DH is driving me mad giving junk food to the kids

[UPFoff]

I am an average weight, fairly healthy eater and DH is not. He was a very overweight child who then shot up to really tall as an adult. He’s still overweight but he’s also very active and very muscular so carries it well. He has disordered eating, and will happily starve himself all day then eat junk at night.

SD10 is overweight (98th centile) and it’s a constant battle to get her to exercise. I do most of the cooking here and she’ll eat whatever is served including salads and vegetables. She’s increasingly aware of her body and compares herself unfavourably to her smaller cousin. Despite all this, when DH puts a bowl of chocolate on front of her or takes her to McDonald’s, of course she eats it all! He definitely shows love through “treats.”

Our DD, just turning two, is 91st centile. She’s active and healthy, and eats well, but I’m increasingly having arguments with DH about him sneaking her chocolate or juice.

I just fear he’s setting them both up to be overweight when they’re older and it is infuriating.

Am I fighting a losing battle because they’re destined to be big anyway?

Any tips to get DH on side?

What did he say when you discussed it with him?

My DH does this as well @UPFoff , and I sympathise. For me, the problem is it means I can’t treat the children myself because DH will. I’ve tried to discuss it with him (as the poster above rather passively aggressively points out) and he just ignores it. I wish I knew the answer.

BMI 90th range or weight? Because those are two very different things.

As a society, most of us have lost perspective on what’s healthy and normal.

I think you're setting your daughters up for a negative relationship with food by even knowing their 'centiles'? How do you even know their weights? I thought centiles were only for tracking baby weight in the first year. 'battling' to make her exercise won't help. It needs to be a fun part of your family life, doing active hobbies together, not focusing on exercise for weight loss. I think most important your DH gets some therapy for his disordered eating so he can not have a negative effect on his daughters.

How often is he doing it? Is your step daughter actually overweight because her BMI is 98th percentile or are height and weight roughly in proportion?

A 2YO having an occasional juice or bit of chocolate as part of an otherwise healthy and balanced diet is fine… Just like an occasional McDonalds for a 10YO that happily eats veg and salad sounds normal enough. There is a school of thought that believes making these things out to be bad or forbidden is more likely to lead to eating issues/bad diet etc. because the kids then want them more. Talk to him about it. There’s probably a middle ground somewhere.

I used DD’s red book and the NHS website to work out the centiles and BMI. I know their heights because we draw them on the doorframe and their weights because we have electric scales in the bathroom and when SD weighs herself it brings up an unregistered weight on the app (and DD because she copies me). I’m not making a big deal of it or talking to them about it, just saying that factually SD is overweight and DD is close to it. SD is often out of breath and is visibly overweight. DD is, at the moment, a chunky toddler.

I don’t think either of them will ever be skinny because it’s not their natural shape, but I want them to have a healthy attitude to food.

He does it with SD all of the time she’s here, and increasingly with DD because she’s now able to ask for treats. He often does it when I’m not around.

When my dc were little there wasn’t the huge thing about healthy eating and sugar. We had snacks around the house they could help themselves to.

They range in age from 36 to 19. None of them are overweight, none of them are interested in sugar. Denying it all isn’t a good way to go.

As a family what do you do on weekends that encourage everyone to be active? Going for a walk, taking the kids swimming or going to the park.

Food wise do you keep treats in? How often can they be given out in your opinion? What happens if you don't buy them?
I remember when I was younger we would buy a bottle of fizzy on the Saturday and then once it was gone that was it until the next week. Biscuits we had to ask if we were allowed. Takeaway never happened, but this is where I think things have changed and it has become a more regular thing for some households rather than a special occasion.

I’m not denying it all, I’m happy for both kids to have homemade cake and cookies and so on, SD loves baking and trying new recipes. I am not happy for DH to pick up fifteen supermarket doughnuts on the way home and then for them to scoff them all in an evening.

That’s helpful 🤣

OP I have this problem. I haven’t found anything that works. As my children have got older they have naturally taken More interests in their health and weight and the teaching about healthy eating they get at school had a big impact too.

I would try not to worry- this generation are SO superior to our eating disordered obese test generation pumped full of advertising and cheap food. They love gym and magnesium. There is hope!

DH has a very active job and plays sports twice a week, I run twice a week. DD does dance weekly. We used to have SD in various sports clubs but she’s hated all of them and DH has agreed she can stop. Every weekend day I try to get them out to the park, soft play, bike ride etc but after his active week, DH prefers to stay home and SD will always stay home if she’s allowed.

Because it’s a step situation, DH gets the last word with SD.

When I talk to him about the junk, he agrees. But then he buys more. I can’t have treats in the house without him eating them, I have to hide Christmas or Halloween sweets for instance.

If your husband is really tall wouldn’t you expect the children to be too. Centiles for weight and height should be roughly the same, eg 90th centile for height could be 95th for weight or 85th.

Thank you, do you have girls? My concern is both of them are clearly naturally on the higher end of normal weight and I don’t want them to have lifelong struggles with food and weight like DH and SD’s mum do.

Both girls are average height. They might shoot up in puberty like DH did I suppose.

You still seem to be muddling weight and BMI. What are their BMIs? There is no utility at all to talking about weight centiles. My DD was 90+ for weight her whole childhood but off the charts for height. And has always been very healthy in terms of BMI.

And out of breath implies unfit, which is a worry that exercise should be used to address. Adukts can't run away from a bad diet but exercise has a bigger effect with kids. Long walk to school or cars all the way?

My DH is a feeder and he does it to all of us. I surfaced that to DD using the dog of all things. "Daddy is a feeder so poor Fluffy needs lots of runs and no treats from the rest of us". She notices he does it to her too.

If he eats crap there's probably no way to keep it out of the house unfortunately.

Please bin the scales. We never had scales in my house growing up, and it was the single best thing for my body confidence and attitude to food. I would never have scales in the house. The idea of a 2- year old copying you weighing yourself just absolutely breaks my heart.

Yes. They are both obese and I have just taken them out of the school nurse weigh in as I don’t want DD to be embarrassed.

my DH is also very tall (6”6) and well built and they have wide shoulders and rib cages. They’ve had to fight to be a normal weight from the beginning tbh. My elder is thinning out a bit with puberty
my priority has always been to avoid giving them disordered eating it’s absolutely endemic in my generation. So I don’t say much. DH does give them huge amounts of junk- he does it because it’s how he shows love. It’s not mentally or physically healthy but we’re all complicated, right? 😂

You are right to be concerned as it is patterns set in childhood that typically set the scene for life

your husband has disordered eating that affects his weight and will likely affect his life span and general health and he is passing that onto your children which is close to child abuse in my book

fat children become fat and unhealthy adults - you would not make a
child smoke or drink alcohol but feeding crap is somehow ok?

does he need help to at least understand his habits are wrong and bad ?

It's not about individuals though. Plenty of people in the world eat junk all day every day, and are fine, apparently healthy and / or slim.

But on average then population is getting fatter. Some people just don't have the genes to self-manage their weight. If there is a tendency for obesity and lack of control around food in the family, then probability that it will affect the children one way or another is much higher.

OP's husband isn't teaching them good food habits, he's teaching them to use overloads of sweets and fatty food as a self-reward.

If you look on the NHS BMI calculator for children, it gives centiles, not the number like it does on the adult one. SD is 45kg at 140cm which it says is 98 centile, which is in the overweight range.

SD gets driven to school and no longer does any active extracurriculars. I’m aware this is her parents’ choice but I don’t want DD to go the same way because of DH’s attitude.

I weigh myself about twice a month and DD and I talk about numbers. It’s really not a big deal or a bad thing to be aware of your weight.

Well OP says she is "increasingly having arguments with DH" so I would imagine along the lines of him denying he's doing what he's doing.

He agrees with me whenever I raise it, but it doesn’t change his behaviour.

I do all of the food shopping and most of the cooking but I can’t control him stopping off on his way home from work, or taking the girls to the shop when I’m out.

Then this is where it becomes a DH problem. Have you properly spoken to him about the effects of poor diet and no exercise for SD?
Secondary school can be cruel. I always remember a boy coming up to me in DT, grabbing me round the waist and saying 'how fat are you?'. I wasn't even fat, just average. This memory has stayed with me though. I am someone who is not ever going to be thin (can't resist treats every time, don't exercise enough and actually just genetically take after other family members with a similar body shape). I think you need a word with DH about the impact though this could have on SD self esteem and that giving her these treats might be a temporary way to happiness but in the long term could lead to negative body image.