To think we’ve lost sight of what a healthy child’s weight should be?

[Winniethepoohandtiggertoo]

Walking through town today as kids were leaving school and I was quite shocked by the size of them (primary kids). But then I noticed that so many of them were overweight that in a way it isn’t surprising that maybe their parents haven’t noticed or realised there is a problem? When I was little kids were skinny things, now it seems the norm for them to be built like shot-putters! I know a few parents with overweight children but they insist they’re ‘strong’ or ‘solid’, or ‘they run around so much they just burn it off’. When so many kids look like theirs it probably isn’t surprising they think that?

Are they actually underweight though? Or they just look skinnier than their peers? I’m willing to bet the former, because like I said a chubby child is now seen as a ‘normal, solid’ weight. It’s great they see party food as treats and have the odd gorge. Isn’t that the whole point of them being a ‘treat’?

I don’t know about this. I think it might be possible to eat only “healthy food” and still be overweight if the portion sizes are just too big on a regular basis.

My DC definitely eat some junk food, they also have sweets and chocolate a few times a week. They are really slim and so am and I and DH.

But we don’t eat big portions at all. Some of the overweight children I know come from families where the family sit down together every evening and the mum cooks, which should be a good thing. But I think a traditional “meat and veg” dinner everyday does add up. Some people also have pudding after each meal, as if it’s standard!

We are often rushing about and might have scrambled eggs with pitta bread or beans on toast, or pesto pasta - we only sit down as a family for a “proper” meal once a week. So, combined with DC having McDonalds once a week on the way back from an sports club, probably not as healthy as we could or should be.

Maybe “healthy” is mixed up with home cooked food now in peoples mind as well. Jamie Oliver talks a lot about healthy eating, but if I followed some of his recipes and portion sizes every day I think I’d be pretty big.

My friend - who has very overweight DC and is big herself - cooks from scratch often, which is seen as a healthy thing (and she describes the DC’s diet as healthy) but she might make a home cooked lasagne and then adds garlic bread and chips as well.

To me, lasagna seems such a big meal, that a bit of salad on the side is quite enough, but if having sides is what people are used to then they might not notice that they are packing in additional calories. Even a “healthy” pudding like Greek yogurt with banana is also quite high in calories.

Very expensive though

It's not a simple thing. Children, like adults, have different body types, metabolisms etc. forcing adult neurosis on children about weight will only hurt in the long run.

In my DDs year 3 class there is one dc in age 4/5 clothes, child doesn't eat much and what they do is rarely healthy but they are fairly slim. My own DD is in age 11/12 clothes, very tall- she is a head taller than all but one child in the class despite being the youngest and well proportioned, fairly muscular and not much fat, in the healthy weight bmi zone, but I imagine judgemental people looking at her thinking she was too big and it's our fault (I guess it is, it's genetics!).

I do think some people think they are eating normal sized portions, when actually what they eat is enormous. And this extends to their children.

I remember as a teenager going to a friend’s house for dinner. Friend was overweight, as were her brother and parents (the latter greatly so). The meal they fed me was absolutely enormous, and I had a small appetite as a child. I wouldn’t be able to eat that portion now!. I ate probably 1/6th of the meal and the mum had a massive go at me. I remember feeling sorry for my friend and her brother, it her parents were good people and probably genuinely thought it was a healthy plate of food. I think that happens a lot these days.

Yes I’m amazed by how many people have more than 1 type of carbs on their plate! Pizza with garlic bread, curry with rice and naan breads, cooked breakfast with toast and waffles… to me you generally have 1 carb, 1 protein and veg.

forcing adult neurosis on children about weight will only hurt in the long run.

This is just such a weak argument. If ‘body shaming’ had half the effect that people claim it does, anorexia and bulimia would be much more common, as would being underweight. Under eating has never even been 5% of the issue that over eating has.

Healthy food can still be high calorie - avocados being a prime example along with fruit, olive oil etc etc.

You can have an entirely healthy diet but still be obese. Calories in vs calories out. Most people just don't think about this with 'healthy' food.

Have people forgotten about “puppy weight”? I was a chubby kid, by mid - end of high school I was healthy weight just from naturally growing up - but because of all the comments about my weight I ended up with an eating disorder and my relationship with food never recovered.

So the question is why do you buy so many snacks for your children, why do they need to eat the extra salt , sugar and fat those snacks are putting into their bodies? They don’t need them nutritionally, and a human body’s natural response to energy that it isn’t using is to store it as fat around internal organs. If they are hungry before a meal that isn’t a bad thing, if they are hungry after a meal make them eat slower so the “full” hormone kicks in. Nothing wrong with treats, we all enjoy them, but if they are everyday they stop being treats and are seen as part of a days diet.

Puppy fat is a myth, it’s been debunked time and time again.

Not enough people acknowledge that what they view as ‘genetics’ is actually learned behaviour. If a parent is overweight, not active and eats large portions then the child goes the same and that is there barometer of normal.
Even as an adult I’m sometimes shocked at the portion size when I eat in other people’s houses.
What people class as a ‘normal’ plate or food or a ‘healthy’ diet has unfortunately become very subjective.

Yanbu there is a huge girl at a toddler group I take my son to.
She is the largest one there and her grandmother helicopters around her with Oti do you want a snack?

My daughter is the only girl in her class who isn't overweight. I know with some of the smaller overweight girls that their parents think they are 'slim', because they are comparing them to the bigger girls. I don't have the heart to say anything. In the primary check they were told, but subsequently reassured by other parents that the check is silly and wrong.

The focus on weight on MN is completely wrong when we should be focusing on health, nutrition and promoting good lifestyle choices that will stand out children in good stead for the rest of their lives.

My family has a tendency towards babies, toddlers and young children with a good amount of puppy fat. EBF babies shoot up the centiles and then it takes a number of years for this weight to drop off. They are by far some of the chunkiest babies and toddler around and they are noticeably different to their peers. Not one teenager or adult in the family is overweight or has any real problem maintaining a healthy weight. This is because the fundamentals of health are established early on. Eating a range of different food that give your body the nutrition it needs. A focus on moving your body for fun and being active.

On the contrary I see parents with stick thin toddlers feeding them all sorts of rubbish and promoting a sedentary life. The kids are obviously genetically programmed to stay slim although i notice as the kids get older this changes and inevitably they begin to pile on the weight.

So many posters on MN are overly focussed on weight because they have an issue with maintaining a healthy weight themselves or are fat phobic. Even in cases where slightly overweight children are clearly eating healthily and very active, parents are still chastised for not achieving dietary perfection. Orthorexia thrives here and its completely counter productive. Look at the people that live the longest with longest amount of 'healthy years' and you will see that most didn't live perfectly and weren't obsessed with their weight but we're just consistently making pretty healthy choices and were genetically lucky.

You sound like a barrel of laughs, OP.

Obesity is very complex and many determining factors are pre set in the womb, or in early life up to the age of 2. Your weight at 2 determines a lot about how much fat you carry when you're in your teens and beyond.

We should be throwing a lot of money at educating women pre pregnancy about nutrition and weight, providing lots of support and programmes to ensure the conception - age 2 bit is optimised. Support for exercise and diet through the rest of childhood too.

I have no time for judgey pants 'I gawp at plump children on the school run and think how much better I am than their parents' type of people. There's an obesity pandemic, it's a systemic problem.

I worry about this quite a bit because 5 years ago I had tipped into having an obese BMI and at time I thought I was 'just a bit overweight.' And when I decided to tackle my weight and change my diet, lots of my friends told me I wasn't even a bit overweight and didn't need to change anything. While I know there was an element of them being 'kind' I also presume they really didn't look at me and see an obese women. Because our perceptions are really fucked up right now.

So I worry about it for my son and do sneaky BMI checks on him. We're both mesomorphic body types, which means we're densely built, with larger frames and a lot of muscle. So neither of us will ever be skinny. He also has clearly the same tendency that I had as a child, of looking like he is getting a bit fatter before suddenly growing taller. He's currently in the 83rd centile, which is on the higher end of healthy weight but not worryingly so. However, I worry about the chart being based on centiles. Because if everyone is getting heavier on average, which we are, then is being in the 83rd centile really still healthy? Surely he'd have been well into the 90s if you compared him to the centile weights in the 70s?

Giving children the knowledge of a healthy and balanced diet and lifestyle is much more beneficial than them learning bad habits that will affect their body, their health and their appearance for the rest of their lives. This tip toeing around weight doesn't do anyone any favours.

Wearing clothes that are for children 5 to 6 years older than her and within the healthy weight range, are you being honest with yourself here?

What people class as a ‘normal’ plate or food or a ‘healthy’ diet has unfortunately become very subjective.
I agree, portion sizes are way off. I order a child's meal when eating out and it's usually plenty. My children wouldn't eat anywhere near as much as is usually offered.

The other thing is that a child can be a healthy weight and still be malnourished. Just because they're 50th percentile doesn't mean they have enough vitamins and minerals, they could be having small portions of oven chips every day and nothing else. Weight is not equivalent to health.

I have no idea how much they weigh, obviously. I only know that one of their parents asked me if my healthy weight DD (who is nowhere near the overweight category) had got the letter about being overweight. Which does suggest their perceptions are a bit off. I’m not sure that it’s great for kids to want to stop playing because they finally have a chance of getting some sugar!

You sound like a barrel of laughs, OP.

Best you can come up with?

There are certainly lots of factors at play and it definitely isn't as simple as parents feeding their children too much, but similarly there is a level of responsibility that lots of parents seem loathe to take. Sweeping it all under the carpet and head firmly in the sand isn't helpful.

It’s not an even playing field though is it?

I say that as a parent of two very skinny kids.

I know I can be lazy sometimes and feed them junk and - visibly anyway - it won’t matter as DH and I are both very slim and so are they. Genetics really does play a huge part.

This thread has made me realise that actually they probably eat a bit much.

I don't think people have lost sight or haven't noticed.

The parents are overweight, unsurprisingly their kids are overweight, and it can be very difficult to change lifestyle habits to lose weight and keep it off. We live in an obesogenic society, if you hadn't noticed. It's much easier to be overweight than slim. Overweight is normal, the majority of adults are overweight.

Of course personal choices come into it, but when a huge change has happened in society over 40 or so years there is usually rather a lot more to it than that.