To ask for your help? DD aged 3 is overweight!

[LumiereLight]

DD is almost 4 and absolutely loves food. She asks for food constantly throughout the day and I often have to refuse. She doesn’t seem to reach the point of being full.

She loves porridge for breakfast. She eats oranges, apples, bananas, eggs, whole meal bread, home-cooked meals, plenty of veg, yoghurts, cheese, beef, chicken etc. The problem is, most days she cries for more and I have to tell her she can’t have anything else which makes her upset.

According to the NHS child’s BMI calculator, she is overweight (92nd centile). According to her growth charts, she is in the 25th centile for height and the 75th centile for weight.

Just for context, my older daughter who is 6 is in the 9th centile on the BMI calculator and DH and I are also both slim.

I’m just really struggling with the volume of food DD2 wants to eat. I give her nowhere near as much as she wants and yet she’s still overweight. What can I do to help get this under control?

I’m so grateful for your help.

That's really not a massive amount of food. My three year old eats more than that, she snacks on fruit and veg a lot, she always has a two slice sandwich at lunch, she would have whole milk to drink at least once a day too.

I'd never usually comment on these kind of posts but she sounds very much like my 2nd daughter (who is a piece of string now). So I'll comment but I'm not proclaiming to be any kind of expert 🙈

make an appointment with your health visitor (they can refer to paeds. In our area gps can't it has to go through a health visitor first). Make a point of saying about the tiredness and falling over. It sounds very much like hyper mobility from what you have said.

she might be needing to eat more than what you have given her especially if she's tired. You're giving her a great diet. My daughter at the same age was exactly as you described with the food and the falling over, getting tired and not walking far. From a medical point of view it was hyper mobility. In terms of diet. I've managed to control that by sticking to 3 meals a day mostly so I'll rarely give snacks, and I'll put lots on her plate, a big portion and lots to choose from. Let her fill herself up properly each meal and then when she is asking for more, you can tell her no, it's not lunchtime yet. And she will learn that she's going to have to wait until mealtime and she will get a good meal then.
My reasoning was that when they go to school they have to wait. When she starts school if she has hot dinners she will get much more to eat than that. But spacing it out and not having any snacks worked for us because it have routine.
Is she filling up on water and then getting hungry after that?

I would decrease the carbs and increase the protein and fat content of her diet. It would help her feel full.

YABU if you're just going by BMI, in my opinion.

If she is visibly definitely overweight (and I don't just mean a bit chunky/podgy, I mean normal kids' clothes for her age not fitting) and/or a qualified person has said she's overweight, YANBU.

My 2 year old eats more than that and she's slender... Definitely see the GP of your concerned but I don't think food is the issue.

It's so sad you're restricting her food intake when she is telling you she is hungry. Why not give her second helpings if it's a healthy meal? Plus fruit?

Definitely worth a visit to GP though.

OP Does your daughter go to nursery or a childminder? If so it might be helpful to find out if she asks for food and how what she eats whilst she is there.

I’d give some protein with the snacks. Her blood sugars will stay more even. So maybe hummus with peppers/cucumber rather than the orange and avocado. But butter with apple. Glass of milk with a banana etc. I’d give veg rather than fruit. Maybe make a nice veg soup to have with the sandwich.

Nut butter!

My 2 year old eats a lot more than tgat and is slender too.
Porridge + toast for breakfast
Fruit for snack
Sandwich + veg + crackers + yoghurt + fruit for lunch
Biscuits x 3 for snack
Spag bol etc for tea + cake for dessert
Banana + milk before bed

Always asking for more yoghurts/ toast/ fruit and I never say no.

PPs suggestion of swapping lunch and dinner could be worth a try. My DD has very similar diet to the one you describe but with nuts and seeds on porridge and a hot dinner at lunch time at nursery. She has a second dinner at home in the evening too but we keep it a bit smaller. Diet seems excellent but lunch seems light to me and I wonder if she never feels full or satisfied during the day whether her more substantial meal in the evening is just too late for her to feel satisfied.

100% she needs to see a dr.
Falling , weak and tired is not normal

Her food really doesn't seem that much.
Fruit has very high sugar, try swapping some fruit for vegetables.
I would give her two slices of bread for her sandwich instead of one as well....

My 2 year old eats more than that and is a healthy weight. Why are sandwiches only one piece of bread? It's not much for a 3 year old.

I’m really wondering about this hyper mobility thing. Hasn’t happened for a while but on 2 occassions when DD was younger, she lost the use of one leg for a day. So each time she’d try to put weight on that leg, it would buckle beneath her. The first time it happened, I kept a close eye on her and it was back to normal the next day. The second time, she had been running round on the hilly area at the park. I couldn’t see her legs at the time but she fell down and then had the same issue with her leg but it was the other leg. I was never sure if she tripped or if the reason she fell was because of her leg giving way, if that makes sense. Again, her leg was fine the next day. Does this sound like it could be caused by hyper mobility?

As others suggest I would try bulking her food out so with porridge chop banana in or grated apple etc. Bigger sandwiches, soups with pasta in it. As a comparison this is what my two year old had today:
B: pancakes and small bowl of cornflakes with full fat milk
Snack: kinder bueno choc (tiny)
L: half tin tomato soup with cheese sandwich, full fat Greek yoghurt with blueberry compote
Dinner: two fish goujons, noodles. Choc chip cookie for afters. She was still hungry so I gave her a plain oatcake.

My son is 1.5years old and is slight. He would struggle with those snacks and needs more fuel. I am a bit alarmed by how much he and my 3 year old eat but they must burn it off.
It sounds like you are doing all the right things.. and it must be hard as sometimes you tired/busy and you must feel you can’t slip too much with the healthy meals etc.

I agree with the others that a trip to the GP would be good. Please let us know how it goes.

Not RTFT OP so dont know if anyone has asked this. When she sits on the floor does she sit with her bum on the floor making a w with her legs? I am just thinking with the being tired all the time, not liking walking far and the clumsy when tired, she could have hypermobility syndrome. Both me and my DD have it, my DD hates walking distance and gets tired easily (as do I) and she is always hungry. Take her to the GP and talk to them, it may be that or it may be something else, but hypermobility is actually very common in a lot of people they just don't always know they have it.

Also I don’t think the needing to nap sometimes is that unusual? My son napped every day to 3.5 years old and his little mate (nearly 5) has a nap on the weekend quite often. But they both have busy little lives so not surprising.

DS2 wants to eat way way more than DS1 who, like me, really hates that feeling of being a bit too full. The way forward has been to give PLENTY of good food at mealtimes, with a portion of fruit in between meals. I now don’t get asked for ‘snacks’ because they know we don’t have them (eg we have biscuits but they come after lunch rather than mid morning so that everyone eats a bloody good lunch). Visiting children think I’m bonkers and mither me for snacks, but my own know that the good stuff comes at meal times.

My 14 month old is a good eater but would eat what you've described unless you're portions are very large. I agree with pp, GP for tiredness and falling over, more protein and good fats to fill up.

*your

Ok so I know two children who “overate” and were “obese” around age 2-4. They both suddenly grew extremely tall and it turned out their bodies were just, rightly, storing fat in preparation for the massive growth the DNA had planned. Since your daughter is short for her age, it seems likely that she needs to grow, and to do this she needs to eat.

I would NOT restrict her food and let her cry about being hungry unless you have very clear instructions to do so from a doctor, preferably two (since nhs is crazy overworked and making a lot of mistakes at the moment.)

The NHS weight charts aren’t very good, for example very fit slim children are often classified “obese” because muscle is heavier than fat.

Ps it would be better to have a fat child than one who cries for food she doesn’t get.

The food variety you provide looks very well balanced to me OP.
The quality doesn’t look low to me but every child eats different quantities.
It may well be that she doesn’t understand what being hungry feels like (plenty of adults don’t so it’s nothing to be embarrassed about, besides she’s only little) but it is something that gets a quick reaction from you.
She may be feeling thirsty or be bored Or a number of other things. Of course, she may well feel like starving.
It may be that she has an underlying condition so you should absolutely take her to see a doctor. I doubt it would be worms (easily treated) because you would have known by now.
A healthy young child around 5 (yours is not there yet) is usually on the slim side and eating a lot because they are super active, are growing and have a different nervous energy as well.
This would be the best time to address this issue. Tiredness would concern me more than the physical size as the first issue to tackle.

And the other posters are right, charts are not always the best guide.