Friends DC eating so much crap all the time

[letsmargaritatime]

Not just one friend, every friend. Plus my siblings, well that is how it feels. I posted before about my overweight dd (I can't work out how to link to it) and had some advice on here which I have been trying to follow. But this half term has been like every other school holiday, every occasion and meet up has to involve loads of food, and every friend I meet up with seems to constantly ask their dc if they are hungry (surely they would fucking say if they are at ten years old, why ask?!) And producing snacks all the time. Even the snacks that aren't so bad are still calorific (home-made banana bread, flapjacks etc) I'm so fed up with it

Nobody gets it, and they don't give a shit because their kids are skinny. And say unhelpful things like "oh she will grow into her weight" I know I'm being unkind to my friends but I just don't understand why dc can't get together and play without bags of sweets, packets of crisps, popcorn, chocolate buttons, fruit shoots, and I can't single out my dd and her not to be the one to have it. I have literally no other friends who have overweight dc and posting here hoping people in a similar situation will get how I feel

Worst of all was friend saying that if I stop overthinking it, it wouldn't be a problem. So basically if I let her eat whatever she wants the weight will fall off 😡

As an adult who gains weight easily I am sympathetic with you and your dd. So many adult friends or family outings are based around food too. And one problem I have is that having something unhealthy can set off cravings for more. So even though a coffee and cake with a friend could fit into my diet it can be difficult.
If I do go out I tend to allow for the urge to eat biscuits at home afterwards and follow with a fast day. It helps me get back on track with my appetite. I know you can't do that with a child but maybe a good healthy eating day where you keep sugars low and portions sensible would have a similar effect.

Could you take a trip to the dentist. And ask them in advance to give you a lecture on no snacking (in front of dd). Then talk to the family afterwards, say that you've realised how bad snacking between meals is for teeth and health. And that from now on you'll only have three meals and x healthy snacks at most. Then when out try your best to have a hard line 'we've given up snacks on our dentist's advice'.

I tend to always have a box of raisins for DS handy as a hangry two year old is hell on earth, if you only saw us when were out you may think he lived off cake, hot chocolate and fruit shoots...

...but most of the time he snacks on fruit at home, eats porridge for breakfast 5 days a week , drinks water, has mostly healthy lunches and evening meals we don't have white bread/pasta in the house. He's also VERY active. He'd waste away if he ate any less.

I've always been a snacker, would rather eat half a dozen small meals a day and I've managed to get to mid-30's without being obese

If you're thinking along 'healthy' lines Cow I'd cut out the raisins. Dried fruit as a snack is a terrible idea, they stick on the teeth even more without being able to be washed away and the sugars just erode at the teeth.

You are so right, OP. My DDs often pick at food, but they wolfed down supper tonight - they hadn't had anything to eat since midday and that was only a small sandwich. Avoiding snacks definitely had a good result at meal time!

I sympathise with the snacking and sugary treats when out with friends. I'm guilty of that myself, because my kids eat very healthily at home and during term time. I let them eat more sugary treats on days out during the holidays. If they ate like that all the time they would be fat and unhealthy, but they don't.

How about experimenting with some healthier treats? My children love home made 'energy balls' which are basically dates, nuts and a bit of cacao for a chocolatey flavour.

Is also think that avoiding meeting up around food times might help as well. Meeting for a walk/cycle/other physical activity etc

I've always been a snacker, would rather eat half a dozen small meals a day and I've managed to get to mid-30's without being obese

Will this is it, ultimately the choice is eat large meals and don't snack or eat more frequently and eat less. Personally if I do the latter I end up just slightly hungry and craving food all the time. So I am much better off having nice, satisfying meals and not eating otherwise. I'm older than you and also slim. But we're all different and I think that's part of the reason why it's hard.

It's hard to give helpful advice I mean....

I feel for you, OP. It's harder when one child feels like they're being singled out, but fortunately your DD has plenty of siblings. Can you make it clear to all of them that you're reducing sugar and crap carbs? Junk food is unhealthy regardless of weight. If you police what all of your kids are eating then your DD won't feel singled out even if her siblings aren't always around. You can just say "no cake, DD, remember we're cutting back on sugar". As long as you say the same thing to each of them then you're not making it about her, but about healthy eating for everyone.

Your friends are being really unsupportive. There is no need to constantly be giving out snacks to kids. You are doing the right thing for your dd and it honestly wouldn't kill your friends to cut back on the group snacks when you all meet. Or to take things like grapes or something healthier if they think their child can't survive 2 hours without knawing on something.

If meeting at a pub I really can't understand after a meal and a dessert why they would give kids a whole heap of junk. Your friends are really inconsiderate. Have you talked to them and ask if they could stop doing it? If they get arsey with you, they obviously don't give a shit and are not very nice friends quite honestly.

Thanks for some great advice, just catching up with replies. Going to find the BBC programme tomorrow

I do get where you are coming from but on the other side of it, my DD(8) is very underweight and is now refusing to eat properly because her best friend (who is obese) mother commented on her snacking at a party a couple of weeks ago. DD is already underweight enough that the doctor is worried so as you can imagine I am pretty pissed off with the friends mother. As if that wasn't hard enough, DS(12) eats constantly and being old enough to go out on his own I can't police it anymore, so obviously I'd have been better teaching him self control and healthy options when he was younger but I didn't think about that.

I don't know what the answer is but at 11 she needs to learn to say no to the snacks for herself because secondary school and going out with your friends alone are full of unhealthy snack opportunities.

Have you got a local girls rugby club? I played at university and I wished I had a chance to play when I was younger. It's a fantastic sport of all different skills & sizes and can give you the most wonderful confidence. I'd recommend help finding your daughter a sport or activity she can get confidence so she wants to look after her health.

Don't focus on her weight focus on her health, remove any scales you have from the house so she' doesn't get an unhealthy obsession with the numbers on the scales. Get her to help you create a meal planner for the week with built in snacks including a cheat meal / cheat snacks.
80/20 split will help her deal with the real world no one is 100% perfect & she shouldn't feel that she has to be. So when you go out and she's offered a snack you can say to her you can have that snack now but you'll have swap for one in the planner so the choice is hers. If she has the snack then she doesn't have one later, or if you know she is going out you can plan for it so there is no guilt associated with it. Hope that makes sense!

op this thread really got me. While my dds are very slim, their best friend is overweight, I expect she weighs more than me, I find it so difficult to feed her, my kids like a lot of fruit but she does to excess

It might be worth taking her to the doctors about her weight, it could be hormone related.

Oh bless you op it sounds really hard so please rant away.

On one hand yes you already know that it is a bit U to expect people to not do what they see fit just because your child has a problem.

However I also will admit to if I am meeting up with a friend I would purposely bring something everyone could eat .

Well I say i would bring something but reality is if I was popping out for a couple of hours with friends i wouldn't bring food as I don't see the need to constantly snack.

Regardless of your kids friends weight it does seem a tad unnecessary to follow lunch with yet more food. Sometimes i wonder if people struggle to entertain their kids and just keep feeding to keep them quiet...

I'm a bit like you op it never ceases to amaze me how kids permanently have food in their hands yet appear so skinny. I'm insanely jealous if I'm honest my clothes feel tight just reading about it.

I wish you luck op

I completely sympathise. My 4 yo is overweight and will over-eat. My DH, myself and my DS are all a healthy weight. We have a healthy diet at home and a strict 3 meals, 2 snacks policy but coping when we are with others is so tricky. Buffet type situations are just hell to me.
I tend to be fairly relaxed (outwardly) when others are getting snacks or we are at a party and just reduce the food for the rest of the day. I have no idea if I'm doing the right thing though. We saw a dietitian and it was all talk about portion sizes but what I really need is advise on how to teach her to stop eating when she is full.

I actually avoid play dates in one house now because there is always cakes/biscuits etc...left out in plates and I find it too hard to manage without making a fuss.

YANBU.

The amount of crap some kids seem to be offered every day is over the top.

One of my DC has no "off" switch and will eat is she's bored. She isn't overweight but has nearly been there (based on BMI) and has had a bit of a tummy in the past. She's also athletic and swims 4-5 km a week and is in the school athletics squad. I feel the vigorous exercise normalises her appetite a bit and she becomes hungry for proper food like protein and vegetables and she's less likely to graze after a proper meal.

It's a really hard situation and no matter what you do people will say it's wrong. If you make an issue of it you can be accused of setting up an unhealthy relationship with food, but if you ignore it and she gets bigger she's much more likely to continue being overweight/obese into adulthood.

She's 9, btw, so similar age. Could you find some fun, vigorous exercise?

One of my dc is a skinny thing. All bones and no fat. The other is overweight. And has SEN.
To add to it the skinny one takes after one side of the family and the 'sturdy' one takes after the other. Neither side of the family are obese adults so who knows what's going on.

You could just be extra conscientious with diet at home, then when she is out or with friends that is her 'treat time' where it's ok to relax. If you know she's eaten well the rest of the time it'll make it easier to deal with if she has a cupcake or a chocolate bar.

Could she have a medical condition causing her to gain weight? As if your other children are fine, she's eating the same things & doing sport, things don't add up...

If she's just a little chubby it may be better in the long term to leave it (whilst encouraging healthy food & exercise still of course) as its really unhealthy to keep mentioning her weight & she could easily develop a complex.
She'll likely have a growth spurt & naturally thin out.

Thanks for the replies, particularly posters who can relate and empathise, like I said all my friends kids, and my nieces and nephews, are skinny so nobody in to seems to get it.

People asking how overweight is she, I've pasted this from my other thread:
wolfie I can't really explain it unless you see her, it's just as if she's a totally different shape to the rest of the family? You know when they are babies they have these big chubby thighs but then they change, but she didn't and when she was a toddler her thighs still touched and I never put her in tights or jeans etc as it looked uncomfortable. The tops of her arms never fitted the right clothes for her age, t-shirts would leave marks on her upper arms or give her a chafe rash.

We had one short appointment with a dietician/ school nurse and they basically said her portions must be too big, that she must be eating too much. Basically that she needs to eat less. They don't think it's a medical issue. I don't think they believed the food diary I took with me.

My friends aren't horrible people. I just feel like if it was a dairy allergy or something there would be more understanding, but obesity seems to be viewed as self inflicted. I have no idea why she is like she is, obviously she's eating too much but no more than her siblings who are all slim.

It's not just my friends either, I feel it's society as a whole. At the end of the Easter term, the cakes and treats each child was given by teachers and TA's was more than I would normally give dd in a whole week. They had eaten most of it by the time they'd got to the school gate. Every time there is a birthday the kids bring in treats or cakes, there are hot chocolates at golden time for the kids who have worked really hard. There is a whole reward system based around food! My teenagers social life seems to involve so much costa, Starbucks, Pizza Hut etc (but she is very slim still) Don't know if this is just where I live or a nationwide issue

Can you post what she eats and how much?

People here are pretty good at seeing stuff others can't and may he able to pinpoint where it's coming from.

Hv are more sort of change for life people which advocate low fat and sweeteners etc which don't fill you up and are often worse for you

I know what you mean though.tge amount some kids put away is astonishing and it does make you feel mean that your child actually has a portion as opposed to an entire bag of something and a whole chocolate bar