Overweight children, is it some kind of personality thing??

[mummyloveslucy]

Hi, my daughter is slightly over weight. My DH and I are healthy weights. My daughter from a baby has always had a huge appetite. She's now 8 years old and is constantly hungry and whining for food. She doesn't like to exercise either. My DH and I are very active and take her on lots of walks etc, but she huffs and puffs and keeps saying she's tired, her legs hurt etc.
When I was a child, I was constantly running about, playing actively etc and eating was something that had to be done, but interrupted my play. This was nothing to do with the way I was bought up. My brother was the opposite. He was like my daughter and was overweight, more so than her.

Today, I saw a very overweight child of about 3 in a push chair saying to her mum "I'm hungry" the mum said "but you've only just had breakfast". This made me think, is it some sort of personality thing in some children? Everyone tends to blame the parents for their over weight children, but if they had a child who was constantly hungry and hated exercise what would they do?

There was that Horizon programme on this a few months ago. Babies who don't gain enough weight in the womb are born with higher levels of the hunger hormone to compensate

She's not too keen on porridge but will eat Ready break...with sugar, or honey.

I'll have a look for agave nectar

Give it her plain if she is hungry she would eat it. Putting sugar/ honey/ sweetener on food encourages overeating.

She likes egg on toast, but only eats porridge in the form of ready break... with sugar.
I will try some of that agave nectar, it does sound good.

Mean Mummy!

Also, make sure nice food isn't always around. I buy nice stuff but once it runs out it's fruit, veg, peanut butter and rice cakes. If dc don't want that, they're obviously not hungry!

I didn't think my last post worked, so I typed it again. I hate it when that happens!

Yes thats right

porridge is filling, try that. Some people here are confused about the difference between complex carbs (Slow release, filling) and simple ones (quick sugar hit).

complex carbs are pasta, rice, wholemeal bread, porridge: 'starchy foods'.

your daughter doesn't like walks - kids have no interest in scenery. Is there something she might enjoy? Swimming? Watersports? Climbing? (random ideas)

Ds1 isn't particularly sporty, but he's recently started trampolining classes and loves it!

Pasta is difficult, not filling (and I eat wholemeal) so ds1 will eat a lot of it. Definitely wholemeal better though, have you tried Brown rice? White rice, pasta, bread are definitely too easy to overeat and not feel full.

Nature/nurture and peer group all play a huge part in a child's weight IME.

I'm by nature slimmer than my DSIS, although I probably ate more as a child. I was more active and had an active group of friends who swam and cycled a lot.

DSIS had a more sit about chatting sort of peer group as a teen.

DD1 likes her food and likes reading and singing. She does active things with rangers etc, but not every week.

DD2 finds food really boring, often doesn't bother finishing. She also dances, does gymnastics and every other sports club going. Her peer group are as bad doing athletics, swimming etc. to a high standard. They never sat still at primary and they still don't.

If I had a child that was overweight and did not excercise I would take charge and make sure they ate sensibly and did some exercise.

I think it is a form of child abuse to let your young child get fat when they are at the age when the parents are controlling what they eat.

Cereal does not need added sugar. If she won't eat cornflakes etc then she would have to wait for the next meal here! YY to adding fruit but we really don't need to add sugar.

chunky I agree with you about the hormones. I'm generally pretty good at controlling my weight and have never been above the middle of healthy BMI. But when I took the Pill, I went from very slim to "normal" and gained the weight very quickly. It fell off when I stopped it. When I took hormonal drugs for IVF last year, I was putting on weight at a rate of 2 or 3 pounds a week during and for a few weeks afterwards. My appetite and ability to retain weight is definitely hormonal.

That's constructive, amothersplaceisinthewrong. Without having a dc like this, you don't know how hard it actually is.

We live in a society obsessed with food, "treats", sugar. Even if you are sensible as a parent, there's always birthday parties, sweets given as "rewards" even at school, relatives that seem determined to over feed your greedy child. I've actually fallen out with my dsis because she repeatedly loaded ds1 with crap even though I'd told her about my concerns.

Agree with brettgirl2, kids will not usually overeat if they don't particularly like what they're offered. I have 3 dc and they probably love every 3rd meal that thry get! If they don't eat it, no worries, they can have rice cakes or toast before bed. My 3 are all average weight but I'm sure ds2 would be huge if he actually liked what he was offered every time!

So eg cereal - if yr dd is hungry she'll eat it without sugar/honey etc but prob not as much cos its not as appetising. IMO a mistake to try to make food sweet to be appetising.
In my house sugary cereal only allowed on wknds!

I've recently changed my diet a bit and have cut back on sugar and after a fairly short while your palate changes and you realise how sweet many foods already are - I eat bran flakes with just milk and they taste sweet to me.
If she is hungry - try offering a wider range of snacks to find something she likes - my DD enjoys raw carrot/cucumber/most fruit and recently I've been trying her with unsalted nuts and she likes (some) of those too.

But I think some people do find themselves more drawn to food than others for whatever the reason.

Definitely no sugary cereal, it's not real food, may as well give them cake for breakfast.

I agree with plain food. Sometimes ds1 will love dinner and have seconds, but I balance it with boring dinners he may not finish. Food is about nourishment after all (then I get to eat cake when they're in bed!)

If mine say they're hungry then I'll tell them what's for the next meal. It's good to be hungry for a meal, everything tastes better when you've got a good appetite.

Snacks such as oatcakes, fruit, plain nuts and seeds are fine as long as we're not eating a meal in the next couple of hours. Junky stuff like bakery or chocolate is occasionally and after the main meal when everyone's basically full already.

It's such a shame that extra sugary cereals, foods and drinks are marketed for dcs, they'll happily eat porridge and plainer cereals like weetabix if that's what they're given.

Exactly. I've bought sugar cereal about 3 times in dc's lives and they're 7 and 4. It's so wrong that this type of food is seen as normal.

Sainsburys used to have a sign saying 'children's cereal' above all the sugary stuff, and 'adult cereal' above the plainer stuff. Not sure if they still do. At what age are the dcs supposed to magically stop eating cocopops?

There's absolutely a genetic component. DS is like this - borderline obsessed with food, always asking for more, eats huge portions if he can get his hands on them (he's 3.10 so I control his diet mostly but can be difficult if we are eg, at a party, to control him without making food an issue). DD likes food but is happy to stop. They were born different.

DS is happy running around but I wouldn't say he was naturally sporty and active. When I say he eats a lot people say "Oh but I bet he's always running around isn't he?" and the truth is, no, not really. He does football and swimming but really that's only max two hours a week so it can't really counteract the lack of activity at school. We do try to do active things at the weekend but again I feel we are slightly fighting an uphill battle.

Anyway, the point of my thread is to say that yes, there are children like this and no it's not fair on them but yes, you have to manage it more than you would for a normal child. The normal advice about being active and making healthy choices doesn't really help when your child is extremely interested in food. I watch his intake very carefully and our everyday food is pretty plain and minimal to compensate for the times when I don't have total control.

Here's an example - he had dinner at home on Friday (can't remember what but it would have been a smallish portion of eg chicken casserole) then we went to a friend's house to pick up DD from a party. Friend's mum offered DS a piece of cake and some leftover pizza from the party. I can't complain about that - it's a normal thing to do for a normal child but for my child it's a problem. I allow him to have some but he wants a huge slice of cake and half a pizza! I cut off an inch square piece of cake and an inch of pizza from the pieces he'd been given - cue huge meltdown. My job at this point is just to ignore the meltdown and insist that he has the smaller amount. You do end up having to intervene every day and it is exhausting. My point is, it's not as easy as the healthy eating messages we are given. Some children are just more demanding around food and in consequence you have to set more boundaries than is normal.

Quangle, that's exactly my experience. Ds1 is much easier to handle now, thank goodness, and I instruct him in advance to be polite and eat a sensible amount. That's still more than others, though!

I know I've already mentioned it, but Ellyn satters book did really help us with changing our attitude to ds eating.

I remember having sugar on cereal as a child, but don't allow DSs to have any except on porridge, and then it is limited. There is a lot of sugar eg in branflakes, but it will take a while to get used to the taste without.

I am lucky in that both are active with no weight issues, but they do eat a lot. Rarely do they have snacks, but I notice that DS2 is often hungry (he would say starving to death) when he is bored.

Good on you for trying to deal with this - I know it's not easy.

My experience is that my dc sometimes say they're hungry when they're basically not sure what to do next. If I find them something to do rather than food then they forget they were hungry.
Or "I'm hungry" is a good one to put off something they don't want to do (like bedtime, homework...)
And that they get into a habit. If they come home from a club and say "I'm hungry, I need something to eat" and I let them, then they are much much more likely to do the same the next week.