to be concerned that a child who is born at 98th centile is obese by the time he gets to 3 years old by just following his centile?

[ClaraCloggs]

I have a child, 3 years old. He is fit and healthy, wears clothes for his "age" (so have just started buying age 3 for the Autumn/Winter) with no size or fit problems, does not eat junk, does not have a particularly large appetite, is active. No fat rolls anywhere, legs look lean, almost spindly at times. Can see ribs when undressed (a few anyway). He is also tall, 98th centile for height.

Yet the NHS Healthy Weight Calculator which is designed for children aged 2 and above and adults says he is obese.

Okay, so if I'm happy that he is fine, what is the problem? Nothing, really. But this still irks me. For a start, am I going to start getting grief from my doctor, and advised to attend some cooking session or nutritional workshop that I am almost qualified to run myself? Secondly, they talk of an obesity epidemic, but if obese means looking the same as children his age, and wearing the same sized clothes, but just turning out the wrong numbers, does this even count?

I dont have to let anybody weigh him, or let anyone get involved in his diet or habits. There seems no reason to. If he had never been weighed or measured (done recently to be able to hire a car seat abroad) I would have no idea whatsoever that he were anything other than absoloutely fine.

Yet apparently he is some medical risk and is destined to die of a heart attack before he's even had his first beer or cigarette

What are your views on this situation?

what is all the fuss about,does nobody have eyes to see with.I also know kids who are nowhere obese but are fed junk at every meal everyday and snack on crap all day,so who is right.

I did 103cm and 18.5kg.

For all the HVs want babies to stick on their percentile, technically the data is take from measuring actual children rather than idealised ones. Obese children will have been measured to produce these charts.

Not on my one! When was your book produced? Because if I use my daughter's red book but use the male figures, I get the same?!?

In answer to your question, I'd tell them to exercise some common sense and actually LOOK at her. She's clearly not obese, is very active and has a healthy diet. So yes, I probably would be a bit pissed off!

Yep the height thing is different in my son's book which is why its saying he's 98th for height.

In my daughter's red book it gives a different height at 98th centile for a male at age 3 so it is all rather weird!

If I put the figures in at face value in this chart though, they say he is obese.

I give up!

Like you say, it doesn't really matter but confused much?

No spanx, the centile charts are gor healthy children as far as I know, so 99.9% on the chart is a healthy weight

I've had my book 6 months.

Ah see my daughter's book is newer too (9 months)

Weird.

Still according to the NHS calculator, regardless of individual weights, a child over the 91st centile at age 3 is overweight, and a child on or over the 98th is obese.

So on centiles does not mean healthy weight after all by age 3.

Doctors do have eyes, and only very very occasionally you might stumble upon one who goes too much by the book - such a mistake is newsworthy - that shows how rare a mistake it is, so not something you should worry about. The vast majority of people told they are obese are, but they might be less likely to shout about it. Even the exceptions on here who are athletes of some sort say they are "technically overweight" not that a doctor is harassing them about it.

Not at 3, but as they get older, it isn't as simple as height and BMI matching as BMI already accounts for height and all the really fat kids are skipping up the BMI centiles to occupy the top spots. Comparing it to a centile chart from the 50s/60s or a healthier European country would show a completely different story. BMI for all the (well recognised) faults is a better gauge than centiles.

Also (not you OP) when a doctor tells someone (adult) to eat better and exercise more they don't only use BMI, they ask how much exercise you do first. I have yet to see an obesity campaign that has a picture of an athlete beside it (by accident, technically obese, but the medical profession are too stupid to realise that).

The whole campaign is not based on obesity as an end in itself, luckily things like heart disease and diabetes are less subjective and can be dismissed less easily by someone who thinks a weekly curves class gives them enough muscle to fill their 60inch waist.

Well obviously the charts don't work.

DS was on the 98th centile for both height and weight for the first 5 years of his life, and nobody ever suggested that he was obese. The HV thought it correct that the height and weight measures matched. He is now 12 and like a whippet.

Everyone in my family has followed the same pattern for 4 tall generations. I would suggest that someone who is going to be tall stores fat as a child because when they are a teenager they are going to need that fat to grow upwards very quickly.

My friend was recently told she was too overweight for the pill. She does not look overweight at all, and is she just under 5 foot tall. The healthy weight range between her being overweight and underweight is tiny.

As a teenager I weighed 9 stone 6 and was 5 foot 10. According to BMI that is a healthy weight, regardless of me being big boned. Everyone else thought I looked anorexic and dangerously thin.

So I think the BMI simply does not work - it is a very blunt tool.

I would be tempted to read here

There are a lot of good reasons why, when I had a children's eating disorders placement, there were several other things we looked for alongside BMI increase...and that was very hard to get across to children and parents sometimes (particularly with some teenagers who were physically not meant to have a BMI of 17/18 even in their mid-teens).

A 'healthy' BMI changes with a lot of person-specific factors.

SPB I thinck the current red book charts are the UK 90 which shows ramdon dcs including premies etc. The new WHO charts use bf babies of high social class non smoking mothers. They are supposed to say how children should grow whereas the UK 90 shows how they do (or did 20 years ago) grow.

This suggests that the charts are out of date.

"Advise that the UK90 BMI reference may not truly represent the prevailing BMI distribution
in contemporary children due to a secular trend to increased childhood fatness."

www.rcpch.ac.uk/doc.aspx?id_Resource=1746

The UK 90 reference fits
contemporary data much better, but it has been suggested that these are already out of date, with a
rapid trend to increasing weight particularly in older children and at the top end of the age range
(Rudolf, Cole et al. 2000).

you are a lot more informed than me then spanx :) I was always told the charts were for healthy children - i.e. 99% just means you're the top 1 or 2 in 100 of healthy weight children, but it seems that's not so then!

Same here - I ignore it on the basis that DS is a big (tall), lean, healthy boy.

DH has just shed some light. he found a more detailed calculator, and found if DD weighed 4lbs less, that would be in the 'fine' range.

or if she was 1cm taller.

basically the chart is so fine at that age minor differences - even a slight error in measuring - push a child from one point to the next.

As it happens the scales i weigh her on are at least 2lbs out, and she is rather thick-set of build (think East German swimmer...broad shoulders)...and obviously measuring the height of a toddler involves spearing a moving target (or avoiding doing so)

there is no point me putting in my measurements, a am v. pregnant. thouh Mum described me as 'fit as a butchers dog' which doesn't seem entirely complimentary....

(imagines jovial looking muscular but fat Bull Terrier of some sort)

I shouldn't worry, Intriged by this post I just looked back at ds red book - he is 6 next week.

From birth - 1yo he was between the 50th and 75th% fpr height and weight then between 1-5yo same for height and above 75th % for weight. He is now on the 50th% for both height and weight. According to BMI link his weight is 71.2% and he's healthy.

I'm pretty sure with the way they grow being so sporadic at this age as you mentioned they could be abese for 3 months then nearly underwightf for the next 3!!! Especioally as you pointed out theres somtimes only 1 or 2 cm or 1 kg in it.

Random one what size shoe is your ds? (clarks sze if you know).

my 2 year old is over the 90th in his height and weight both, i put him in the calculator and he came up as healthy weight (it said 73rd? maybe he has gone down some percentiles but he has always always still been up in the 90s so not sure if this lower number is due to when they combine the height and weight?)

Ok not sure its necessarily that acurate for adults either!!

Ive just put in my details - I'm 5"7.3 and a size 12 and apparently just considered healthy - BMI 24.5 but if I was to put on 1kg I would be overweight!!

Now I do need to tone up a bit thats not disputed but it does seem to imply carrying any extra weight bar post baby blub is obese!!!

I know my fat % is 4.2% less than the upper limit for my age (practically in the middle) and I do prefer this method on monitoring my weight.

I've just put Dd's in. She's 3.7yo and is 117cm's tall and 2st9lbs (16kgs). Apparently, she's underweight . She is tall and slim, eats really well, no junk food. Not skin and bone, just lean.

Ds is 12yo, 5'8" tall and 8st ~ healthy according to the calculator...he was always at the 99th centile as a baby for height, but around 53rd for weight...I'm confused cos now he's 37.1 centile and skinny!

Just did my three, the 2 boys are "healthy weight" at the 6th and 30th centiles, but DD is underweight and on the 0.8th centile.

So why does it then link you to advice on getting children to eat vegetables and do more exercise? As that surely won't help if you're underweight?

BTW I think the percentiles are worked out differently here, in teh red book they will be the percentiles for your age whereas here it is the weight percentiles for your height. So if you are 110cm tall and weigh 18kg you are on the 30th percentile for people who are 110cm tall, regardless of their age IYSWIM.

solo dug out ds's red book (haven't looked at for years!) and your ds is still around 99th centile for height and somewhere between 75th and 91st for weight.

The centile in the calculator appears to be for BMI - so kind of makes sense as he's skinny for his height and only 37.1% of kids his age will be slimmer.

Oooh! thanks for that Lindax, makes me feel a bit better.

Dd has her pre school check in a couple of weeks, so I'll see what they say about her. I doubt they'll think she's underweight though.

Solo - are you sure about DD's height? She would be 7cm's taller than my 4.6 year old and she is approaching the 91st centile. Your DD would be off the scale.

solo - your dd does sound awfully tall. My dd is 3.6 and 96cms, and she's shot up 6 cms in the last 6 months. She quite tall now. And weighs 13.5kg. I shall find the calculator thingy now, but I know she's a skinny thing.

Seriously yes! she is 3" above my naval! and I'm 5'8"; both my Dc's are extremely tall, my brother is 6'8" my Dad who had a curved spine was 6'5"he'd probably have been nearly 7' tall if he'd been straight! we are all tall.
Dd is taller than all her friends that are older than her; it's a family thing! and she is 16kgs.