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.

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

Funnily enough this might work in her favour. It might be that she just has to drop a few of her 'bad' habits to make a difference. The difference between weight gain and weight maintenance might be very small and as long as she is happy to take it slowly she might be able to loose weight or grow into her weight with little effort.

I always did a 'one treats a day rule with my kids. I know a lot of people don't like the term treats and some people don't think you should have a treat everyday but this was before social media and I didn't actually give it too much thought. It worked well for my kids and they still, roughly, keep to the one treat a day rule now they are adults.

I wanted my kids to enjoy their treats but not to mindlessly eat junk.
I guess it's a bit like the arbitrary target of 10,000 steps a day. It's something simple to do.

With my daughters now 15 and 13 I focus on keeping healthy, active and fit. They both have been playing a sport at quite a high level for many years, that they need to be fast and have endurance for. They also run competitively. I have reduced UPF as much as I can at home, apart from the odd bag of crisps and ketchup by cooking from scratch and baking any treats with lower sugar. Fortunately they are not fussy and seem to genuinely enjoy a well balanced meal and hopefully understand the importance of eating well to keep their fitness optimum so they can be successful at their sports. I am also very active myself so maybe they see that too.

With your DD I think it would help to find a physical activity that she loves. Football and rugby are great and will give her strength and confidence. Regarding food, discuss reducing UPF as a family and changing your diet as a family (brother within his limits) to be better balanced to improve health. No different really to what other posters have said! Good luck!!

I have also seen friends of my DDs who were very slim in primary and have been allowed free reign of sugary snacks put on quite a lot of weight in their secondary years.

We also have this, DD similar age gained some weight around the tummy in lockdown. She is about a size 12 or 14 around the middle, and I am buying clothes which skim round the middle and emphasise her legs a bit as a result.

She was a very picky eater when little, 25th centile, and ate very very slowly. She gradually developed a liking for sweet things and is quite keen on pudding after supper and juice. We try to limit the juice and go with plain water, or water with a bit of lemon in it. We also encourage mainly fruit for pudding.

She does get very hungry and even if the food I give her is healthy eg, avocado with toast or plain yoghurt with fruit, it does mount up, when she is still hungry and wants something else.

She takes a "treat" of some of her favourite fruit to school every day rather than have pudding at school and has the school meat and veg option.

We also have a very tall slightly older brother who eats a huge amount and has quite a muscular build.

We don't buy many biscuits/crisps/sweets, don't routeinely eat these and they have limited opportunity to buy these via the fairly generous but structured spending arrangements we have in place for them; we rarely have cake or chocolate except at birthdays/ Xmas and rarely have chips. Nothing is forbidden though, it is just mostly not there in the house! and they have a fairly free choice if we go to a restaurant or socialise.

She does have activities she enjoys, swimming and various dance sessions so I have encouraged those. She is quite tired after coming home from secondary school.

And we have not actually talked about "weight" ever, we have not discussed going on a diet, I do not know how much she weighs. We call it trying to be healthy.

We aim at quite large portions of protein and veg because I think that is what they need to grow (might be too generous I guess).

I would love to help her more if I could.

I'm not sure what the situation is with you and your DH but it sounds as though your son is not vegetarian just super fussy [due to ASD] . If you both eat meat is she the only vegetarian?

So a quick google found this and it's a possible opportunity for both kids to do separate courses as it sounds like your DS could also do with understanding his nutritional needs better and that might make it less isolating for your DD? https://teenfood.org. I'm sure there are lots of alternatives but thought if he is doing DoE at school it might also be an easy draw.

For your DD [which this is actually about] it might help her to understand her choices? So if I want pasta for dinner, I can't have lemonade too. I completely recognise the fear of creating a food disorder but taken from the approach of creating a balanced diet rather than a diet per se might help? She like your DS has specific needs as she chooses to be vegetarian. Understanding how sugar affects the body and what foods break down into sugar quickly is lost on most people. You could also consider other cuisines? Pasta is dead easy - could you do Thai night [with pasta for DS] or Japanese ramen for example.

I'm built in the manner of if it's not in the house I won't eat it. Perhaps it would be fairer to remove as much treat food as possible from the house so she's not secret snacking but if she is, then I would question why if her portion sizes are generous. Is she snacking because she is miserable, bored or being bullied?

@TreadSoftlyOnMyDreams thanks that looks really interesting I'll investigate further. Son isn't officially vegetarian but will only eat ham or cured meat occasionally - stuff like pepperoni or salami with loads of salt and nitrites and E numbers. I usually refuse to buy it so he is mostly veggie too. He hates the texture of all protein foods except tofu. However I won't elaborate on him so much as he's eating a bigger range than he used to and it involves some egg, about 4 types of veg, 3 types of carb and a lot of fruit and he has a multivitamin and iron supplement to hopefully patch any holes. I don't think he would be at all interested in a course but DD might well enjoy it.

She is sometimes bored and is stressed this year about the 11+ but the issues started way before that. I don't think she's being bullied however the friendship groups at school present challenges sometimes. She does seem to tell me her troubles thankfully.

Thank you

@Gunnersforthecup similar- my dd is wearing size 12 pants so bigger than mine, but she's tall so carries it well hence my reaction to tell her she's beautiful as she is.

@TodaysNameIsBoring yes you are right I think some small improvements like no seconds and cutting down a bit on Saturday's intake would enable her to grow out of it rather than losing any weight.

@Gunnersforthecup not implying you dd isn't carrying it well obviously 😳 !

Can't edit on my phone- that's going to confuse people!! She's not doing 11+. I was just reading an 11+ thread lol and I'm super tired and not making sense. She's stressed about end of year and an extracurricular exams she is doing. 11+ years are thankfully behind us

He might not be but then he might surprise you especially if he is always starving. Teen boys also start to become self conscious about being super thin, not having muscle and understanding what foods do what to your body might help on an intellectual level if not necessarily at a sensory one. I have a close family member who is like this and it's been interesting to see what he can change when it's something HE wants.

Back to your daughter - possibly worth exploring why she is stressed if she's only 12 or even a bit older? Do you think she may be emotional eating? Is the school quite competitive and possibly laying it on a bit thick ? I found my daughter getting stressed about GCSE's in Yr 8 <facepalm>. Could you help with managing expectations on results, what good and appropriate levels of studying look like at this age and huge praise on the extra curricular stuff obviously. It's hard to do both well.

The only other suggestion I have is perhaps do something like Bodycoach videos with her or her father on the grounds that you want to get fitter. There are tons of his veggie recipes online and most people who follow his stuff talk about the fact that they've never eaten so much while still losing weight so possibly worth a look? There's couch to 5k too and sports day coming up I assume?
https://www.womenshealthmag.com/uk/food/weight-loss/g31127628/vegetarian-joe-wicks-recipes/