to ask you to explain to DD, because I can't get through to her

[RebeccaDuWinter]

that just because she is no longer at the lowest end of a 'healthy' BMI for her height, does not mean she is grossly fat. She is absolutely convinced the higher end of the healthy range is 'fat' because it is 'fatter' than the lower end and restricting her eating to try and change this, and I can't convince her otherwise. She does exercise regularly, but not as regularly as she did as she simply doesn't have time to compete anymore, and reducing hours has meant weight gain, her solution is to starve herself until she loses weight. I will show her this thread.

I think we're missing a lot of details here, but she has recently given up some kind of exercise and now she is putting on weight? I hate to point out the obvious, but clearly she needs to eat a little bit less than she did before when she was more active if she wants to maintain the weight she was. I'm not sure why you're getting so concerned about her wanting to lose a few lbs that she's recently put on, and stay at her preferred level within the healthy BMI range. That seems perfectly reasonable and a good idea to me.

What about her life does she think will change/be better with a few kg lost or gained? My stable BMI is 22-24, I've been lower but it always rebounds since a very low bmi is hard for me to,maintain - at no point was I fat, and whatever weight I've been, it didn't change anything else about my life. I suspect some underlying discontent that she's hanging weight on. Does she want more friends? Is there a particular boy she's interested in? I'd encourage her to think about why she's focusing on weight and not a new hobby or better strategy for achieving something worthwhile.

If she's just given up a really intensive exercise program, then to maintain the same weight she will need to eat a bit less than she was before, simply because she's not burning as many calories.

A BIT less. And she doesn't need to lose weight if she is within the healthy range - if she's been really sporty so has a relatively high proportion of muscle, it would be odd and rather worrying if she wasn't towards the heavy end of healthy, and many fit and well toned athletes are "overweight" according to the tables (in fact strength based athletes are often "obese" by them).

All starving herself will do is slow down her metabolism. It'll be much easier for her to stay healthy (and thin) if it stays high.

Thanks everyone for your advice-will read through properly now and do some screen-shot-ing to show her. She's 17, I'm getting more and more worried about her attitude to food. This has really started over the last week or so, when I say restricting, I mean refusing to eat breakfast, piece of fruit for lunch and picking at dinner. I've suggested a GP appointment to discuss things but so far she's refusing to entertain the idea, difficult to know what to do with her really. I've had a look at a couple of ED websites but I'm reluctant to give her that label really, perhaps that's stupid of me :(

My SIL used to be a hurdler (she even beat Jessica Ennis when they were both 13) and always looked like she weighed about 7 stone. Infact, she weighed closer to 11 stone and bmi calculators put her as overweight. They didn't take into account muscle or bone density. Your dd needs to eat right and exercise, and ignore every thing else.

Good luck, OP. I don't think you are wrong to be wary of a label: disordered eating does not necessarily lead to an eating disorder. Young people experiment with all sorts of things, including eating habits, and it would be wrong instantly to put those who do the latter in the same camp as someone who has been hospitalised with anorexia nervosa. (A bit like claiming someone who likes things clean has OCD: i.e. it's OTT, and possibly offensive.) Though of course I have no idea what is going on in your case. What's certain is that your daughter is very lucky to have such a sensitive and supportive mother; I really hope she's OK.

Hi Rebecca,

I'm sorry to say that you might not want to look at ED websites, but it sounds to me as if your daughter has a very unhealty relationship with food from what you say.

I hope she's ok but I think she needs to nip this in the bud, the BMI range is just that, a range. either end of healthy is healthy.

Good luck to the two of you.

I'm in a GB team in the over 40 age group. My BMI is 24.9 - right at the upper end of 'healthy' if taken at face value, but I have a muscular build. There are guys who would be considered 'obese' by their BMI but they haven't got a scrap of fat on them, they just have muscular torsos.

She's 5 foot 2 and 9 stone 8, so heavier end of healthy BMI. She's just dropped a lot of dance hours because it was just unmanageable with her other commitments but is still doing 8 hours a week. I wasn't worried about the weight gain because the dance hours only dropped a couple of months ago and I thought it would settle down on its own/with some tweaks to her diet, which it won't do if she keeps starving herself like this :( Until about 18 months ago she was hovering near the underweight range so I'm just glad to have her out of that, although I think she has very unrealistic expectations of her body, she is a beautiful ballet dancer but she doesn't have a ballerina's body.

Hi, its very important to be happy. Obsessing over weight does not make you happy. Sil died from anorexia three years ago. It started when she was 15 and she died aged 35 weighing 4.5 stone. She basically starved herself to death. She was never happy in that time her weight sometimes increased to maybe 6.5stone. She lost her friends and boyfriend. All she talked about was food. She was very deluded into thinking she ate well (lots of fruit/veg) but she cut out meat, gluten, milk etc for 'health reasons'.
She didnt have periods and was unable to have children. Her skin was dry and cracked and her face was covered with that hair you have when you have anorexia. In the last few months she developed big absesses on her legs really pussy and nasty. They couldnt treat them and the hospital wanted to operate but she was too thin. They sent her home to try and put weight on (massive hospital fuck up she was 4stone ffs). Mil had to call the police as she didnt answer door when she went to check on her. They found her dead in her bed. She had passed away several days before they found her. Absolutely miserable. Choose happy.

She'll lose muscle through not eating - not healthy, and not a good look either.

Plenty of exercise to maintain tone, and a healthy, nourishing diet.

Seriously, look after your body and your body will look after you.

My disordered eating probably contributed a lot to my pcos.
Which means my hair is thinning, I have excessive facial hair and acne.
Attractive, non? And all because I thought I needed to be thin.
If I could go back in time, I would eat properly and exercise more, then I wouldn't be dealing with things that really do contribute to looking unattractive.
Being a bit (or even a lot) curvy is in no way a detractor to a persons appearence.

It's been going on a week or so?

If I've got that right, then you are massively over reacting.

Nostress I'm so sorry for your loss, that can't be easy thank you everyone for your advice, you've definitely convinced me I need to do something. I don't know whether to try and trick her into a GP appointment somehow, I can't see how else I'm going to persuade her to go :(

She should know about BMI and muscle mass from her dance teacher who is fairly hot on this sort of stuff, but I don't know whether she trusts it iyswim.

Throw away the bathroom scales!

Why do you still have scales in your house?

Get them gone, point her in the direction of far more healthy tools, waist measurement is a really good one - it's a far more positively healthy measure.

Discuss food with her too, maybe show her how to use MyFitnessPal together, so you can plan recipes together which fit into a healthy calorie goal. MFP is pretty unforgiving of really calorie counting, so it's a useful tool to guide towards healthy goals. A fitbit or similar is also a great tool to visualise exercise against calorie intake.

Muscle weighs more than fat, so scales are pointless. Starving will lead to muscle loss and muscle turns to fat, so weight goes own but so does helth and fitness. Faddy diets, in the end, contribute more to weight gain than weight loss.

Body composition may alter from muscular and lean, to less muscular with more fat, but muscle doesn't 'turn to fat'. Muscle and fat are two different types of tissue so it is not possible.

Sorry, but this oft-repeated myth is unhelpful.

I don't know what I could have heard, read, been shown/seen at 17 that could have stopped me going down the route to self-destruct that is an eating disorder. If your daughter is on the cusp of an eating disorder rather than a phase with disordered eating, and there is something that you can do to interrupt or holt its course, then I sincerely hope that you find what this is and can deliver. I'll echo PPs and support the suggestion that if an eating disorder threatens, please seek professional help, or at least professional advice.

I don't think its a bad idea to post on here though, I've had an eating disorder and shades of over dieting etc over my life, I struggled to have my two dc probably due to messing up my cycle not having periods for nearly 2 years as a teenager and now I'm 35 I just wish I could get all the time back I wasted worrying about trivial rubbish like my number on a scale. Health is one thing, but obsessing over being just a bit thinner than is easy to maintain is a gigantic waste of time. Yes I'd have my dad at the dr and in therapy (private if the referral took too long and I could afford it) as this extreme dieting and disordered body image is setting herself up for a lot of wasted time even if it doesn't turn into annorexia.

Dd, not dad obviously.

Oh yes, nagging someone who is overweight and telling them how fat they are is really going to help her...poor girl

An update: I've managed to talk her into a GP appointment this week, although we are both going with different concerns. Will bring up her eating habits and hope she hears it differently coming from the GP. Fingers crossed.

youarereallbonkers have you actually read the thread?

Doesn't look like she even read the op, Rebecca!

Hope your gp visit is helpful.