9 year old DD - just plain greedy!

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Sorry... posting here for traffic

DD has always had a big appetite... but recently she has become unbearable, always eating, throwing tantrums etc.

She’s always been on the ‘fuller’ side of healthy, but recently I’ve been noticing she’s looking quite overweight. I decided to step back and track what she ate yesterday:
2 slices of toast with generous amount of Nutella, a banana and small bowl of shreddies.

2 hours later was rolling about on the floor claiming she was ‘starving’ I gave her an apple. Checked up on her a minute later to see her munching on digestive biscuits from the cupboard!

For lunch she insisted on making herself TWO wraps with lots of ham and cheese inside, a bag of salt and vinegar crisps. Said she was still hungry, I offered her carrot and houmous which she reluctantly accepted.

Mid afternoon... caught her raiding the fridge, getting herself a large chunk of cadbury, and a yoghurt.

Dinner was new potatoes, steamed fish and lots of veg. She ate all of it, demanding more which I gave her, and then proceeded to make herself another bowl of shreddies afterwards.

8pm, screaming she’s hungry, that we’re starving her (!!) she had a tall glass of orange juice and a marmite crumpet.

If you ask me, that’s ridiculous! I try to make her only eat healthy snacks etc, but frankly I sometimes need an easy life. Both DH and I are fit, healthy weight. For some comparison, I, 33 years old ate:

Scrambled egg on toast breakfast.

Apple mid morning.

Salad with falafel & quinoa lunch. Cappuccino.

Greek yoghurt & honey mid afternoon

Same dinner

Chunk of cadbury (less than DD) around 9pm.

Her brother, 11, also has a good appetite, eats less than her.

What do I do ?!

Caprisunorange not extremely rare, about 1 in 20,000. It’s the extreme hunger, obsession and food stealing that is worrying and worth checking out amongst other things. It is a possibility and a blood test will confirm or rule it out. There are also other genetic conditions that are rarer that also feature some of these behaviours. Not everyone is diagnosed at birth.

Well said Muchalover . Child hood obesity is a blight on a young persons life.
It's a fact that fat people are treated a lot worse by society. They are 'picked' last for everything from the school team to promotion opportunities. Your opinions aren't listened to or valued in the same way normal weighing persons are. (You are fat so therefore stupid 🙄)..Its harder to make friends and many have such damaged self confidence that they never have relationships.
Why would anyone line that up as a potential lifestyle for their child - for the sake of saying 'we are going to be eating healthier.' and not buying the stuff that will make your children fat.?

Please don’t judge! I don’t keep sweets or biscuits in the house, I have a well stocked fruit bowl and only offer cereal or sometimes a boiled egg or toast for breakfast. My DD10 eats 3 home cooked meals a day and is still overweight. I hope, by keeping her active ( walks, gymnastics, swimming, hockey), I’m helping. She’ll steal chunks of cheese from the fridge or eat sugar from the baking cupboard. It’s been a real opener for us, how devious she can be- it doesn’t tie in with the rest of the family as we know it

My DD is an adolescent who is frequently hungry and goes through phases of eating like this. She’s slim & athletic, kids your DD age can frequently change, suddenly slimming down due to height increase. I’ve not restricted her eating, just encourage her to eat healthily, including protein. She too gets very upset and grouchy if she’s hungry & will pick at treats if they’re available. She’s just a hungry kid who’s growing & expends a lot of energy.

My friend’s mum had a judgemental and controlling approach and she’s suffered in her adult life with food obsession and an eating disorder, particularly severe and being very underweight as an older teen.

you need to change your attitude.if the way your coming off in ur post towards her is being seen by ur daughter.at that age I would feel like I wanted the ground to eat me!sorry.but the very language ur using is just really eek.
her meals don't so too bad to me.a little here and there but not huge changes.a few better choies in areas that's all and that something u can do together.
people saying why does she have free reign.errm am I the only one who has a family who has free reign to a certain point to there cupbaords?
would she like fruit salads.could you have a tub of this in the fridge for when shes hungry.i remember loving this when iwas a kids.(the Sainsburys fruit salad bars.ohhh!)
make a rule of Nutella onmly certain amounts a week.for all the family and it will soon become the norm and just seem part of life.
2 wraps isn't bad.maybe you could say ur cutting back on how much meat pack you can buy so its -2 slice of ham each per sandwhich please.
could you cook together and show better portion control.
give her sandwhiches so she can learn whats ok and she will gradually just get used to that being the amount to have.
just be normal.try and add a few better choices.be kind.

We now have science to explain why these children (and us adults) eat excessively and they really have no control over it. The only answer is to cut sugar and white flour out of their diets (near impossible I know but any reduction will help). Eating excessive carbohydrates causes insulin levels to rise and high levels of insulin block leptin from getting to the brain (leptin is the hormone that tells us we are full). Please do your children the biggest favour, do your research online and google leptin resistance. I was called a 'greedy' child, I wish the science had been available back then.

Replying to Charolais, your reply bought back a lot of long forgotten memories for me and how poor we actually were as a family.

We had cold cereal and milk in summer and porridge or ready brek in winter before walking to school, no matter how bad the weather.

Lunch during the week was free school dinners or a specific cheap meal.

Dinner during the week was usually a cold meal except on toast night on a Thursday and fish from the local fish shop on Fridays.

My Father got the only cooked meals during the week.

Consequently the slightly better home cooked meals at weekends were all more enjoyable and eating at other people's houses was a big treat.

Like you we had a daily milk man who was paid once a week as well as a bread delivery and the coal every few weeks was also delivered for the coal fires.
There was no central heating or showers, no television and a outside toilet.

I had a a bad accident as a young child and realised quite early on in my young life that the food we got in the local small and larger hospitals that I was a patient in, was a lot more filling, more healthy and doing me more good, than any of the meals given to me at home.

The OP has simply asked for some help.
Don't people realise how horribe they're being, the language directed at the poor woman, the judgemental nastiness, the need for people to write an essay about what they eat, criticise what she eats, what she does, what she should do, what she's doing wrong far outweighs any positive steps she could take.

For God's sake, is there any need for everyone to bombard the poor woman with criticism. Honestly anyone would think you were all qualified dieticians.

The same things are repeated over and over, 10 pages of unnecessary crap and there's always the one who says "notice the OP hasn't been back" well I wonder why that might be.

Honestly ladies, get a grip, get a life

Sometimes we think we are staving and need food but we are really dehydrated try giving her more water to drink and more fruit!!

Firstly I would be some what wary about the fruit options mentioned in here as they often read as if they have been copied from a diet textbook and do not mirror real life.

Secondly no one has mentioned the person's ability to purchase all these healthy options and whether the person's food budget can easily stretch to include more expensive items, like fruit and other things.

Then added to all of the above may be she is asking for the other nicer more surgery less healthy foods, as that is what all her friends have and they post it on social media, so she wants the same and does not want to feel left out.

There is also the ideas shared on here from so many, that are ideas or things people have read in articles, but in reality they would not dream of doing in the real world or they offer you advice that they have tried themselves over the years with out much actual success.

She sounds bored OP.

Dear OP, you, as a slim mother with a greedy child, are getting the sort of painful, judgemental vituperation that Inreceived a stage mother of two overweight children who are now very overweight adults. You have my sympathy.

I used to be appalled at my normally sized husband’s mother - and the rest of her side of the family who were all extremely large. She would eta and eat and eat. She produced four meals a day and would even wolf a snack before bedtime. Her weight was a direct result of her unhealthy relationship with food. When she went on a diet by cutting out only extra bread she lost two stone and shrank but she couldn’t make herself go without so immediately gained the pounds again.

I never thought that my children would take after her food compulsorily, after all, I am slim and healthy, but they did.

Nothing I could do would stop my children eating too much. I kept junk food out of the cupboard, didn’t buy extras like chocolate or cakes and watched the meals over ‘binge’ seasons like Christmas. Easter eggs were given a small piece at a time after the one egg allowed on the day - and so on. I really tried. But they were fed by others at school and at friends’ houses and and the other mothers would feed them up while blaming me for letting them be fat. It was a nightmare.

My daughter slimmed down when she was older and I breathed a sigh if relief only to find she had bulimia. A food therapist told her not to think about food but to eat what she wanted and now she is approaching her wedding about three stone too heavy. My son is conscious of his weight at the age of 29 but seems unable or unwilling to do anything about it.

Your daughter’s constant desire for food an the fights she is prepared to start to get it are very familiar to me. I don’t know what to suggest except to resist her efforts to binge and clear your cupboards of any snacking food. Hide and lock away treats for all the family And give them out in controlled amounts yourself.

Prepare for a lifetime of judgement and flak for something for which you are not to blame and over which you have no control.

Sorry, should read ‘ I received as a mother...’

Sorry for all the numerous errors. The autocorrect is working overtime - though why it should do such things as adding a capitalised ‘’And’ in the middle of a sentence I cannot think. It has overridden three times inaccurately in this correction!

Keep junk down to a minimum, teach her how to cook healthy and about portion sizes, watch to see if she's eating emotionally and don't let her eat if she's bored etc, distract her where possible and maybe have a schedule, e.g we eat breakfast at 7am, mid morning snack at 10am etc, so she knows when shes going to next eat. Also cut her plate of food down, so when she asks for 2sds, she's only having what would be her normal plateful. Also i have an open policy on the fruit bowl. I keep it full of apples and oranges (hiding the more sugary fruit). My kids know they may help themselves, when ever they want. Ive done this with my kids and it works.

Months where clementines are in season so we eat a bag a day (grin) and Days when no veg at all gets eaten? That’s normal eating

I will admit to eating lots of satsumas when they are in season, but I’d struggle to think of a day when I didn’t eat any vegetables. That’s actually quite tricky to do.

I completely disagree about showing her what healthy eating is and letting her be in charge... she’s a child. Food can be addictive. We don’t let 9 year olds take up smoking or drinking do we? It’s bad for their bodies and their minds. Well being fat is pretty shit as well.

Take control. Get rid of all the crap in the house.

New rule that you have to ask for snacks (I wasn’t allowed free reign at the food growing up, totally normal to ask if I could have something - yes fine, no you’ve already had a pack of crisps today have a carrot instead or no we are about to eat dinner).

Get her out and about. If you’re out riding a bike you can’t stuff your face.

Careful with ‘healthy snacks’ like cheese nuts and hummos. You can inhale a fuck ton of calories in healthy food.

OP I’ve just had another read and your DD food intake on that day is not bad at all. It’s a reasonable amount. Of course there are better substitutions e.g. less Nutella but sometimes that’s easier said than done, especially in this season where everywhere you turn there are sweets and chocs on offer.
Prader willie was a ridiculous suggestion. Annoyingly my mother couldn’t accept my appetite and thought there had to be an issue. She was fixated about it being my thyroid. After the doc drained my body of all my blood, I almost passed out. We discovered it was just my appetite.

Also any type of food binging is unhealthy.

"Crap" = below, AND banana, apple, carrot, lots of veg, orange juice

"Unhealthy" = as previous and below AND toast, shreddies, wrap, new potatoes, crumpet

"Empty carbohydrates" = all above AND ham, cheese, hummus, steamed fish, marmite

And yes there was also cadbury, Nutella & yogurt.

MN orthorexics out in full force, I see.

Sorry I have little advice, OP, my 10yo lives on fresh air. Boredom is a factor in overeating for many, though, I'd work on that one first. Constantly accessing food means she wasn't busy doing something funner.

Ignore the suggestions of Prader-Willi - is is a genetic condition which would have manifested itself from infancy by many other symptoms. It does not simply pop up later in life with over-eating leading to obesity!

Lost - if the doctor drained your body of all of its blood (how? why?), would you not have been dead?

Mominatrix that was a huge exaggeration. I actually had the tests in another country. Not as restrictive as NHS. The amount of blood they took from me that day for various tests was phenomenal. I almost passed out after those tests. Took a while for me to feel normal. I’m also not a stranger to blood tests.

“Months where clementines are in season so we eat a bag a day (grin) and Days when no veg at all gets eaten? That’s normal eating

I will admit to eating lots of satsumas when they are in season, but I’d struggle to think of a day when I didn’t eat any vegetables. That’s actually quite tricky to do.”

I had a winter vomiting virus last week. I didn’t eat anything at all for 4 days. Since then I’ve only eaten toast and drank tea. For another 4 days. Im not going near a vegetable, my whole body is rejecting the very idea. I’m sure normal appetite will resume soon.

It sounds a lot but at that age they are growing quite quickly and need more to eat. My DD could easily polish all that off given the opportunity. She has learnt about healthy foods at school as well as home so I keep in healthy snacks but I do but crisps and biscuits as well with the view that once they are gone they wont be replaced until my next big shop, that helps! it sounds as if she is at home for half term and a bit bored, take her out, keep her busy and spend time with her doing things she likes.

A couple of suggestions OP, I stock up on sparkling water (17p from Lidl ) add a little bit of cordial or sugar free squash to that and it’s line pop. It’s also nice with fresh orange juice so you get a long drink with little or no sugar. I eat weetabix for breakfast and instead of sugar I add skinny coffee syrup 1 teaspoon, odd I know but it works for me. My DN was like your daughter but she used to eat until she was sick. She is now 26 stone. My Dsis would buy tins of biscuits and let them help themselves! I agree with the others to get rid of sugary or fatty foods and let her fill up on healthy stuff

My mum was like you OP. I KNOW she had my best interest in mind, but all she was doing was transferring her hangups about being big on to me as I was an early developer. Looking back at the pictures when it started - all that happened was I developed boobs and hips and my mum constantly was on at me about making sure I didn’t end up like her. I first joined her in a “eat just boiled eggs n lettuce for days” diet when I was 12. I haven’t got a goid relationship with food. I comfort eat, but manage to maintain a sort of normal weight. I am happy. Most importantly I let my boy more or less self limit and he makes healthy choices all the time. I’m glad I broke the cycle. Seek help if unsure. Don’t set her up for a lifetime of struggle with food.