I think dd2 may be deliberatly not eating as much

[NervousNutty]

She is 9 and up to now has always had a good appetite.

She is in no way fat at all, but I think she has noticed that where her sister is like a bean pole, she is more curvy.

She has been a bit off her food for a while now, and also miserable. I had blood tests done and all of those came back fine.

Yesterday she asked me if there were calories in vegetables. I asked why she wanted to know and she said she just did. I said yes there are, but calorie content is not something she needed to be worrying about.

I asked if she'd gone off food because she was worried about eating too many calories and she said no. I alos asked her if anyone at school had said anything to make her go off certain foods and again she said no.

I told her again that this isn't something she needs to be thinking about and that she can eat what she likes. She said she just doesn't like certain things anymore.

I don't know what to think. Dd is a pretty complex character. she overthinks things to the point of obsession and once she gets an idea into her head she is hard to convice otherwise. She had previously suffered from handwashing OCD.

I am worried that this might be her new obsession, but at the same time I don't want to make a big deal out of it because that might make it worse.
I am going to try and keep track of what she is and isn't eating and see if she is avoiding certain foods, but other than that should I just keep quiet for now ??

Does she like helping you to cook? I wonder if cooking together will ehlp her to talk to you about it. Sometimes with dd, I'll throw in a 'carrots are really cool cos they have betacarotene in them and that.....' or 'this does have a little bit of fat in it but fat is a really important part of our diet because it....' as we are cooking. Would that approach work?

It's definatly worth a try kitten. I am not the worlds greatest cook, but I can give it a go.

She is still eating chocolate and sweets so thats good iykwim. She won't eat chips though now although did say she would if they were like mcdonalds chips

I try to give them a varied diet and make sure they have veg etc, but it is getting hard to find stuff that she will eat and I am of the 'i cook one meal and thats it' brigade and so sometimes she ends up leaving half of her plate.

She has a school dinner, but when I asked her what she had yesterday she said a piece of chicken and that was it. She said they had peas but she no longer likes them, and they had wedges which she also won't eat anymore.

Thankfully she is still as in love as ever with a bacon sandwich.

Could you read up together on healthy eating - including of course things that say 9yo need more fat while they're still growing - and talk about how you can put these things into practice together? She sounds like she is smart enough and determined enough to decide to do something, and do it, so I don't think you'll get far by telling her she needn't worry about that sort of thing.

I'd agree she probably shouldn't worry about it, but she sounds like someone who will worry, so your best tack may be to subvert her worries into making a sensible healthy eating plan.

Yes thats a good idea too, thanks