aibu to ask you how to deal with my 15 year old dd deciding she's fat and refusing to eat dinner?

[carpieharp]

Today dd was meant to be leaving to go to the theatre with friends, about 10 mins before she stomped into my room on the verge of tears saying she's not going because shes gone really spotty overnight, her hair is greasy and her thighs are fat. She's a size 10 jeans so when she declared that her 'thighs look like they belong on a morbidly obese woman' I nearly laughed. In the end she stomped out the house late and went. Now she's gotten back and headed to her room in a strop and saying how she doesn't want any dinner. How do I react to this? My mother would always just tell me ' well stop eating so much rubbish then' if I told her I was fat, which didn't help and acknowledged I was fat. So how does correctly react to this?

I noticed you said you left out low calorie food. If you start going on about calories she will have a real problem. Now is not the time to go on about food or you could really add to a problem which is probably just hormonal.

When I was a teenager I wish I had known that if I stopped eating sweets, chocolate and anything with sugar in, cut back on dairy my spots would have disappeared.

I had spots for 20 years until I changed my diet.

Can you talk to her about what she eats?
I know my DD was very stroppy and scathing at that age.
Typical teenager who thought mother knew nothing.

I was like this at fifteen.I went through stages of not eating very much at all.It was really self confidence and having low self esteem.Dont worry too much it may be a passing thing.Talk to her about eating healthy meals so she knows youre listening to her and she can still eat and be healthy and give her lots of compliments without being too OTT.Its hard being a teenager sigh.

OP I would buy her a book by Marya Hornbacher called Wasted.

Hornbacher had a serious eating disorder and wrote the book in her 20s to describe how lucky she felt to still be alive. However it is written from the perspective of someone who knows still how it feels to want to be so skinny.

There is a memorable passage where she describes looking in the mirror at her lightest and realising that she looks "like a monster" and comparing herself to her size 10 flat mate who is beautiful by comparison.

It certainly made me think.

Also when I struggled with ED it was really about academic pressure. Is she high achieving?

Least said soonest mended.
If she's hungry she'll eat.

All I do is to nag DD to stay properly hydrated if she's in skip meal mode - s she has to have a big glass of water and a cup of tea or glass of milk.

THe more of an issue you make of food, the bigger it will become.
Try to get to what's really bugging her.

Just make her a healthy dinner each night, preferably something low-carb and low calories. Then get up and cook her a really yummy breakfast. Explain to her that she won't do her body any favours by starving herself (body goes into preservation mode and metabolism slows down) but she can change the order in which she eats things eg heavy breakfast, moderate lunch, light dinner.