To think it’s possible for child to be overweight BMI but not unhealthy?

[NameChangedOct24]

My DS is age 8 and falls into 95th centile overweight BMI on child growth charts. To me he doesn’t look overweight, is it possible that he is still healthy despite the chart and I’m not deluded….ill try to upload a pic.

Most of them are about 14-15 stone though. Maybe the odd huge one (who will also look far).

I’m 5’ 2”. When I weighed 9st, I was a size 10. It’s irrelevant what my ‘body type’ is - whatever that means.

I got letters for all my dc saying they were healthy weights for 2 and underweight for one (she’s fine). Dc have no clue because I’m not a bad parent 🙄

You’ve misread this if you think you’re in the healthy weight range. Less than 7 stone is underweight for a 5 ft 2 woman.

I think she means that she has a small frame. The BMI ranges does take into account frame type - hence the broad range.
Two people of the same height but very different BMIs can be equally healthy - a low BMI doesn't mean you're healthier.

I look at my sons. One is slight like me, the other is broader like his father's side. If they had the same BMI one would be chubby and the other would probably look a bit unwell.

Fat children front load their heights earlier (and end up shorter overall) so you can’t really use their height to justify their weight. Your goal should be to ensure he doesn’t gain any more weight. That means tidy up his diet / portions and ensure his activity levels are increased. A child that age should be getting 30-60mins of vigorous exercise everyday as a minimum.

My sister wore Jane Norman. Their size 6, size 8 and size 10 were often the same size. She was so frustrated as she was a size 2 and at the time it was a battle to get anything from non-US brands.

BMI indicates whether the person is a healthy weight, no more, no less. Our weight is one aspect that contributes to our levels of health. As is quality of diet, amount of excercise we get, our genes and the environment we live in. This is why some OW people are healthier than slim ones, there are aspects of their health that balance the negative impact of their weight. In your sons case, his youth, if he has good nutrition and excercises, these are protective factors. There is a lack of agreement as to how much 'weight' BMI should be given in assessing overall health, which in all honesty, is mainly driven by people who prefer not to see it as important. You have some information about your sons overall health picture. If I had that information I would try to reduce his weight (or rather stabilise it so his height caught up) because I don't have sufficient expertise to be able to say 'it doesn't matter' when all official guidance would say that it does.

But they’re taller, which BMI takes into account. At my career peak I was 106kg which is about 16 stone, I’m 185cm which is just shy of six foot one which I think gives a BMI of 30. My team mates who were hitting 23 stone were all taller than six four and we were also carrying too much body fat.

I have a high BMI. I am actively losing weight, but according to my BMI I am basically a sedentary beast.

No BMI is simply a weight to height ratio. It’s just numbers; it makes no judgment. The NHS site suggests taking more exercise to lose weight but if you’re already taking loads of exercise, that advice is not relevant to you. So you will only lose weight by changing your diet.

He looks like he is due a growth spurt but he doesn’t look at all overweight and sounds like he does lots of exercise and eats healthily. My child who is in a football academy is tall had a similar body at various points.

There are far too many woman on mumsnet with disordered eating. You know who I mean - the teeny tinies that eat nothing but massive salads and have “delicate wrists.” You appear to have a good number on this thread talking about flabby tummies and belly overhangs which aren’t there. I suggest you treat their advice with some caution because you could end up being quite harmful to your son but do speak to a doctor or your school nurse if you are concerned because you’re likely to hear from someone with experience and not someone addled with orthorexic views.

Good try. I'm mixed race. You can tell if someone is muscular, skinny, in the middle, overweight etc. BMI is reliable for most people.

No it really doesn’t work like that! There’s no probably about it; his BMI is over 90th centile.

I didn’t see the picture but to put it in context my 8 year old is 32.5kg but 6-7cm taller. She’s been on the tall centile line since birth really and has had periods of putting on some weight before a growth spurt but currently is around 50th on the centile charts for bmi. She is by no means the thinnest child and has a bit of a belly before growth spurts. You can see in her swimming classes a lot of the other girls are thinner than she is but some are nearly a foot shorter so to be expected but you also see the tall skinny kids who are really tiny.

At 135cm I don’t think you can assume a higher weight for your son because of height because he isn’t mega tall.

I think its really difficult to use BMI with kids especially boys who tend to plump up for a couple of months and then grow like billyo for a while and stretch out. A friend of mine her son was constantly plump and then grew - her husband was a nightmare about it constantly on at her and her boy about being healthy and not overweight and yada yada yada forced runs with Dad and cycling etc didn't make a jot of difference. At 24 he is slim and doesn't cycle anymore with his weight at all, can eat anything he wants. Thankfully Mum acted as a buffer between them to offset the worst of it. It was then the same for her younger daughter who again is now a gorgeous size 8 at Uni and thriving.

Teach a healthy relationship with food I say

yes, I think they can. My daughter was 100 percentile at birth, is still 100 percentile now at 6 but is very very tall and lean!

Noone can be at the 100th percentile. It's actually a mathematical impossibility. So maybe she was 99.9th?

How old is your younger one? Toddlers/preschoolers are supposed to be a different shape to school aged children. And what is his bmi?

Im afraid I disagree on the body shape point. If you Google images of school children in the 60s and 70s they were all slim and actually skinny looking compared to today’s children. People have completely lost all sense of what children should look like as obesity is sadly so common.

BMI/ centiles are a decent ballpark guide but not a complete picture.

Then consider body shape. Ribs should be visible not totally covered over. Prepubescent children should have straight body shapes. There shouldn't be obvious surplus fat at the belly, hips or chest- children are different shapes to adults.

What are their genes like? Are they following the way their parents and other family members have grown? Are they following their own growth patterns? When have family tended to hit puberty?

What is their diet like? Do they end up aquiring additional sweet treats from here there and everywhere? What do they eat/ drink when out and about? It's quite easy to have a decent diet at home but end up being tipped into a surplus by additional extras that find their way into a child's life.

What are their activity levels like? Do they have a lot of incidental exercise? Are they generally active or naturally slow and ploddy? How much movement do they actually get at their sporting activities? What's their functional movement like? Can they sprint? Have they got good stamina? Can they get up and down easily and move in a variety of motions? Can they climb easily? Have they got strength relative to their build? (I know some secondary age children that by late primary age were struggling to move functionally)

Some children concertina as they grow. My two tend to change face shape but there's little obvious difference in the body. Some children are more obvious. The awkward part of assuming they'll grow into their mass if their diet is continuously unbalanced for their needs is that you don't know when they'll stop growing and then the surpluses will accumulate. I've known heavy y7s stretch out through y8-9 then get heavy again once they stop growing- plus their appetites increased while growing rapidly.

Does being overweight matter? It's not a moral failing or weakness. Long term it is a significant trigger (or correlation) with poor health. That generally doesn't show up until middle age, but excessive fat (especially visceral fat) does stress the body's systems, and having that stress through youth is very far from ideal. Youth is when people's template for themselves is set- "fat" youths expect themselves to be "fat" adults. Their habits and activity levels are set then, and while they can be changed, that is very difficult to do and sustain. It's very difficult to reset to healthy weights after sustained periods of being extremely overweight. It's also just harder to move and less comfortable to be active when there is surplus weight.

Making sure children are in good health and making modest tweaks if needed is much easier than letting problems escalate into the late teen years and adulthood.

I looked up the OP’s child on the separate height and weight charts which I think can be more helpful than BMI. It does depend on exact age but broadly speaking

At 8 - 135cm would be 91st for height but 98th for weight at 135

At 81/2 135cm would be around 75th centile for height and 91st centile for weight.

At both points, his weight is in a higher centile than the height but the older 8 he is, the less likely you can just say it’s because he’s tall that he’s a bit heavier

Wtf?

My DS is 10 and is about 135/136 cm tall and is about 28kg. I haven’t seen the pic but I’d say it sounds like your DS is probably a little overweight.

There are far too many woman on mumsnet with disordered eating. You know who I mean - the teeny tinies that eat nothing but massive salads and have “delicate wrists.” You appear to have a good number on this thread talking about flabby tummies and belly overhangs which aren’t there. I suggest you treat their advice with some caution because you could end up being quite harmful to your son but do speak to a doctor or your school nurse if you are concerned because you’re likely to hear from someone with experience and not someone addled with orthorexic views.

And how many threads about Mounjaro? Bloody loads. So this works the opposite way too. Many people have forgotten what 'normal' or 'healthy' looks like.

But it does work like that! BMI is a calculation based on weight and height.

According to the NHS, a 9 year old child on the 91st centile for height and the 91st centile for weight, is around the 50th centile for BMI. I had a brief moment of doubting myself, so just checked!

I think one of your kids measurements is off. Either their height is lower than 90th centile or their weight is higher than 90th centile or you have got their BMI wrong.

They're only horrible if you equate size with value as a person and that fat = bad. This is your issue, not the posters I'm afraid.

No one is saying DC is bad / horrible / ugly / disgusting / mean / lazy / nasty.

Some of them are saying they are overweight / chubby / have belly overhang. These are objective statements about physical shape and size - they are not good / bad. They are just a description of reality.