How to help obese dd

[RugBunny]

I am really worried and really guilt ridden over DD’s weight. She is 16 and is clearly obese- she buys size 18-20 clothes. I don’t know how much she weighs.

She is food obsessed and always has been to a certain degree. She was born on the 99th centile and was always chunky. But between age 11-14 she piled weight on. She will eat late at night- not necessarily ‘junk’ but bowls of pasta for example.

How can I help her? I tried to broach this last summer but she shut me down and didn’t talk to me for three days. It’s breaking my heart to see her opting out of activities because of her weight. I’m worried about her health and know she needs to go to a doctor but I’m struggling to see how I can force her.

For context I have three other DC who are all well within healthy bmi. Me and my partner are also a healthy weight.

Food is the symptom, not the cause.

You need to find out why she is eating so much. It sounds like she is in mental distress. Does she have ADHD or ASD and is masking that she can't cope?

Would she find a group useful such as slimming world?

I’m pretty sure there’s no asc or adhd, however undoubtedly there is a deep rooted reason for the over eating. Or is there? Did it just spiral? I don’t know.

I haven’t even reached a point of being able to discuss potential solutions such as slimming world. I don’t know where to even begin with the discussion as she shut me down so quickly last time I tried.

I agree with PP, you need deal with why she over eats not the overeating itself. Has she ever had counselling?

I was very over weight at her age and I think it is a two-fold problem: (1) why a person over eats; and (2) breaking what has become a habit once the underlying cause is addressed.

If you’ve never worried about what you’ve eaten, or have set eating patterns or a psychological system of rewarding yourself with food it’s quite a difficult pattern to break even if you’ve addressed the underlying cause of why you over eat.

Good luck OP.

I wasn’t far off her likely weight at that age and I wouldn’t have responded well to direct confrontation on it either. I’m trying to think what might’ve worked for me. Do you keep a lot of food in the house that she would binge on? I would get rid of as much junk as you can and focus on healthy meals as a family. I know you said it’s not necessarily junk but if the binging is the behaviour then get rid of the easy options for it. The late night eating is possibly habitual, could you plan other things to do a few nights a week? Anything active or just something to distract from the routine she’s slipped into.

Ultimately for me, the family diet wasn’t good so I was never going to be healthy as a teenager and I’ve only really got a handle on things (most/some of the time!) as an adult with the assistance of Mounjaro.

Oh I feel for you. I was an overweight teenager because I was deeply unhappy in my life. But I was so sensitive about it too.

In hindsight I wish my mum had talked to me about it then, even though I'd have responded badly, because maybe I wouldn't have ended up a 22 stone adult.

Good luck.

Definitely not slimming world. With syns etc it’s a bad way to approach food. Would she be open to talking to a therapist or that you both eat healthier together- she may be surprised how much less hungry she feels if she really ups her protein.
Id also want to rule out underlying health issues - PCOS, ADHD.
There are good health coach’s out there who also offer coaching like help. Not therapy but learning about metabolism, walking as exercise and nutrition. Maybe she would be interested in that? Or you both do it together.

Maybe don't broach weight at all but ask about her feelings. Is she happy? What things bring her joy? What are her friendships like? Is she an emotional eater? If so then addressing the root cause will be the best course of action. My daughter (14) says 'don't eat your feelings'. Not sure where she picked it up from, but its stopped me more than once.

What activities does she like that aren't problemmatic at her size e.g. would she go with you for a walk in the woods or round a park? Up the levels of protein and veg in family meals compared with pasta/rice/bread/potatoes and reduce access to sugar. This might help if being 'food obsessed' is about feeling hungry all the time (I used to get this). Also check she drinks enough water

If being food obsessed is more about eating lovely things and always planning the next meal then a well-chosen cookbook or could focus her attention on flavours of healthy food and quality rather than quantity. E.g. veg-heavy stews and casseroles are great this time of year. Food should be joyful.

If she expresses any disatisfaction with her weight e.g upset at clothes not fitting, or being out of breath, or shy about wearing a swimsuit, then you could use that as an opportunity to ask gently if you could help, and use that to kickstart activity and curb the late night eating.

I would stay away from slimming clubs and 'diets'. As someone with an overweight bmi for her whole adult life,and obese for last 15 years,I am successfully using Mounjaro to lose weight now and back to merely overweight. But the reasons I got big over the years were emotional eating, a love of food and so socialising around eating out, and eating huge portions compared to what I actually need(which even if healthy still pile on the weight) because of rarely feeling full.

It is easier to stick to positive goals e.g.at least 2l water, 10000 steps, 4 portions of veg a day than the mindset of deprivation (no desserts, less than x calories).

Yep completely agree with first poster, food/obesity is a symptom. If not of neurodiversity, then perhaps anxiety, depression, trauma response? People drink, smoke, do drugs to cope, others eat. I started overeating and sneaking food after 3 house moves in a year when I was 8, for example, and from then on eating became my stress response. You obviously know the context of your daughter (there will be stuff you don’t know, of course!) but just an idea from someone who was also size 18 aged 16.

Brilliant reply from @Amelanchier agree with it all.

Especially considering she was born chunky as you said, there is just a massive genetic component in this. I was the other way, always so thin people worried about me. I just wasn't hungry. I went on psych meds and gained several stone which I'm trying so hard to shift, making myself go hungry is the only way to lose anything and I'm hardly seeing any results. It's possible your daughter feels it's not really in her control, because the reality is she will have to go hungry to lose weight, not the way it should have to be. Could she respond better to a clear solution eg weight loss treatment, and would you be willing to fund it ?

Slimming world would be a terrible option for a 16 year old! They weigh you in front of the whole class, it’s not a healthy situation and is humiliating when they announce how much you’ve lost or gained. It also demonises food groups - nothing should be a “syn” - it should be calories in vs calories out and a well balanced diet, everything in moderation.

The only approach that ever worked for me was Gillian Riley’s https://www.eatinglessonline.com/

Only tangentially to do with food.

hope your DD finds what works for her.

Can you think of ANYone who she might open up to?

Lots of people become obese.
Happy successful people in many cases who just don't have the chemistry to regulate their appetite.
Maybe she is just one of them.
When she is 18 she can use Mounjaro to lose. So maybe the best thing you can do is try not to think about it? Just enjoy your dd.

She doesn’t have her own money to buy food so you are going to have to be ruthless about the food you buy so she can’t over eat.

It’s something that needs to be tackled as a family ans you all help her lose that weight.

Goodness. I don't agree with this. She needs help to regulate her desire to eat. Not injections. At least not injections until you know WHY she can't stop stuffing. She needs help, not ignoring

i would be very wary of how you word things to DD. She’s at a young and impressionable age, and she could potentially feel shamed about her body if you’re not careful. Maybe suggest wanting to spend more time with her and go for walks daily together, steps make all the difference with burning excess calories. It doesn’t need to be a march or fast walk, just time for you to spend together chatting and walking - you may find she opens up more about how she’s feeling. Come up with a weekly meal plan where the meals are well balanced and bulked out with extra veg, that would do everyone some good and not single DD out. Have fruit and Greek yogurt to hand in the fridge for if DD wants a snack before bed. Little tweaks might just get the ball rolling.

You clearly have never been to SlimmingWorld! They absolutely DO NOT weigh people in front of others. Nobody other than yourself and the SlimmingWorld consultant knows your weight. And you can opt out of sharing if you have lost or gained.
The entire point is to be supportive not humiliating. I have never known anyone leave a meeting feeling humiliated. The group will celebrate your successes and help you work through times when it’s not going so well.
On the whole SW is brilliant. People criticising the syns on the whole either have never been members and understand the system or have never allowed it scope to work for them.
My only criticism of SW is how anti WLI they are. Which seems silly as it is alienating some of their base. And the two practices working hand in hand are very effective.

OP please do not rule out SW for your daughter. I can’t really offer much advise on how to approach it with her sadly.

I definitely have been a member - I joined at 18 and it was the worst thing I ever did.

Agree with this! I was struck about the bowls of pasta - carbs give a dopamine hit which improves mood (is she very anxious, depressed or stressed?) and of course people witb untreated ADHD are always looking for dopamine hits.

OP, I know you have said she does't have ADHD. I would have said that too about my DD at 16 or even 18. But At 20 she was diagnosed..... it only became really apparent to me when she started uni. All through secondary school she had terrible anxiety, which I now realise is one of her main symptoms of ADHD.

She was born overweight and has always been overweight - until recently tempered by being a child and not having much control of her food choices.

Lots of people are overweight, we don't all have an inner torment we need to address to stop overeating. Neither do we lack willpower.

Why is it so hard to accept that some people are just genetically more likely to be overweight and eat more? Until fairly recent history we would have been facing frequent food shortages, humans have selected out the people most likely to survive a harsh winter.

Well I respectfully disagree.
Anything you try to do to stop a teenager overeating is just as likely to backfire and cause mental health issues. Now we have Mounjaro as a successful treatment for thise who are predestined to be obese, maybe its time to relax about it all and just enjoy life.

if she’s been big since birth it’s unlikely to be just what she’s eating. I assume until relatively recently you or her other parent was in full control of family meals and what the kids ate. If the others aren’t heavy then it’s probably more than just food.

The late night eating thing might not be emotional either, it may be that her hormones don’t regulate her feelings of hungry and full in the ‘normal’ way. I had no idea that others would eat and feel full so stop because it didn’t happen like that for me. When people would harp on about willpower and discipline I felt a total failure because I clearly had none and my overeating was all my fault. Except it wasn’t anything to do with my state of mind or ability to remain disciplined. My hormones didn’t work the right way.

I had no idea this was my issue until I tried weight loss injections.

I’m not saying this to advocate such an approach for a 16 year old child but to get you (and maybe some others) to understand that some people are born with malfunctioning systems that don’t allow us recognising feeling full or give us a permanent state of hunger because our brains seem wired to obsess over eating. And when I use the word obsess it is really quite all consuming. They’ve labelled this food noise and it’s our brains wired to just nag constantly that you want to eat and no amount of food or object diversion can get rid of it. It’s like having an itch that doesn’t go when you scratch it. Some people liken it to an addiction and while it’s similar maybe in mechanism, unlike all other addictive substances (alcohol, drugs etc) we cannot cut food out completely or we die and if we don’t consume “enough” our brains convince us we’re starving. The satisfaction you may feel upon eating a meal for people like me doesn’t come until you’re about to burst and then it also comes with a feeling of sickness and then the loathing kicks in. I’m not and never have been a junk food eater, always healthy homemade food.

The medical profession have started to recognise these functions as being biological anomalies and that they seem to be genetic is important for those of us told for years to just eat less and use willpower because it really is bigger than that for many.

Thisndoesnt help your daughter in the short term but it may help you understand why she needs to eat