How can I help my teen daughter lose weight

[Solentsolo]

I have a 17 year old daughter who has put on a lot of weight recently and is not happy about it. She asked me to help lose weight. She eats lots of healthy, unprocessed food. It’s the volume of food that’s an issue, not what she’s eating. She has always been a hungry child.

Im struggling to help her. I could point out that the cheese she’s having with her jacket potato is calorific so maybe she should have less, and no one needs 4 weetabix for breakfast, or the constant grazing on fruit during the day etc. I don’t think pointing it out is helpful. It’s nagging and might give her a complex.

shes going to uni hopefully next summer and will be moving out. What can I say to her to help her see that this has to come from her? That I can support her but unless she tried to exert a bit more control over how often she eats and minds her portion size, she’s going to struggle? Any tips?

I'd get her to start tracking eating and exercise - there are lots of online apps where you can do it easily. Do it for two weeks without actively changing anything so you can see what her base line is. Its going to reveal either that she's consuming more calories than she needs or that she shouldn't be gaining weight, in which case you've got good evidence for the GP appointment.

For me, it's always been portion size rather than the specific foods and tracking really helped me understand that.

50g of kidney beans = 4.5g protein, 11g carbs, 60 calories.

Hardly a deadly amount of carbs or calories and about 1/10th of the necessary daily protein for a person of 60kg.

See this is what annoys me. We’ve been to the GP before in the hope that she gets some blood tests, and they just trotted out the ‘just do more exercise’ line, not appreciating that she is incredibly active already. I might go back.

Where did you get that protein figure from? NHS again? The figures they use are simply to prevent protein deficiency, not for optimal health. To maintain muscle mass a person needs at the very least 1g of protein per kilo of body weight. To gain new muscle it should be 1.25g. 4.5g protein is neither here nor there really. It's not a bad thing to eat but it's not a significant amount of daily protein needs for anyone.

Don't bother the GP until you've got her to do a proper food diary and worked out her TDEE. Being active doesn't mean a person can't eat above their TDEE. You're hearing hooves and thinking zebras, not horses. She's almost definitely eating slightly above her TDEE on a daily basis.

And ignore the faddy advice here about not having jacket potatoes with cheese and salad, or not eating peas and beans. Portions are important but she shouldn't need to be cutting perfectly normal food out. It's much easier to lose weight when you are young and active, with a few tweaks to diet. I suspect it's going to be adjusting portion sizes and a few swaps as it was for me at that age. And it doesn't have to be diet perfection. I am a healthy weight at 50, cholesterol, blood pressure, resting heart rate, blood sugar all good, and eat crisps and chocolate in moderation, drink alcohol and have a takeaway every Friday.

Can you pinpoint what changed just before she started gaining weight?
snacking on fruit and vegetables isn’t the calorie free option that a lot of people think, depending on what shes having.
If nothing else has changed maybe it’s as straightforward as portion control

Look into a low carb diet. I’d be more worried about the potato not the cheese, same with weetabix, both lack any real nutrition. Same with the advice to use skimmed milk. A low fat diet is very outdated advice.

Have a look at the ketogenic diet. But basically reduce carbs and eat good quality proteins and fats.

Hello, I gained a lot of weight at 19 which was dismissed for ages by doctors. It turned out I had serious thyroid issues, I would ask to get that checked especially if her diet and exercise haven't changed.

you can't out train a bad diet but if she exercises 2 hours a day then she's also probably hungry! If she's exercising to that extent then she probably needs proper nutritionist advice, I definitely wouldn't advocate low carb or she'll be passing out!
Have you tried tracking everything she eats in my fitness pal or similar? You need to be very honest about it and weigh portions of everything.

The British Nutrition Foundation RNI value which is deemed adequate for meeting the nutritional protein needs of 97.5% of the healthy population.

0.75g protein per kg of weight.

Clearly we disagree here but either way beans and peas are not something that should need to be avoided or chosen over other carbs (cereals/starches) by a 17 year old who exercises for 2 hours a day in order for her to lose weight. I’m sure we can agree on that.

Calories in vs calories out.
It doesn't matter what type of food she is eating, if you eat too much of ANYTHING that your body doesn't burn you gain weight.

If she is comfortable doing this, maybe you could get her to log what she eats over a week, just to see how many calories she is consuming a day. Then she can reduce them slowly until she is in a deficit and she will lose weight.

For example, if you know you maintain a weight of say 10 stone eating 2000 calories a day, and you then reduce that to say 1800 cals you will start to lose weight.

Potato provides the majority of the UKs vitamin C intake btw. It’s low in fat, has minerals and fibre. It doesn’t lack nutritional value at all…

Is she going out with her friends a lot at weekends? My dds at that age would be going out a lot and drinking alcohol and getting cheesy chips on the way home etc, or snacks from the vending machines at school. It all adds up, particularly at 17 when they have usually stopped growing so they tend to ‘fill out’ a little more.

See your role as educator not the food police - show her what a balanced meal looks like and how her hunger can be satisfied in healthier ways. If she is hungry she should eat, but she needs to understand which foods help nourish hunger and keep cravings under control, and which foods will not.

Understand too that exercise increases hunger so it’s really important that she is choosing low calorie foods that she can eat in high volumes in order to meet her needs.

I never said they should. I just said they aren't a particularly good source of protein, which they aren't.

Thanks. I think that ‘change in role’ is a useful way of thinking about it.

Start with her just logging what she is eating and when.

Fruit can be high in sugar, fruit juice is so high it is recommended to only have a max of 1 glass a day.

I love soft fruits, melon, mango etc but they are quite high in sugar compared to say an apple.

Does she graze? I think many teens do so they don't learn how to recognise hunger. Can she go two hours between meals and snacks?

Introduce regular meal and snack times so maybe:

7.00am breakfast
10.00am snack
12.00pm lunch
4.00pm snack
6.30pm dinner

Yet another demonstration of how insane it is to ask for dietary advice on MN 🤯

She doesn’t need to start cutting out entire food groups, “low carbing”, inducing ketone poisoning or avoiding perfectly sensible nutritious foods like cheese, potatoes and pulses. She doesn’t need to calculate her TDEE or start counting every calorie at 17 either. It’s depressing to see once again how many MNers are firmly locked into a lifetime of toxic diet culture, and are happily setting their daughters on the same path.

Just support her to watch her portion sizes, make sure she’s drinking enough water and eating enough protein - and enough good food generally - to support her exercise and keep her satisfied so she doesn’t turn to junk food too often to fill a gap. She’s probably stopped growing and will even out over the next couple of years anyway.

This was me 40 odd years ago but what my mum didn’t know was I would polish off a packet of crisp &/or bar of chocolate in between the bus stop and home most days! And if I was out with friends at the weekend, we’d invariably end up in a wimpy or equivalent. And whilst standing the kitchen waiting for my toast, I’d eat a slice of buttered bread…not hard to see why I put in weight but my mum was
perplexed. If she’s doing two hours exercise a day, eating a healthy diet with plenty of fruit and veg & there’s no medical issue, there’s some eating going on out of sight that’s she either hiding or just not considering properly.

Would she be open to doing a Programme with a nutritionist? To learn health eating and about regulating here eating and not controlling it?
It would likely be expensive but in the long term could help her a lot.
Agree that high protein is definitely helpful.

Carbs make you hungry. Get her to try something like a cheese and tomato omelette in the morning instead of cereal. A low carb diet would shift the weight and stop her from feeling hungry all the time.

More water, more protein. And walking everywhere you can, even if it seems far at first.

I'm a volume eater too so I sympathise - a small plate of something, however nutritious, just doesn't do it for me! Try and load up the plate with protein and lots and lots of veg to make the meal plentiful and allow lots of mouthfuls. I love broccoli so I use almost a whole head when I'm making dinner - it really helps trick my brain into thinking I've eaten a large portion. Try and get her to eat protein first, veg next, carbs last.

Is there anywhere you habitually drive to that could be walked instead? Leaving 20 minutes earlier to walk to one of her clubs for example? If you walk together it'll seem like much less of a chore

If she's actually asking for help, I don't think pointing out 4 Weetabix is probably double what she needs is nagging but I get why you're reluctant to seem like you are criticising her. Not maybe while she's eating but cereal especially is easy to over do, the portion sizes they base the serving suggestions on are tiny!

Has she recently gone on the pill, that could be affecting her? Also at 17 she is probably maturing out of the young girl, can eat anything to her more adult body where you do need to be more mindful. I remember constantly being at the tuck shop as a young teen and skinny as anything, then suddenly finding around 20 that I couldn't do that.

So don’t police her food - I’d hate that.
Sit down with her and work out her TDEE. Tell her she needs to eat less that that on a consistent basis to lose weight. And she needs to measure and weigh things to see what an actual serving size is. Cut down on snack - or what helps me is preparing snack in advance, say 100 calories of this or that, and have those available.
Then perhaps suggest you go for a daily walk together? Or a something a bit more active?