Obese children - what does that look like?

[RillaBlythe]

just done an online bmi calculator for DD. At 4 yo, 105cm & 20kg she is 81st centile for height & 94th centile for weight, which makes her obese. Apparently

Will take her along to the HV clinic rather than rely on that but I am a little surprised. She is stocky rather than slender, you can see her ribs, & she wears 4-5 age clothing. I've seen fat kids & DD doesn't look like them. Are my eyes wrong?

Thinking about this some more - she was born at 75 centile, rapidly moved up the charts (in fact off the charts) & then evened out at 91st centile for weight & around 75th for height - at least, that was the situation around 2 when she was last measured... So she's not changed her growth pattern drastically or anything.

Hi there,

When my son was younger he had problems with eating (too little) so he saw a n NHS nutritionist. They said that they were happy as long as height and weight were within 2 percentile lines of each other. For example, he was 50th for height but 10th for weight. They said that this was the biggest difference 'allowed' and if that gap widened they would get concerned.

I sounds as if your dd is just taller than average and her weight is reasonably in line with this. If she was 50th for height but 94th for weight that would be a concern, but she is just built this way.

HTH

Zebad

At age 4 my dd was on 95 centile for weight and 75 for height. We got letter from school saying she was overweight!! She wasn't she was just gettig out of her chubby toddler phase! Now at 8 she's 50 centile height and just under 50 for weight, she does many sports and is very lean and muscular. At 4 most kids are a bit more rounded, I shouldn't worry too much

The fatter children are often taller too apparently. It means that statistically your child is indeed fat, mine is too, actually even fatter. Am not worried as we have a very healthy diet, do lots of exercise and mine just start out as huge babies then get tall.

My older ones have become skinny and fitted the charts around 5 ish, my fat youngest will do the same or I will be more proactive. Until then am not worried. The problem is a long term one, the fat little ones often become the fat bigger ones and the fat adults.

I would just be aware and watch diet/exercise without worrying.

I would keep an eye on it but use your judgement. She sounds very, very similar to my dd, who was always 'well covered'. When they did the measurement at school she had actually evened out but tbh I think that only happened in the few months beforehand - she always had quite a tummy until 4.5. We are a healthy family (neither DH or I is overweight) and do lots of active things, plus eat a wide range of healthy foods. When she was approaching 4 we did decide to be slightly more careful with her portion control, particularly with breakfast cereal (discovered that our Mothers Help was feeding her three big bowlfuls for example!!) I think that helped and now at nearly 6, she is much better at self regulating. She is 50th for height and weight.

Thanks for the reassurance - I will watch & wait - we are a healthy active family & she eats a good diet... She might well be due a growth spurt actually as she has been in the same size shoes for 9 months now (saved me a fortune!).

ooh these test make me mad.

dd eats like a sparrow... i was concerned and i asked for advice.

BY the medical staff visiting the school i was told that she would be she would be like me, 'not so tall and well.....'

So short and fat then!

she is 9 in november and she has gone to school in age 7 trousers, admittedly i've had to turn them into clamdiggers, otherwise she looks like micheal jackson in his thriller stage.

i have a theory.... they have to take all the kids in the world into account in these figures. maybe a third of the world is borderline starvation. the rest of the world have an 'obligation' to step in when this starvation passes borderline.

so if we say that x is normal, these starving kids are further away from normal so this may trigger help, that the rest of the world thinks it cant afford.

Maybe i'm not being very eloquent, but i hear over and over again about healthy looking kids being told they are obsese and overweight that they MUST have thier measure wrong.

please dont stress, make sure DD has a healthy diet, lots of playtime and she'll be fine!

Yeah, it means that out of 100 children, 19 will be taller than her but only 6 will weigh more than her. If 19 were taller than her and 19 weighed more than her, or 6 weighed more than her and 6 were taller than her - she'd be perfectly in proportion. It's not so much about the number as the two numbers together and the amount of difference between them, iyswim.

Apparently.

I got this from an appt with dietician re mine, who I am concerned about. They look like the other kids, don't have double chins or rolls of fat, or look how we think an 'obese' child looks. See them in the yard with all the other kids and they all look the same!

She also told me about portion size, which is basically 3 groups, veg, protein and carbs. Protein should be the size of the palm of the child's hand, carbs should be the size of the child's hand and veg can be what you can cup in your hands

and I realised that's where I'd been going wrong.