HV rant - my toddler is 'overweight'

[sleepcrisis]

Well clearly he's not, he looks totally normal to me and any sane person. My HV on the other hand is massive.

DS was born on 25th centile for both weight and height. His height has remained steady on the 25th but as soon as he started putting on weight it crept up to bang in the middle of 50-75 centiles at 6 months and has stayed there ever since.

HV at his 2 year check this week told me that such a discrepancy must be monitored and that I should cut down his sugar intake.

The boy has a massive head (99 centile) and always has. Surely that weighs a fair bit?

I have found myself doubting his diet! He does eat a huge amount of fruit, fresh and dried. HV commented on sugar content of fruit. HE also has a Ellas kitchen cereal bar every day or so. She was scathing. Other than that he loads of veg and a balanced diet with portion sizes roughly 1/4-1/3 and adult size ( I have in the past wondered if he eats enough but never forced him to eat more)

When I have a cake or an ice cream (probably every other day) he shares it with me but rarely has his own. Although he likes to think it is his own - I just make sure I eat 3/4 of it! SHould I cut this out? He clearly does have a sweet tooth but he very rarely has biscuits (toddler group only), never juice, never sweets. The HV was banging on about sugar and sweeties and biscuits etc - he never has them!

Am I in denial about DS's diet and should I be more concerned than I am?

Oh and the other thing she critisized was that he eats little and often - for example he has a barely there breakfast but then 2 morning snacks at 930 and 11. (a banana and then later a box raisins or more fruit). She told me to cut out all snacks and just give him 3 meals a day.

Disclaimer: I was on here about a month ago listing his food intake and questioning whether he eats enough. Clearly I was wrong about that.

Sorry, I don't mean to sound so antagonistic, I struggle to understand why people restrict their childrens food intake.

I don't ristrict his food intake he has semi skimmed because he likes milk and drinks lots of it but over the age of 2 they don't need full fat so I don't see the need in buying it.

Ds1 is lactose intolerant and didn't like any of the substitutes so didn't have any milk or milk products from the age of 2, as l

Posted too soon , as long as they are getting the calcium/vit etc in their diet they don't need milk.

He might be drinking a lot of it to get the fat. I think semi-skimmed for over 2s is daft. They need the fat, the vitamins are all in the fat.
Breastmilk actually gets fattier as the child gets older, I'm not going to start restricting how much of that my DC get. They need to self-regulate.

No I agree that milk is not as essential, but if you're going to give it to them, then give them real milk.

Well that's probably not true actually, I do restrict the amount of milk he drinks to some extent as he'd drink it all day long and not want to eat any meals, especially if he was drinking full fat.

In the same way I don't let h eat cake all day long because he wouldn't eat his meals

If you let him eat cake all day, every day for a month, you don't think he'd get fed up of it?
If he really drinks full fat to the exclusion of anything else, then perhaps he needs fattier meals?

If I gave him full fat id have to restrict it, or he wouldn't eat as he'd be too full.

If ds4 who is ebf at the moment was 2 and bf more than eating I'd be restricting how much he was bf as I'd prefer at that age for him to be having a balanced diet

No he'd just be too full with all the fluid to want to eat anything, nothing to do with needing the fat. Yes he might get bored of cake if I gave it him as much as he liked, then again he might not so I'm not going to try it.

If my daughter was bf more than I thought she should be, I'd look at what was missing from her food rather than restricting her milk iyswim.

There doesn't have to be anything missing from their meals, sometimes they just have a preference.

I don't think they'd prefer it if it wasn't what they needed nutritionally. Children do self-regulate. Like adults do if they haven't messed themselves up from dieting.

That's rubbish, noone eats only the foods that contain things they need, if that were the case we wouldn't have the odd bag of crisps or chocolate bar.

And ds1 wouldn't prefer to nip down the road for a kebab on a sat night istead of eating the food I've cooked.

my dc was born on the 98th centile and had dropped below the 25th century before he was 4 months old and has happily followed this trend since (i had to have medicines in pregnancy and was told they would make dc larger than he would have naturally been) I was quite happy with the centile dropping as I had been told to expect it but hv kicked up such a fuss and insisted on referring to the pediatrician at the local hospital.

when we saw the pediatrician she told me that they weren't particularly concerned about what centile a child is born on as they will naturally find their own 'line' within a few months and stay along that line.

they are only concerned (at my local hospital anyway) with sudden increases or decreases....
but I was told that hv follow a different protocol where if the increase / decrease is 2 centiles or more they have to take action...eg refer, monitor weight or something along those lines..

i

centile not century lol

Moomins, both crisps and chocolate contain some things that we need. If I found myself regularly craving crisps, I'd increase the carbs and salt in my general diet.

I'll need to remember that justification when I find myself constantly craving chocolate!

Me too! I have enough carbs and salt in my diet, I eat crisps because I like the taste.

Agree with Iwipe. Young Children are generally very good at self regulating. If thy want chocolate or milk all dy they probably need the fat.

Snacking isn't bad as seems to be being suggested on here. I snack all of the time and my dd needs feeding regularly too. Neither of us are obese and just because you snack doesn't mean you don't eat when you're hungry and stop. When you are full. I've always taken on far more calories in the morning than any other time of day. If I had breakfast then had to wait until lunch I simply wouldn't be able to function.

My hv would have a fit if I suggested ds3 needed more fat in his diet with the size of him. I think it's far more likely that he's missing his afternoon nap, is grumpy and over tied at the moment and is missing his bottle of milk at nap time. He thinks I'll relent and give him milk in his bottle.

Funnily enough he doesn't drink milk if we are out all day, or like last week when we were on holiday he only asked for some at bedtime.

As Sirzy said further down, offering 3 good meals a day is hardly "restricting calorie intake". It's simply ensuring that the good nutrition offered at the meals is taken up rather than displaced by nutritionally empty foodstuffs such as squash and biscuits. Especially when you're dealing with very small people, it's important that they get nutrients in everything.

And no, IWipe, most people don't get fat from "binge eating", whatever that is. They get fat from consistently, day in, day out, eating 100 cals too many for their activity level and body size.

No, duchesse, they don't. Of course if you have something to back that up I'll read your references.

Ok, Here's one article. Shall I look for more?

Here's another- the ways you gain weight all boil down to taking in too many absent-minded calories.

Is that your evidence?