HV has told me that my 20 month old DD is overweight. I'm at a loss

[Unappreciatedandfat]

I've always put in every effort to make sure she eats healthily, she loves fruit and veg and I make every meal from scratch, no junk etc. She has small portions and they fill her up easily. She has the very occasional treat and only drinks milk or water.

We live on a farm so she's a very active toddler (she's been walking since 11 months) and just generally loves being outside. I'm so disheartened because I really thought that I was setting her up for being fit and healthy. I've recently lost 3-4 stones in weight jus through doing more exercise.
I see my friends with their toddlers who are a similar age and the right weight and they're fed chips, crisps, chocolate and given fizzy drinks and are sat inside all day long watching TV. What the hell have I done so wrong?

DS tends to really bulk up right before shooting up in height.

Loads of kids do this. Human growth doesn't check with a BMI chart before occurring

I had this with my DS2. He was way off the height/weight centile but perfectly happy and healthy. My friends son was exactly the same at the same time but the HV (we had the same one) told her she was worried about her son's weight, whereas mine was getting rugby player/policeman comments. The only reason we could think of was that my friend was overweight and I wasn't so the HV must have worried about that. Ridiculous.

YY to the bulking up then shooting up. My HV told me they didn't consider children overweight until their height and weight were more than 2 lines apart. Mine were always on a higher % for weight than height but about 50% of children will be, and they are not all overweight. But not all HV really get the stats, I think.

Basically WEES, we need percentiles! Just keep an eye though.

Does she take in a lot of milk, fruit juice and squash? Nothing wrong with drinking milk but you're saying she eats little, Imwondervwhere hercalories are coming from? (And 1 year olds do need calories of course!)

I would have thought all babies get the hungrys, chunk out then shoot upwards growing into their skin. You can usually always tell when a growth spurt is coming.

I think kids being fat us in the spotlight atm and they've all been sent on a course or something. Just keep on with what you're doing at that age imo.

Sorry, *I wonder where

My ds doesn't chunk out before shooting up. He shoots up and looks scrawny then bulks out a bit!!

Agree though that following the curve is best indicator and the occasional anomaly isn't a worry as could be a growth spurt.

Thank you all, I've just checked her red book and she is 82 cm in length which is bang on 50th centile. She weighs just under 15.87 kg which is above the top centile - I don't know how much this is considered overweight.
She doesn't look over weight to me - don't get me wrong, if I pick her up she's certainly solid, her trunk is slim and skinny but she has chunky little legs.

I don't let her drink fruit smoothies. I only let her have water or milk.

I'll give you an idea of her daily routine

6:30-7am: Up and dressed, breakfast of banana and brown toast or small bowl of porridge with fruit e.g tangerines, blueberries or raspberries and a drink of water

7-9:30: she occupies herself whilst I do some housework

9:30-10am: mid morning snack (box of raisins or carrot sticks usually) and a drink of milk

10:00-11:00 am: Walk around sheep steep downhill and steep uphill, she will walk all of the way down and part of the way back up

11:00-12:00: she has an early dinner as she tends to fall asleep between 11:45-12:00 (she's snoring away now ??) I made some homemade chunky veg soup yesterday so she had a small bowlful of that, I offered her some bread but she didn't eat it. Other days we will have a quick omelette with peppers and maybe some ham and onions or beans on toast or scrambled eggs on toast. Drink of water

1:30-2:00: she usually wakes up around this time and we go for another walk but a shorter one.

2:30-3:00: we tend to do some arts and crafts until my partner comes In for a cup of tea at 3:00pm she will then share an apple with me.

5:00pm-5:30: Tea time (hope this isn't too confusing, where I come from we say breakfast, dinner and tea!) for example tonight I will be doing a stir fry with chicken and some rice noodles and a low sugar sweet chilli sauce and light soy sauce, other examples are homemade curries, no creams etc just low salt stock and herbs and spices maybe a tin of tomatoes, slimming world lasagne (I follow a lot of their recipes, chilli con carne is also a favourite)

She drinks water throughout the day

What could I improve upon?

15.8kg is only slightly lighter than my average height 4.5 year old, so I would guess she is pretty overweight. I would get her weighed again though or take her to the GP because I would imagine a child at that height and weight is visibly very heavy.

Ignore my HV said my 2 year old was overweight. He's now 3 and perfect weight for his height and I didn't change anything!

I stopped seeing the HV after that.

That doesn't sound like a fattening diet.

Can you give us some idea of quantities - what proportion of a tin of beans, how many eggs omelette/scrambled, how many pieces of toast, how much noodles?

I'm worried she has some sort of disorder because there is no way that she eats enough to be that heavy

Remeasure her height at home too. Height is tricky.

I'll put two eggs in the omelette but she'll have a quarter of it, probably less than a third of a tin of beans with one slice of toast (which she usually leaves). Maybe 1-2 dessert spoons of noodles

Has she always followed those centiles? I wouldn't worry until you have seen the GP tbh and don't change anything until then either.

Yes my very tall 4.5yr old is 18kg but I met a 2.5 yr old the same weight and he didn't look overweight even though there was quite a difference in height between the two kids.

What does she have for dessert? The diet itself sounds fine but it is difficult to know what a small portion is!

You can apps for your phone that you can record their height and weight on. I found it really useful when I was having to monitor ds and measures monthly.

Yes, what are her portion sizes like? My two toddlers (3.5 and2) eat tiny amounts really - they never finish what's on their (toddler sized) plates. They're not fussy at all but they just don't eat that much. My 2 year old DS was weighed and measured today (2 year review) and he's 87cm and 12.2kg. 50th centile for height and weight. Nearly 16kg at 82cm does sound quite heavy really.

My DH is always worrying that our kids don't eat enough but I think that overall portion sizes nowadays are so huge that it's easy to think kids are eating the right amount when actually they're eating far too much.

Agree that you should re measure at home both weight and height and use that as your base for monitoring

It's a big disparity between height and weight if she's eating half an egg!

I think I'd give it a couple of months for the growth spurt then remeasure her. If still the big disparity, I might take her to the GP. It's quite likely to sort itself out - some chunky toddlers thin out over time - but it would be good to get some reassurance and get to the bottom of it.

I would have her re-wighed as my DD2 was not much heavier at 30 months and she was pretty chunky.

Keep a food diary for a week - be absolutely honest (I'd probably go as far as weighing/measuring portions). If your menu for a day is typical, I really struggle to see how your dd could be overweight - it looks positively Annabel Karmelish in its perfection.

Get your dd re-weighed by the HV - if she still appears to be very overweight, take your dd, together with the food diary to your GPs. Because I really think that an investigation into why your dd is overweight would be necessary.

FWIW, I reckon your dd was incorrectly weighed.

Hmm if she is on the 50th percentile for height and over the 100th for weight that would indeed suggest a problem. I really think you should speak to your GP and get those merasurements checked though as a few cm or pounds misreading makes a big difference.

Activity wise, how 'busy' is she when she's at home - constantly running around or happy to sit and concentrate on stuff. Natural fidgets burn off huge numbers of calories that way - it's harder if your child is naturally sedentary. My ds' will burn up hundreds of calories playing computer games for example, cause they jump around so much whilst doing it (sounds trite but try jumping up and down for an hour at a time and see how much energy it uses).

Calorie wise, is she drinking a lot of milk? A couple of small glasses as a drink is fine but pints of the stuff count as food. The food your offering sounds great, so maybe look at portion size (once you've established there is a problem). Toddlers need tiny amounts - hence all the posters on here worried when their perfectly fine toddlers seem to exist on thin air.

This sounds a little confusing. If I were you I'd remeasure her height and weight yourself and see what you make it.

I agree that sounds on the heavier side, as my 3yo doesn't weigh that much, but equally that her diet and routine sounds completely normal and very averagely healthy.

So if the weight and height is right then one, I would stop beating yourself up as you are feeding your daughters lots of healthy things and giving her plenty of exercise, and then I'd probably take her to the doctors to have a chat about it.

Those measurements indicate she is overweight.

I have to say, my DCs diets are probably worse than what you describe, and they are both well within healthy weight, even though I am obese.

I don't know what to tell you OP. Maybe you need to start a food diary, do that for a week, and then take it to your GP. Be totally honest about everything that passes her lips, and approximate quantities.

Does she drink a lot of milk? I remember my DS guzzling it down at that age, and suddenly realising what a lot of calories he was consuming in liquid form!