off obesity and instil healthy habits is quickly shot down as something that may trigger an eating disorder- happened to me on this thread!

My lovely friend has been working so hard at this as her Dd was overweight yet her sister was anorexic- friend has done a brilliant job of promoting healthy eating going to PT with her Dd. Dd now a happy 18 year old of normal weight.

That's true @TheaBrandt. I'm resolved not to do nothing but I'm treading carefully for the reasons being discussed. You can't win on mumsnet, if you allow your child to become overweight you're a bad parent for not controlling portion sizes and UPFs and if you control portion sizes and UPFs you are likely to give them an eating disorder. Eating meat is generally understood to cause worse health outcomes in the long run but being vegetarian or vegan isn't simple either and comes with its own potential problems. However I have got some good advice and solidarity on this thread and I'm glad I started it. Thanks everyone.

Would she enjoy dance? Or something like Zumba. Something fun.
Also for the whole family geocaching or hiking can be a really great way to spend time together, they would talk about what was going on in their lives. Somehow the act of walking along together got them talking. We always made sure there was something to enjoy at the end - like a playground or a small but healthy snack.
swimming lessons or family swimming can be good.

Still thinking about the suggestion of avoiding family meals- I think it's the same as avoiding anything in life/ parenting. It's not going to help in the long run and teach coping skills for issues around food. For someone with no natural off switch there will always be too much food around in life and for picky eaters they will always have to join in with meals that aren't specifically catered for their preferences.

@Autumcolors Yes will definitely try some of those things over the summer. Zumba has been tried and rejected on the grounds that the music is awful. Other forms of dance don't currently appeal although I think maybe a martial art might be good. Walking is great although would ideally have to get dh and ds onboard and that might not be easy to achieve.

When I was her age I was one of the skinniest girls in my class (at secondary school) but as far as I recall, I walked there every day and back (approx 26 mins plus up and down steep hills).

We were very active in school, always still playing in the playground or playing hockey. Before at junior school we’d play rounders and netball but I was always on the side hoop and not in the main game! But we all played out a lot and I’d cycled and roller skated all my childhood plus had horse riding and ballet lessons up until I was 11/12.

We walked everywhere by ourselves at that age partly because a short hop on the bus was free but longer journeys cost money. We got trains sometimes too. We did get a bus for eg 30 min journeys.

I can’t recall skipping breakfast at that age but it would’ve been either cereal or toast and fry ups at the weekend. Then school dinners (I can’t remember those at all especially in secondary school) and on weekends we had (Sunday lunch roast dinner) or sandwiches (cheese on mighty white bread with salad fillings) plus normal dinners. We did have desserts but these could be tinned peaches or strawberries and fruit to snack was encouraged. We did have an open biscuit tin and cakes for treats.

Snacks were chocolate bars and crisps but I don’t recall my mum buying them, it was a large bag of bbq hula hoops once a a week and a 4 pack creme caramels as my “treat” from the supermarket and my pocket money covered anything else (chocolate bars). I do recall snacking on cream crackers, cheddar cheese with margarine on top and sliced tomatoes with salt with them, and crunchy nut cornflakes slathered in mixed candied fruit, golden syrup and milk as snacks.

I wish I snacked more like the above now to be honest. If it’s not there or you can’t afford it or get to shops on time (we had proper stricter shopping hours then) you won’t miss it.

My best friend as a teenager was off school a bit with illness but also school refusal and because her mum bought lots of beige food she soon piled on the weight she also spent hours on the sofa watching black and white films.

You can easily get your DD into healthier eating habits now and exercise if she wants. It won’t be easy but as she starts to lose weight and fits into normal sized clothes and looks better she’ll thank you for it.

I’ve just thought and this is a diet partly based on weightwatchers:

weekend

breakfast: scrambled eggs with butter and sautéed mushrooms on whole meal toast (I like Vogel soya and linseed. or: peanut butter and marmite on toast - this will keep you full and you may not even need the carbs for lunch.

Lunch: egg salad with stuffed olives, feta cheese, rye bread or Ryvita. Maybe add small bit of rice or pasta to salad and avoid bread/ryvita.

dinner: what you’d normally have but a palm sized portion of either rice, pasta or potato. Try to up veggies here.

Snacks: any fruit, veggie crudities with hummus, sugar free jelly (you can make these yourself and reuse the bought pots), apple and cheese, pop chips, skinny whip bars.

Allow once or twice a week a cheat day and chocolate etc. in moderation.

A ‘cheat day’ is an incredibly unhealthy way to diet and just promotes the wrong mindset. Everything in moderation - no need to alienate certain foods

My DD, aged 15, wanted to lose a few pounds, slid quickly into anorexia. I'd got some scales for me as I was quite overweight and I was monitoring my own weight. I hadn't realised what a large part they played in her illness till way down the line. I'd never have them in the house again.

She's in a good place now, recovered an appropriate amount of weight to be fit and well.

It's a minefield.

Whilst she was in the grip of it, she was also obsessed with her Fitbit. She sold it whilst she was recovering as she realised it was making her very anxious.

She does an appropriate amount of exercise now because she enjoys it and it makes her feel good.

It'll be things like brioche buns and chocolate rice cakes which will make the difference.

You really need to make sure that your daughter knows you have heard her and that you respect what she has said. She 'wants to get thinner' and she is asking for your help. I think you should sit down with her and work out how she would like you to help her. At 11 she will already have a reasonable amount of knowledge about healthy eating and exercise. I think that it is ok to let a child 'diet' as long as it's done carefully and healthily. Treating diets as something evil is not going to help. You don't want her to become obsessed with dieting but you also don't want her to be a chubby teenager but there is a normal healthy middle ground where you can both work together to slowly and healthily help her 'get thinner'

I think you have had good and bad advice on this chat. One thing from a recent post that stuck out was that you said you had dieted in your teens and got very thin- you didn’t have body dismorphia but were stuck because it gave a sense of control. And you regularly go to bed hungry after eating small portions. Apologies but this does sound like an eating disorder and as they have been found to have some genetic basis you might want to think about that. An eating disorder is a kind of addiction to calorie deficit and your daughter’s calorie needs will be different to yours because she is 11 and still has a ton of growing to do. Why not tell her this instead of supporting her to ‘get thin’. Walking more would be good as it doesn’t even have to be see as exercise. Don’t talk calories but instead maybe discuss food providing energy to grow. Is there an option for her to not be vegetarian?? Increase the range and choice of food for her? I speak as a parent of a teen with Anorexia so am maybe very alert to it and apologies if I have been too blunt.

Haven’t read the whole thread and it bay already have been mentioned but Joe Wicks has just published a book for kids all about health, food, exercise and mental health - might be a good start for conversation. If she enjoys cooking many of his recipes are very easy, perhaps give her free rein in the kitchen!

What a strange question

Same, hopefully,as them being conscious of not misusing alcohol or substances, not losing their teeth through not cleaning them.

How has it become so twisted that being conscious of being a healthy weight and all the risk factors that come with being overweight is seen as 'unhealthy'.

Beggars belief.

OP it sounds very like my daughter. Who though not overweight was getting a bit of a pad of fat on her arms and stomach.
Her brother's are tall, skinny, and very sporty (run 5 to 10k daily, at the gym most days). They eat a lot but need to.
She loves carbs and crisps and spent a lot of time in bed (reading, sleeping, watching TV). We spent a lot of time talking about being fit, healthy and strong and never mentioned weight. She now goes to the gym most days and is eating a lot healthier. Porridge in the morning with dried fruit was a big change from cornflakes. She is acting much healthier, less being tired all the time, less grumpy, has gained some muscles, no idea if she weighs less or more as we don't have scales. We talk about how she can now do more press ups than me (not that great an achievement tbh 😁).

Hi, yes I used to go to bed hungry in my 20s. That was a while ago... I am a really healthy weight for my height now (though not enough muscle tone after recent illnesses) and I don't go hungry although I still eat small portions. Yes I absolutely do consider that I had an ED however that was over 20 years ago. I only really mentioned myself as a lot of parents of overweight kids are also overweight and are passing on a combination of their genes and habits. Neither is true here in fact I think possibly the small portions with masses of veg I used to give her left her hungry and began her quest to find food all the time, ask for snacks etc. Because of my former issues plus knowing someone now with a serious ED has made me very wary of supporting her to 'get thin'. We went for a nice walk yesterday, she was reluctant but then we climbed some trees and it got more fun. I absolutely wanted to hear from parents in your situation thank you for replying and sorry your DC is suffering.

The vegetarian diet is her choice and very unlikely to change although she used to eat meat, she has stuck to being veggie for a few years now. She loves animals and doesn't want to eat them.

I didn't know this. We all did some of the Joe Wicks workouts during lockdown so that might go down well.

Yes exactly this is the middle ground I'm trying to find. Normal and healthy isn't always so easy to achieve for various reasons but that's exactly what I'm after. I have discovered her knowledge about healthy eating is not that good. She knows that lots of veg is good and that I rarely allow crisps and limit sugar, but she currently wants to 'get thinner' by exercising more and not by eating less. I have said that exercise is good and important but it's more about what you eat, but she hasn't really taken that in and I haven't reiterated that point. I'm thinking rather than explaining every single food choice I might just agree with her that I'll do the portion control for a bit and she can help with the food choices. Bit by bit as she gets used to eating a bit less I can explain more about eg why she can have seconds of carrots and greens but not of chips or pasta.

I’m sorry to hear you think you did have an ED. I was also a slim teen and have never been overweight and I also used to try and give my kids healthy food and lots of veg- all good of course but when they were growing I didn’t always appreciate they need more and would wonder why they were always hungry! I think you come across as someone really wanting to do the best and consider how to go about really carefully. The walking sounds like a good start. I would also address your daughter’s concerns by telling her she will grow and develop a lot over the next 10 years and food is the fuel she will need to help this. No 11 year old should be trying to second guess how they would like to look and she and all her friends will be different heights, different waist, bust measurements etc. Of course if weight becomes a medical concern or stops her from being active then that’s something keep in mind. Good luck with it. ❤️

In case anyone wonders why I didn't do the portion control already, during the pandemic of course I did and I think that's when she started feeling hungry and bored and looking for food to sneak off with. Now I'm back at work I'm out of the house 12 hours a day 6-6 so she doesn't usually have any meals with me in the week unless her dinner is late. Saturdays we are all out together at various classes and she is around friends who eat and share a lot of takeaway food, cakes, biscuits, crisps and sweets, which is why we have crisps on Saturdays- I can't say no all the time or she gets very upset about it. That might change if she is really keen to be thinner and I explain why crisps aren't a good choice. I remember a friend at school on a rowing machine spending what seemed like forever trying to row off the calories in one crisp!! So I've had that awareness for a long time of intake vs exercise but I haven't ever taught it explicitly because it somehow seemed inappropriate for her age until now. Maybe I was wrong about that.

Thank you @sunglasses ❤️