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 ?!

My dd is the same, the only way I can stop her is to stop buying bad food, stock more fruit and veg rather than crisps and chocolate. School holidays are harder as they get bored. Try keeping her busy with activities, go to the park, walk the dog etc...

How much is she drinking?

Stop buying crisps and biscuits, chocolate and Nutella for starters.
Ensure she has a healthy breakfast, you can look this up, but Shreddies have the nutritional value of zilch.
Also I would say the child is BORED. Bored, bored, bored.
Also sounds like Pudgey vs. Judgey.

Not sure if anyone has thought of this but she could be manipulating you. How much exercise does she do?

The lunch doesn’t sound particularly filling

Two wraps? I think tortillas are one of the most filling lunches. If I ever have two tortilla fajita wraps then I'm stuffed and I'm a person who can eat! I think the OP's daughter is eating a lot.

And to this talking about kids helping themselves, I think of myself as a relaxed parent but my kids know to ask if they want a snack whether that's a biscuit, fruit, toast, etc. They definitely don't have full reign of the kitchen cupboards. DS2 has a very sweet tooth - there would be no biscuits left!

Could it be boredom eating? Doubt she gets thru this much on a school day?

PP have pointed out issues of a lot of sugar in your DD's diet, which I would agree with.

But I think a bigger problem is all the snacking. She's having 3 meals a day and then 3 snacks a day because she says she's "starving". She's not starving, and you know this. Permit her perhaps one snack in the afternoon and that's it. There's nothing wrong with feeling hungry between meals, which is normal, natural, and desirable.

So she's 9?? I'm 39 and struggle to manage my urge to raid the cupboard if there is chocolate in it :)

Any 9 year old still needs help and support (in a loving, kind and non judgemental way) to regulate food consumption. They need advice on what's healthy and what's not, what to eat and when to eat it. My DCs would not be allowed to raid the cupboards and if they did, wouldn't find Cadbury and digestives in it (because I will have already eaten it if it's been hanging around more than 10 seconds!) !!

When I was a kid and hungry I was told to eat fruit or wait til meal time. If I said I didn't want fruit, the reply was 'well you can't be that hungry then')

If mine are looking a little chubby then it's usually a growth spurt and they r normally average looking or even a bit skinny! My youngest sometimes starts to fill out at non growth spurt times, and then I know it's my fault for too many ice creams on days out etc.. and my DH and I make an effort to cut this down etc.. but we know it's still our responsibility at this age, and the DCs are still learning.

No DC of 9 is 'greedy' - they r just normal and need help to regulate what and when they eat. Please be kind to your DC

She's probably going through a growth spurt. I remember being very, very hungry myself at that age, and weighing 7 and a half stone at 20. I can remember my children being very, very hungry at certain times. They need substantial carbohydrates, like wholemeal bread for sandwiches. the wraps may not be sufficient. Sugar helps to cure the hunger pangs, but is not good for them. So I would have wholemeal bread, nutella's not too bad, but I would certainly not have so much chocolate at hand. Your son will have a growth spurt in the future.
They also get argumentative before puberty, so she's probably a bit argumentative! I'm sure you love her very much!

zoo it might be worth a trip to the doctor - my son (2) has Ketotic hypoglycaemia, aka Accelerated Starvation Disorder. He burns through food quickly and goes into starvation mode very quickly, where his body starts burning off fat and muscle to keep his blood sugars up. Many kids with KH are normal sized or underweight but I’ve heard that many of them start eating a lot when they are older because their sugars start to drop, making them feel really rubbish so they eat to make that feeling go away.

Have you ever smelt ketones on his breath (sort of like pear drops / a chemical-like smell)?

Just thought I’d mention it in case.

Tortilla fajita wraps are usually stuffed with pulses and avocado. Not ham and cheese.

I was like your dd.
I could eat and eat, I was constantly hungry. I could come in from school demolish 10 slices of toast and still eat dinner. Eventually I was overweight but I was genuinely hungry.
I started to do something about it.
I didn’t watch calories, that left me hungry so I’d eat more. I watched fat. Yes this is lots of carbs and not what anyone would recommend.
I’d have the biggest bowl of porridge to fill me up (shit loads of fruit as well), I’d have rice for lunch (I’d make it with stock so it was tasty) or pasta. But loads of it.
Then dinner (ideally dinner as she walks in the door and a pudding at 8ish). I’d only have fruit in between.

It worked, eventually the weight fell off and I reduced portion sizes. Because I was so full i didn’t pick.

I was a greedy child: my parents cooked healthy food and controlled access to snacks etc, but by the time I could go anywhere by myself (I guess 11, 12?) I would buy food and eat it secretly. I think it was bordering on a disorder and I did get podgy between 12ish and 15 (still have the stretch marks on my belly sadly).

What helped me was cooking. I realise that I basically just love food (I started reading cookbooks at a young age, strange child I was), and being able to cook myself anything I feel like eating has stopped the weird behaviour with hiding food, eating to excess and 'treats'. I've been more or less slim since my mid-teens and feel like I have a healthy relationship with food.

So OP, maybe try encouraging your daughter to get cooking? Not specifically healthy food either, just learning about food and cooking in general.

Also "chunk of Cadbury" really does need to stop being said here.

My son could easily be like this. Sometimes I do think he's hungry and having a growth spurt (he's 9, 10 in December. He's 5ft 1", in size 13/14 clothes. He was 10lbs when he was born. His dad is over 6ft, and I'm 5ft 9", so he was never going to be little, but other times I think it's just habit.

I try to balance 'if you want a junk snack, have a healthy snack first (fruit/ yoghurt/ bread sticks/ smoothie)' half the time once he's eaten something he doesn't realise that he was initially asking for junk which is why I say sometimes it can be habit.

It is hard though when they won't stop moaning about being hungry 😋

Maybe my experience as someone raised in the 50's/60's might be helpful. Keep in mind we were all slim and fit back then - except for one chubby girl in the school and two of the mums. They were oddities.

There were no snacks or cereal in the house. There was a sort of big shop (with dad) on Saturday mornings in town but all other food was purchased almost daily from the nearby shops for cooking that day. Because my mum didn't drive and had to walk, she wasn't about to walk home lugging boxes of snacks. We didn't have a fridge until about the mid-60's because my mum couldn't see the point of them. Milk was delivered every morning to the door step.

We were well-off by the way.

My mum would bake once a week. She'd make a small batch of jam tarts or fairy cakes - something like that and we had probably one each. After Sunday dinner we'd have something like rice pudding, which my mum made while the oven was on.

My dad, bless him, had a great sense of humour and he'd buy a one or two donuts from the local baker every Saturday for himself. They had pink icing. I'd stare at them dreaming of them being in my mouth and my dad would say, "that baker is a dirty old bugger, he picks his nose while he's making these". I never touched them. lol

I was given half a crown for pocket money every Saturday morning and I'd treat myself to something. I always spent a tanner (sixpence) on a saucer of cockers in the market.

We just learned to tolerate/ignore any hunger in between meals. There was no pop or juice in the house and milk was for tea or rice puddings. My stomach must have been tiny because I could only nibble a bit of school dinners.

We played outside, never in the house . TV would only be put on at about 5pm.

It all sounds awful but it was wonderful. It really was. We went anywhere we wanted.

My parents would always go on about how little food there was during the war and how little they had to eat. I'm sort of doing the same thing here I suppose. lol.

My DDs (9 and 6) go on about being hungry as well, and help themselves from the fridge. It's galling because they'll say they don't like the food I've cooked for them, but then they'll say they're starving an hour later and raid the fridge.

We don't provide lots of chocolate or biscuits, though. It's not so bad when they're eating ham or cheese as snacks.

My DDs are very slim, so it isn't really a massive issue, only when it's just before a meal and ruins their appetite. (I'm the one who has weight problems. 😂

Does she have parasites?

Give her more protein and less junk, and make sure she is too busy to eat from boredom at weekends.

I'd be more concerned about why she's throwing tantrums and how active she is. It sounds like she's growing and going through puberty.
Your attitude to her eating is more of a problem.
Cereal isn't filling-swap to porridge maybe. It's what I recommend to all my patients.

My DD is 9 too. From your OP it does sound as if you are massively judging your daughter, and I am willing to guess that she is picking up on this. As PP have said, if she can’t regulate her crisps/chocolate/Nutella etc to a sensible amount, don’t have them in the house.

Also agree with water- thirst is often mistaken for hunger. And exercise! How much is she doing? My DD does loads and loads which enables her to eat more. However, if she starts eating too much, I cut down/out on the amount of snacks I buy. And yes to the sugar thing. I sometimes do a couple of weeks pretty much sugar free with my kids and the cravings disappear quite quickly. We don’t keep it up indefinitely but every so often. And I try hard to only give refined sugar as part of meals not as snacks (holidays excepted). So rice cakes, cheese and fresh fruit as a snacks, not a biscuit, but yes to a biscuit as desert. It’s very tough but you need to also tread carefully, young girls are so impressionable.

She is 9. This is completely your fault.

She is 9. This is completely your fault

What's wrong with you? Why would you be so horrible? The child likely has nothing wrong with her, she's probably going through a growth spurt. But even if not. Attacking a parent asking for help? How low can you get?

Nice answer! All your fault eh?

My upbringing was not that dissimilar to Charolais and I'm only 30! No, we did have more but it wasn't regulated the way people always recommend on here and none of us were fat. We are lots of meat and potatoes at mealtimes, with two different veg. Always more if we wanted it. My parents would never have said no to more dinner if we said we were still hungry, never. But we had 5 meals a day - breakfast, crowse, dinner, tea and supper just before bed. Crowse and supper were what you'd call snacks. Dessert after every meal. Homemade baking for crowse and supper.

A cooked breakfast goes a long way, is there a reason you can't try that op? Is time limited?

Funny op hasn't been back.

Adaline in our case we had Nutella for pancake day, but ds had secretly eaten it all in the days before.

I like to buy a small packet of biscuits for the weekend. There are 4 of us in the house, if we all had a couple each then a couple for visitors then that would be that, but ds steals them all before anyone else has a chance.

Christmas is hell, we buy ourselves a few treats for the main days so that we can have some chocolates watching a film, it's the mountains that everyone else sends that causes problems.