Daughter getting fat in school

[joey197860]

Teenage daughter has gained 22kg in new boarding school. No medical explanation for it and she's very happy, wrll integrated and academically excelling. School has a shop on site and girls have access to kitchen in the evenings. Daughter had major surgery last year and specifically should not eat sugar loaded food. What am I to do? I want to pull her from the school at the end of this term. The school is absolutely no help when I discussed this with them.

The OP has a previous thread about her daughter’s surgery.

Disordered eating would be if she was throwing up or using laxatives after a pig out. She could be I suppose without the OP knowing.

It could be this, quite normal for hormonal teenagers to enjoy a bit of pigging out and quite common for them to engage in the occasional purge, but if that becomes a habit and is done often then that's potentially harmful.

Binge eating disorder is - as you can tell by the name! - an eating disorder and does not necessarily involve purging. It's serious and harmful and very difficult to manage.

For further information @winkingjadeeye https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/get-information-and-support/about-eating-disorders/types/binge-eating-disorder/
The NHS also has information about BED and you'll see that purging is not part of this eating disorder.

You send her sugar free sweets - maybe a weekly postal order?

Ah, so basically overeating very often and quite a lot? I wonder if that could be caused by a hormone imbalance like a pituitary tumour?

It can develop as a response to restriction - a history of dieting or food deprivation can be contributing factors. It can be a response to feeling out of control of your life or worthless, it can be a desire to numb painful emotions with food, it might spring up out of having a lot of shame and guilt associated with food or certain types of food and there could also be contributory physical or hormonal factors.

As a person who worked in the are for a decade, you are wrong. Disordered eating takes many forms.

The hormone thing is so hard isn't it ! I remember as a teenager i would stuff myself with loads of junk alone in my room, I was always going out to buy more and more chocolate . I would often spend hours just grazing and grazing . It was like a weird kind of compulsion . I felt out of control doing it. I was diagnosed with a hormone disorder (PCOS) in my 20s but I had shown full blown symptoms since age 16. Perhaps all the gorging I did was a an early symptom, although PCOS doesn't develop in early childhood and come to think of it I remember as a young child I would steal food and gorge on it in secret . I would eat until I was stuffed. And as a teenager I would try and throw up from eating so much as I felt out of control and was always on a diet of some sort to counteract all the weight I was gaining.

You're describing very disordered eating. To some extent having a disordered relationship with food is completely normalised in our diet-obsessed culture so we don't always realise when it's happening, and a lot of us were taught to practice harmful habits in pursuit of thinness and it damaged our minds and bodies. It is terrifyingly easy to get caught up in a binge-restrict cycle and for that to escalate dangerously. It's important to recognise it for what it is and how common it is.

I have no idea if any of this applies to the OP's daughter, however, in her case the tumour history is obviously a big red flag and the cause might be physical rather than mental. But a 3.5 stone gain in four months is not something to blame on greed or a lack of self control; it's very concerning and points to something significant going on beyond enjoying a bit of junk food.

Is there a cure for this ? I am on drugs for the P COS which has caused me thyroid issues and deficiencies with vitamins and also diabetes in the past (I'm just pre diabetic now) but it hasn't taken away the mental health sense of compulsion . I've self harmed since a child and I wonder if this is an extension of that ?

This really won’t fix the issue. Sending a child with an eating disorder or hormonal imbalance sugar free sweets will not fix the root cause of what is clearly a very serious health issue (either mental or physical).

it needs medical assessment and intervention.

Bingeing and self harm do go together; bingeing can be a way of harming yourself. It's never too late to seek therapy. It isn't a quick or easy process, but it can help and you deserve to feel better. There are quite a few podcasts about this too - I find Christy Harrison very insightful on the subject.

Thanks. I had an obese friend I've known since we were at school (year 6) and she claims to have been diagnosed with this . I have been sceptical about it but now it seems that it's a real thing! I was worried about her dropping dead from a stroke as she is as big as me (25 stone ) and I see myself in her when I look at her and sometimes it turns my stomach . I feel bad that I've been having a go at her in my mind (never told her how I feel). sHe used to claim bizarre things (claiming her lovely parents were abusive ) so I just assumed this was one of those things .

Now I know, I will go to easier on her too and seek some therapy for myself. Thanks so much, I appreciate it .

apologies to @joey197860 for derailing, me-railing, really, your thread. Hope things get sorted with your DD.

Postal order? Do they still exist???

There are two reasons. Either it's health related (i.e. hormones or results of the surgery) or she's eating too much.

You need to get to the bottom of why and only then can you do something about it.

Trying to have the kitchen closed down overnight is about the most stupid thing I've ever heard. Why should all the other pupils suffer - the ones who don't have a medical issue and aren't over-eating?

Also just taking away eating options is absolutely the wrong thing to do and is likely to do more harm than good as it can lead to "secret" eating, binge eating, food theft, etc., often blighting someone's entire life (I speak from my own experience).

The core cause has to be worked out and then dealt with. Ideas such as closing the kitchen don't even begin to deal with the underlying problem. That kind of thing is just putting a sticking plaster over a broken leg.

Someone said it earlier in the thread, apparently based on another thread by the OP, that it had grown extremely rapidly over a short time period and had resulted in the removal of a 2.5k tumour and an ovary, and included a long horizontal incision. I don't know if that's correct and don't have time to go back through all the posts.

Can I ask why you seem so weirdly over-invested in this? You've posted about 20 times as many as the OP.

In leui of cheques? Yes they do.
Hope it's clear I meant it as an order by post through?? Which also exists.

How strange, I can’t remember the last time I wrote a cheque and probably haven’t seen a postal order in over 40 years! Probably easier for a child away at school to have money transferred to their bank account I would have thought. I like that they are still around though, makes me nostalgic for birthday cards from my granny that always contained a postal order ❤️

I assumed you meant a weekly sweet subscription over the internet.

which again sounds like an odd solution to what is a very serious issue.

sugar free sweets can be unhealthy. They also tend to be aimed at adults and diabetics. I really don’t see how they will solve this issue?

edited to say I used to read about postal orders in Mallory towers books many, many years ago😊. I had to google them to see if they still existed. I have never seen on in real life. I thought they went out with trunks full of tuck😂

I wouldn't know. My intended meaning was to suggest setting up a regular order of sugar free sweets to arrive by post.
Suggested from experience of supporting a sweet toothed family member at risk of diabetes.

Ah I get it now! Like a subscription service 😀

I agree! They are also less yummy.

But it all else is well is OP's DD they could help in phasing out other candy without feeling left out. Or not. It really is up to the OP.

And I have seen postal orders in real life - some people without bank accounts rely in them. Well done for knowing how to use Google though 👏🏻

Why so nasty?

Just grumpy. Sorry. Felt silly at getting pulled up for using postal order to mean arranging an order by post.

Also tetchy as my DSis had similar issues at that age due to having to take antibiotics dose up to age 16 following a serious illness. It was hard for her to be bigger than her friends at that age. Imagine it's ever harder for young women and girls today.

And thanks for not taking my grrrrr personally.