Helping to control weight with 8 year old

[fairy1303]

My 8 year old DSD has, over the last 18 months put on a lot of weight. She does do exercise - trampolining, swimming, brownies and walking to school etc, but her eating is ridiculous,

She will throw tantrums at the dinner table when her portion is smaller than me and her Dads - we have to explain that she has less because adults, men etc need more but she will literally sit at the table sobbing.

I don't have any crap in the house - we eat pretty healthily, mostly vegetarian and I'm doing slimming world so the family eat that too.

She has packed lunch most days and always really healthy.

But she is fixated - last night she had a friend round, I gave them breaded fish and homemade slimming world chips, with carrots for a treat, fruit salad for pudding. When me and her dad sat down to homemade soup she stared whist fully at it - 'oooohhh soup, I LOVE soup, my favourite, I wish I conld have some... Etc etc.

I don't know what to do, I was overweight as a child and my mum was forever saying 'you don't need that' - it gave me a complex and I don't want the same for her but she is self conscious about her weight and is much bigger than the other girls in her school - she is in size 10-11 and these are bordering on too small, at 8. Any advice?

How much is she drinking? I'd give her a drink of water after her meal and tell her she can have another serving after 20 minutes. It will give her stomach chance to show that it's full.

The thing is - she doesn't stop when she is full. She normally has a drink with food - but generally, she will eat and eat until I make her stop. I don't know how to approach it without upsetting her or giving her a complex

What sort of thing does she enjoy doing? could you arrange for her to do thing after food, so she has a reason to stop eating? horse riding (£££ I know), swimming, cycling with you etc?

I'm going to suggest something you won't like!

She's 8, and active, growing fast. She doesn't need an adults idea of a "healthy" diet, based on flawed official advice about what we should be eating (ie low fat, low protein and huge amounts of sugar (I mean carbohydrate in all it's forms, not just table sugar).

We all need fats and protein, kids even more so... On a low fat "healthy" diet, you may get plenty of calories but be starving for vitamins (many are in the fat), and carb heavy diets can make you constantly hungry (some people are more affected by this than others).

A breakfast of scrambled eggs would be much more nutritious than toast or cereal for example, and Avocado is a great way to add healthy fats to the diet.

Your Dd may be obsessing about food because she is actually hungry and putting on weight because her diet is too carbohydrate heavy (sorry but usually that's what people tend to mean when they say "really healthy diet).

Absolutely NOT meaning to cause offence saying that, I speak as someone who really can't handle a lot of carbs without getting very very hungry, put on a huge amount weight eating a "healthy" low fat diet... Now I base my diet around vegetables, fats and animal protein (including fish,eggs and cheese), I'm not hungry and have lost over 6 stones that's been with me since I was about 10yo.

I have been told many times that protein keeps off hunger.

Could you try getting her to meal plan with you, show her how much of each thing we should have (there is a way of doing it based on your fist, so adult fist larger than child's fist)

Then the deal is that you all eat the plan, and that is it.

Do you usually eat together? I wonder if she wants to eat twice because she wants to sit down with you and dh

Yes give her more meat - she's growing and needs need not vegetarian stuff - unless you're packing in decent legumes and dairy plus eggs?

Creature - She is not vegetarian - it's just that I am so mostly we eat veggie -lots of lentils, quorn, tofu etc apart from a couple of times a week when I might make her and DH fish or chicken etc.

She also has chicken in her sandwiches and meat if we go out.

Definitely something to look into though, to be honest I hadn't actually considered that, thanks