HELP NEEDED

[Freyron]

My 13 yo daughter has issues with eating. After speaking with the school, we decided to visit the doctor.
Doctor not particularly interested and when she weighed her, just replied, "she's not underweight enough, come back when she is, you can even ring and have a telephone consultation and I'll refer her for help"
Surely, telling an impressionable young teenager who's concerned about being "fat" and "overweight" that she's too heavy to be referred for help isn't great!
She's 5'5 and 45kg at the moment, I'm just wondering how's best to deal with this at home. Any advice welcome

Hi, not much useful to say but I wanted to show some support. I have had issues with eating but have never been 'underweight'. The GP needs educating. I would go and see another doctor, on your own, to discuss what to do next. Also try the charity BEAT, they have a help line that may be of use. Good luck to you both. www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/

@overripebanana thank you for the advice. I was really disappointed in our GP. Will definitely have a look at the link you sent. Thank you

I suppose the difficulty is that you know that your DD is thin for her, but in BMI terms, her BMI is 16.5, which for a just 13 year old is between 9th and 25th centiles, and for an almost 14 year old is just about bang on 9th centile. So for her age group, in a room of 100 healthy children her age, you'd expect 9-25 of them to be her BMI or lower. Clearly, a quarter of girls can't be referred to eating disorder services, so they have a cut off.

But, as others have said, eating disorders don't always go hand in hand with low BMI.

Can you give an idea of what difficulty she's having with food? It might be helpful for suggestions?