Put my daughter on a diet - advice would be welcome from parents who have done the same.

[dexiedoo]

My daughter (12.5years is overweight and it is concerning me, so, I have decided to put her on a diet/healthy eating regime. I will be doing it with her (But following weightwatchers).

Today is her first day, do any of you wise mumsnetters have any idea what I do to be encouraging?

Over the past few weeks I have started increasing the amount of exercise she does and I'm stopping snacking etc in between meals and bulking with fresh veg and salads.

Any more ideas would be welcome

Sometimes you feel like you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Often as not by parents who aren't really providing much different by way of exercise or food but who simply have kids who aren't prone to put on weight.
As far as I can see the only difference between DD and her skinny friends is that they eat a lot more chips, crisps, biscuits and chocolate.

It is difficult when they are still growing I think. My DS2 has got very tubby in the last 6 months without seemingly eating any more or differently than he did previously and not having any change in exercise. He is 8 and his brother did the same thing at the same age but has slimmed out considerably in the last year as he has shot up in height. I reckon it might be related to do with a height growth spurt. So, the first question I would want to ask is has your DD grown in height recently and has she always been overweight or is that a recent thing?

Secondly I wouldn't do diets either. 90% of diets in adults who have control over what they eat fail - a child who doesn't have that control over their life is not going to do any better.. No/low cal artificial sweetners as they just make you hungrier (you still crave sweetness without ever being filled up by what you eat so you eat some more anyway).

I would be trying, as a family, to do follow the principles of only eating when you are hungry, eating slowly and consciously, stopping when you are no longer hungry but still having a little of what it is you actually want. If you want chocolate, you have chocolate but eat it slowly and stop when you are no longer hungry. These are the rules of the Paul McKenna eating plan by the way although I wouldn't be folllowing any eating plan with a 12 year old, just using them as a guideline for commonsense eating. (I am not suggesting the plan for your DD as I wouldn't be doing the hyponosis CD thing - that is being a little too focussed on food for a child imo, making too much of an issue with it and it is only helping to reinforce the 'rules' anyway . However, imo it is much better for you than doing WW and would save you a shed load of money in the process but usefulness of WW another thread really). What happens is that by making conscious choices you always think twice about whether you should be eating at all and then about what it is you really want to eat. Do you actually want to eat chocolate when you know there are other things that are better for you - if you consciously chose then sometimes you are going to refuse the chocolate, but not always. By realising you have a choice nothing is forbidden but you learn to listen to your body and treat it better. It is not an easy thing to learn as an adult with years of poor eating choices behind you but it would be a good thing for a child to learn.

I think a whole-family-being-healthier approach (change4life?) is better than a diet.

I wish I knew what to do for DSD though, 13, quite noticeably overweight. We do a lot here but it's sabotaged at home as her mum insists on feeding them crap. And yet other DSD (twins) is terribly underweight, has virtually none of the food she can eat (allergy) because her mum won't get it, and then complains she doesn't eat. Funny, she eats like a horse at ours (healthy stuff)

Sidge (your name always makes me smile because DD's nickname is Smidge :)) - d'you mind if I ask, was your DD actually diagnosed with PWS at 9m? I didn't know it could be picked up so young.

If you rephrased as together we are going to eat more healthily and pay more attention to portions rather than I am going to PUT my DD on a diet I think you'd have got a more sympathetic response.

It seems like what you are doing is actually the first thing, so that's good. I think learning about what your body needs vs what you want but don't need is good education. :)

The trouble with food choices in relation to kids isn't (IME) so much the odd chocolate, its the staples. DD simply won't choose wholegrain rice or pasta, and rarely wholemeal bread. She won't choose to eat a wide variety of veg because there's only a few she likes. She won't eat fish for love nor money. Makes it hard to do the 'whole family eating healthily' thing when DH and I like brown rice, fish and veg and she simply will not eat it.

I think I was brought up with a healthy attitude to food because it was never an issue. We were made aware that our parents could only afford a certain amount of food and that had to be eaten or we would starve. My mum and dad are both very good cooks so they made a lot out of a little and it was put in front of us without comment and taken away without comment no matter whether we ate it or not. No alternatives were offered. Mealtimes were stress free because no one was monitoring anyone else and there was no fighting - if someone said "I don't like it!" the answer was "ok there are bananas in the bowl" and that was it. Chocolate was a treat provided every Friday by my gran.

I think the more you stress about it the more your children will pick up on that and feel stressed themselves. My advice would be to just buy the healthier stuff, offer it and if your children don't like it then offer a piece of fruit and don't engage in arguments, bribing or monitoring. Food only becomes a real problem when it has an emotional element attached and IMO that usually starts when parents turn it into a battlefield and a source of shame for the child.

fuzzpig she was actually diagnosed at 4 weeks!

She was very poorly at her (premature birth) and they knew she had something wrong but weren't sure what. She had all the tests under the sun and at 2 weeks a neurologist recommended testing for PWS - they sent the bloods off and 2 weeks later we had the results.

They are much better at diagnosing PWS these days, I'm in touch with quite a few families who received diagnoses at a very young age. Historically they didn't have the sophisticated genetic tests available hence the much later diagnoses 10-20 years or more ago (if at all)

(Sorry for the thread hijack)

Sounds easy.

With a secondary age child, if you just buy the 'healthy' stuff and its not their choice, then they'll snack when they are with friends and eat what they want at school.

I think once they reach secondary age your control over their eating is over. You can offer them healthy stuff at home and hope they'll eat it but you can't stop them snacking outside the house. Trying to control their food intake will not go down well and will actually lead to more problems I think. If they come to you and ask for help to lose weight, fair enough, but if you put pressure on them without them asking for help then all they will hear is that their own mother thinks they're fat and not good enough. I know that's not what you mean, and you only have their best interests at heart but when it comes to appearance the only correct stance to take with teenagers is a neutral or positive one IMO (unless they're actually causing themselves physical harm of course).

Also I've tried the banana thing and she just ends up asking for more and more and more bananas - so it's really not as simple as it may seem.

I have to agree that we're all probably trying to do the right thing but some children are more prone to overeat and be less active and therefore overweight, and that gives us a series of very hard choices. ie - bang on about food all the time and make the issue even bigger OR pretend it's not happening and risk them getting seriously overweight OR spend a huge amount of time jollying along with healthy choices and family exercise. Obviously I try to do the last one (as I think everyone on here with this problem does) - but it is a long and thankless job. It's really not as easy as controlling what they eat and making them do exercise - especially with the vast amount of crap food easily available these days. Thankfully my DD is still too young to buy her own snacks after school and I'm hoping to head off the problem before she gets to that age, but what on earth do you do when they can?

Incidentally I'm another one with one very active, slim child who eats plenty and one lethargic one who is constantly asking for food but not working it off - so the family environment is only part of the issue.

Ever looked into the MEND programme?! Google it, fantastic programme with good results taking a whole lifestyle approach

Incidentally I'm another one with one very active, slim child who eats plenty and one lethargic one who is constantly asking for food but not working it off - so the family environment is only part of the issue.

For sure; I have two brothers - they ate the same, and had similar activity levels. Yet one was obese, the other painfully skinny. They evened up a bit when they reached adulthood, thank goodness, but Big Bro has to watch his weight while Skinny Bro can eat pie and chips with impunity.