AIBU to wonder how it's possible for an 8yo to be obese?

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I know I am and I'm being judgey too, but how?

I struggle to buy trousers fro my DSs (8 & 10) because they won't stay up.

I am in no way healthly eating obsessed. We eat 3 meals a day, mostly home cooked, but not always low fat, eg sausages and chips do feature and if anyone's still hungry there's always cake or a pud. My boys are active when out and about, but not sporty. They spend a good part of each day indoors and they get reasonable amounts of crisps and sweets as treats. DS1 is always hungry and never denied food (usually toast or a cheese sandwich for snacks) and yet still "average" waists are far too big for them.

What are the other parents feeding their kids?

I don't think it's obesity that's the problem tbh. It's the way the bloody clothes are made. Yes it is great to be able alter the waist of trousers for kids, but some of them are just ridiculous. My Ds is 4 next month and he's probably around average height/weight, yet his trousers all have to get pulled in significantly.

children come in different sizes!?!?! well i never!

that's what i meant when i said about retailers measuring stats, they have gone for the average size. why can't they do age and size in kids clothes? for example 3-4 yrs in sml/med/lg rather than one size doesn't fit all.

i buy ds clothes from loads of different shops, from supermarkets to high end highstreet, and they never fit well. the only time clothing has ever fitted him well is when i have bought from viking kids.

lifeissweet in the vast majority of cases it is that simple.

I don't think failing to acknowledging that really does anyone any favours.

But as usual this thread wil now descend into chaos.

I was a chubby 8 year old. My mum was so bothered by my weight that she restricted my calorie intake severely. She just had to catch me with a biscuit in my hand and I'd be hit. I can't ever recall her making lunch for me. As a result I used to steal food from friends houses and lunchboxes at school. Its her fault I'm an obese adult who will need surgery to lose weight. Years of forced dieting have messed by body up and now can only lose weight by complete starvation. My poor thyroid.

So how does my experience work QOD? Three boys on the same food, less for the youngest but still the biggest BMI. He is different! He is always hungry, I try to fill him up on fruit and carrot sticks between meals. (By the way, every time he asks for an apple I share it with DS2) He is very still. My DS2 is full of movement and fidgets all the time, DS3 doesn't. There is more to it than parental influence and diet. There is personality and that love of feeling full and knowing when you are full. DS1 and 2 have it, DS3 doesn't.

I am puzzled why you think that because waist sizes are too big for your child that you think all children that they do fit must be obese.

My DS is a broad/chunky nearly 2yo. Not fat as he doesn't have much excess, he's just chunky. Clothes don't fit very well from some shops as they cater for his height but not waist size.

He is a fairly picky eater but eats as balanced diet as i can get him to eat (which the HV said is perfect), doesn't eat cake (as he doesn't like it) or sweets (as he doesn't chew them properly and would choke on them). He runs around like a maniac all day and the only time he stops is when he's sleeping. It's just the way he's made.

fruit and carrots aren't filling - give him nuts / grains / protein instead

and who cares if he fidgets or not - an hour of running around a day

I am fat

I am fat because I exercise too little and eat too much

it's the same for children - metabolism and build are excuses without a diagnosed metabolic disorder

I don't see why it should, QOD. I agree with you, actually, in the majority of cases, over eating and under exercising is exactly the problem.

I was just answering the OP, who doesn't understand why any 8 year old is obese. I'm simply pointing out that, in some cases, it may actually not be entirely the fault of the parents.

I think the other thread about cheaper foods being the fattiest and most processed is also relevant to this. Larger families = more expense = tighter budgets and more likelihood that a diet will be based on cheap carbohydrates and processed food. The more of this kind of food people eat, the more they want to eat and the life long cycle begins.

I do think parents need to take responsibility and take action if their child starts to be overweight. It is a horrible thing to have to grow up with and it sets them on a really bad life path. However, I am aware that I am the parent of a slim, active child and I consider this as much luck as parenting. If I had a child who wanted to eat all the time and didn't want to run around (I don't think I know a child like that, though...) then I might have a harder time. I wouldn't like to judge.

I do find the age-based sizing of children's clothes a bit weird - not every child of a certain age is the same size, and not every child of the same height is the same build (not just because of fat but because people come in different shapes). Would make much more sense to have height + S/M/L instead of age on the label. Surely most people know approximately what height their child is?

ellen if your son is obese and he is honestly eating the same diet as you other DC's then I would be getting him checked out by a doctor.

Of course there are variations in build and shape but in 99% of cases obesity is due to eating to much and moving around to little.

There is also the problem that FreePeaceSweet talks about. How do you change things without giving your child a complex or an unhealthy attitude to food? I am sure there are ways, but what do you do in EllenJane's case? How can you change the bigger child's diet without the other two noticing. You can't cut their portions too because they need them! It's tricky.

lifeissweet in that case i agree with you also

I think the 'home cooked food' thing is a red herring (unless you eat constant take-aways). As others have said, you can cook using healthy ingreedients and limiting saturated fat, or you can pile that stuff in (like my MIL does with her 'home-cooked' meals). It also depends on portion size, tummies do expand to fit the food available, I know this myself when I have managed to expand my stomach to eat more, I get fatter!

Children are less active than they used to be. Even with lots of activities, they are just less physically strong than the last generation. There was a study recently that measured this and today's 10 year olds were about 25% less fit than in the 1970's.

I would say that in my daughter's ballet class (which has terribly unforgiving leotards), about 1/3 of the 7 year olds are chubby/fat. That is quite a lot. I don't know if that can be all genetics, even if some people are predisposed to being a bit bigger built.

This sounds awful, but if my children were getting chubby, I would up the exercise (which they do a lot of already) or limit treats/sweets/cut portion sizes down. Not in a drastic way, more a fine tuning. As it is, their mostly healthy with too many treats in it diet seems fine for them. I wouldn't obviously smack their hand like FreePeace (how awful, no wonder lovely biscuits seemed so tempting), but move it towards one biscuit and an apple rather than two biscuits, one ice-lolly instead of an ice-cream too often, tiny changes rather than an all out diet (which doesn't work for adults either).

And, I think carrots are fine IMO as one of the things you can snack on between meals, surely it's a balance (e.g. carrot/piece of toast/handful of nuts/glass of milk/apple) rather than having one thing as your snack. Nuts are great, but lots of nuts every snack-time is going to be fattening.

He's not obese, but he's on the 80th centile for BMI. That's still within the 'healthy' boundary, but his brothers are 7th and 5th centile respectively. I do things like not buttering his bread, giving him semi skimmed milk with his cereal, a smaller bowl than his brothers, restricting his fruit juice, giving him less in his lunchbox. He gets proportionally smaller meals in the evening. He does still get sweets every weekend, I don't want to give him a complex!

My oldest ds has always been big. My other sons' are quite skinny. They all eat the same EXCEPT my oldest eats a LOT more and eats constantly and is a lot less active than the other boys. He also eats junk when he is out. No excuses, if he was more active and ate less, he would be smaller. Simple.

Allinabag interesting that you say "this sounds awful but..."

How did we get to a point where tackling weight issues can be considered "awful"?

Allinabag interesting that you say "this sounds awful but..."

How did we get to a point where tackling weight issues can be considered "awful"?

Sorry no time to read all resposes but interestingly (to me anyway) I recently got a letter home from school stating my DS was obese. He has just turned 5 years old. Last week I brought him some new trousers as he has grown alot recently and all his current trousers are more like long shorts! I brought size 5 from Next, Asda and Sainsburys. Whilst all being lovely on the leg lengh they are massive on the waist!
What the hell are parents to think/do when they get letters like that, everyone around them saying the letter is rubbish and clothes for his age are too big for him.

Oddly - and I'll probably get shot down in flames here, but I'm just thinking out loud (well on keyboard anyway) - I think the over-consciousness we have about what children eat may actually have a bearing on this in a small way. By demonising 'treats' like sweets, cakes and biscuits, we make them oh so more appealing. When we tell children that they can have a cake when they've have more carrots, we are telling them that the cake is the reward for eating the carrot, which instantly makes the cake more appealing.

Also, the lack of exercise is a societal problem. We don't let our children go and play in the street anymore (for good reason). We have to schedule time in to take them to the park or swimming. Obviously, my parents did that too, but the difference is that we'd be called in from running around the block with our friends to go swimming and would be back out again after we got back. Our parents didn't have to put aside their chores or jobs or whatever they were doing (reading and knitting in my Mum's case most of the time) to supervise us, so we got to run around all day. There was no need to plonk us in front of the telly to be able to get anything done. They were not lax parents by any stretch, that just seemed to be what we did in the early 80s (I don't think I'm alone in this?)

As a result, we teach children from a really young age that exercise is something you do to be healthy and eating fruit and veg is something we do to be healthy. I don't really remember giving that any thought when I was a child - it just seemed to happen. We exercised because that's the way we played and we ate fruit because we liked it and that's what we were given to snack on. nt sure there was much more to it than that.

I still have no answers, by the way..

I know what you mean OP.

My DD is 7 and very "skinny" apparently (or so parents of overweight children keep telling me).

But its not because of my wonderful home cooked meals and nutritious snacks. I think it is because she happens to be one of those rare creatures who will stop eating when she is full.

So she might get up in the morning and eat cereal or toast, she then might have crisps or a yoghurt (she snacks too much). But even if I made her favourite food for lunch, she would not eat it if she were full.

We don't give her huge portions because she won't eat them. But she does snack on the wrong foods (my fault) throughout the day.

What I am trying to say is that you might think she never stops eating and her diet is full of junk so she should be bigger than what she is. But actually she eats if she is hungry and does not over eat or stuff food when she is full. I don't expect her to finish a meal if I can see she's full up.

This is my biggest problem, knowing when to stop. If children are always told they must clear their plates before eating anything else (like I was), you learn to ignore that feeling of fullness and just get used to eating when you don't need to.

I encourage my DD to have freedom over when and what she eats, because I want her to have a healthy attitude to food so that no food is forbidden.

However as I said earlier, it is LUCK that she stops when she is full. If she didn't do that, I wouldn't be able to allow her so many snacks, and then it would be a vicious circle.

So my point is- I don't have the answers to this OP.

I think in some children and adults, the feeling of fullness that stops you eating too much, doesn't work that great. I find to avoid putting weight on, I have to stop eating before I am full. And I don't eat processed food. I'm not that keen on meat or cheese and eat a lot of veggie meals with pulses. I also play sport. But if I eat until I feel full I put on weight.

Of course eating too much would still cause people to be fat. But I think it is a bit more to it than just greed.

Ellen you don't want to be curtting down onhis fat intake at that age.If you really want to cut down, I would concentrate on reducing sugar.BUT he is still very young and evolved to survive cold hungry winters in a cave or rude hut where a good covering of fat would have been needed in little ones who were to survive.
I think he will slim down naturally as he gets a bit older

Because, if I'm truthful, it would bother me if my children were chubby/fat (unless there were an underlying medical disorder or they were on steroids) and I would be prepared to change our diets/amount of exercise to correct that. I don't say this to parents of chubby/fat children when they are telling me their children aren't fat or are unfairly getting picked on for being fat when they are not, but I do think it. It's an implied criticism.

Yes, obviously everyone who is fat just eats too much and sits in front of the telly all day. Just like kids who have problems reading are all just thickos who don't try hard enough, and kids who have tantrums are all just spoiled brats with weak-willed parents, and kids who aren't very good at singing are making some kind of lifestyle choice or possibly smoking behind the sheds, even if there is no other evidence of this. Everything is entirely people's own fault because naturally all human beings would be identical so any variation is caused by parental failure. Duh.

Meanwhile, back in the real world...

Also there were no fat kids when I was young. Also we were all well behaved and sat quietly in class and loved sunday school and helped old people instead of playing knock on doors and run off. And pigs flew through the skies daily.