Overweight DD, is this a healthy menu?

[TheChild]

Hello, I'm looking for some advice about my DD(7). She is not technically overwight in terms of BMI but she is very nearly, she is 4 ft 6 inches and 5st 7lbs.

She has always been what I'd describe as "sturdy", but with lockdown I really noticed her getting a bit bigger with the lack of school run, PE and less activities on.

We are trying to be more mindful of what she is eating, but she seems to constantly be hungry! I've kept a track of what she has eaten in the past few days, I was wondering how this daily food compares with other children and how we could improve?

Breakfast: porridge with raisins
Lunch: wholemeal ham wrap (plain, she doesn't like mayo or cream cheese), cucumber sticks and tomatoes, greek yogurt with strawberries, 5 ritz crackers
Snack: 1 chocolate from a box of Thorntons
Dinner: chicken fajitas (1.5 wholemeal wraps), cheese doritos (I'd guess maybe 2 handfuls)
Pudding: small bowl of sweets (9 skittles, to be pedantic 😁) and 1 Thorntons chocolate
Supper: apple

Breakfast: 1 slice toast (best of both) with chocolate spread, handful of grapes with a few tablespoons of Greek yogurt (dad gave the toast with Nutella and she said she was still hungry which is why I gave the yogurt, we have agreed nutella on toast is not the best breakfast!)
Lunch: wholemeal ham wrap, cucumber sticks, pepper sticks and tomatoes, 4 ritz crackers, 2 small hotdogs, grapes
Dinner: 3 chipolata sausages, 5 small roast potatoes, sweetcorn and gravy
Pudding: bread and butter pudding with custard
Supper: apple

Breakfast: 1 slice best of both toast and 2 scrambled eggs
Lunch: wholemeal ham wrap, carrot sticks, cucumber sticks and tomatoes, 2 small hotdogs, 4 ritz crackers, raisins
Dinner: chicken fajitas (1 wholemeal wrap), handful of cheese doritoes
Puddin: peach slices with custard
Supper has not happened yet but she will get the option of either an apple, grapes, melon or greek yogurt with frozen strawberries

A bit more info, we cook most meals from scratch and have really tried to cut out convenience food and find meals we can all eat as a family. I think her portion sizes are fairly normal, I try to go by the "portion is the size of your (in this case her) wrist. She gets a glass of fizzy fruit pop as an occasional treat with her evening meal if I'm feeling generous.
We walk to school and back every day (approx 15 minute walk each way) and she has just joined sports club one afternoon each week. We are trying to encourage her to take up a sport to get a bit more active but she is very shy and keeps saying no to everything we suggest. Neither me or DP drive so we do a fair bit of walking but she definitely doesn't enjoy this much 😂
She is very fussy with trying new things, she doesn't like nuts, cheese, rice, spicy food, stirfry etc so trying to get healthy recipes that we all can eat is a bit challenging! (she is pretty much the opposite of her sister!)
I know the puddings aren't great, she would usually be fine with greek yogurt and fruit but her little sister will not eat greek yogurt at all. Is it better to have say 1 "treat" food per day or have 1 day per week where we might allow her a few treats?
I have also never mentioned any concerns about her weight to her, my mum bullied me about my weight as a young teen and it gave me a lot of issues around food and I will always struggle with binging and my weight, so I'm just trying to talk more about healthy eating and discuss why having too much sugar and pop etc is bad for our health and our teeth.

Thanks so much if you managed to read all that 😊

@TheChild Hello, I'm looking for some advice about my DD(7). She is not technically overwight in terms of BMI but she is very nearly, she is 4 ft 6 inches and 5st 7lbs.

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You said yourself in terms of bmi she's fine... please just let her be normal, normalise food, like letting her have a frube with her lunch and getting her a snack on the way home. Get her into more clubs. She will be totally fine but not it you keep limiting her especially when she sees others having these 'treats'

My 9 year old dd is 3st 8lbs and small I admit but still.

Exercise doesn't significantly offset too many calories and your dd is eating more than me. Also no kid needs puddings. Reduce the sugar I think. Or swap for fruit?

I'm a bit baffled by the posters who seem to think your DD's portions are too big and who are saying that they would eat the same amount in a day. I would be starving if I only ate what your DD eats in a day, and my DC who is the same age eats more than her and is very skinny. I don't think there's anything wrong with your meal plan.

You are setting your kid on a road to obesity. The strongest predictor of childhood obesity is parental concern about childhood obesity.

Your daughter as you point out is not overweight, eats a variety of foods according to appetite and yet you are sharing her measurements and diet with a bunch of strangers on the internet because you think being high within normal BMI makes her fat. She has no problem. You on the other hand probably need a rain check on your attitude to food and weight.

That’s a lot of food. And too many puddings, sweets, chocolate and crisps imo.

My 9 year old son has:
Breakfast- porridge with a drizzle of honey or 2 weetabix
Snack - only if needed will be a piece of fruit
Lunch - cheese sandwich, banana, rice cake
Snack - fruit again or carrot sticks
Tea - chicken fajitas (2 whole meal wraps) with peppers, rice, corn on the cob.
Pudding (only if hasn’t been too full) - yoghurt

Cakes, biscuits, crisps, ice cream and chocolate tend to be reserved for days out as we generally don’t have them in the house. He also has school lunches and does at least 15,000 steps a day. He loves his Fitbit.

No need to remove carbs, but you seem to be doing a bit of 'double carbing' - it seems a bit unnecessary to have a wrap (or a wrap and a half) plus crackers.

The thing is, even quite minor tweaks could make a difference gradually over time - e.g. just quit the extras like crackers, and offer a bit of fruit/carrot sticks instead of sweets/crisps.

It sounds like there's a lot of extra snacky foods in there like adding additional hot dogs, crackers on top of meals, combined with lack of exercise i can see how that might prompt weight gain over time.

Could you make the main element of meals more substantial rather than adding lots of extra snacks?

I’m a nutritionist and I would be starving on that diet. Not because of the volume of food but because of the amount of simple carbs in it and crap quality meats like hot dogs. My blood glucose levels would be all over the place telling me I’m hungry when I’m not.

What do you do at weekends? We go walking with our dc every Saturday. Might only be local but we’ll be out for at least 3 hours

Diet sounds quite high in fat , sugar and salt.

Those saying this child’s eats the same as an adult, well yes of course she does she is growing. I think at this age the aberage child needs around 2000 calories which may be more than many women.

This is simply not true. A quick look on the nhs website shows that kids don’t need 2000 calories until they reach age 10. OPs child is 7.

And to all those saying it looks like a healthy balanced diet, on what planet is skittles and chocolate for pudding a healthy balanced diet?

@Hoowhoowho

You are setting your kid on a road to obesity. The strongest predictor of childhood obesity is parental concern about childhood obesity.

Your daughter as you point out is not overweight, eats a variety of foods according to appetite and yet you are sharing her measurements and diet with a bunch of strangers on the internet because you think being high within normal BMI makes her fat. She has no problem. You on the other hand probably need a rain check on your attitude to food and weight.

I'm not sure if you realised just how offensive your post was, but it was pretty damn nasty. I'm not sure if you read the posts where I said I would NEVER mention anything about my daughter's weight directly to her, or the posts where I discussed the abuse I received as a child from my own mother because of my weight and how that led to an eating disorder, or the part where I just wanted to make sure my daughter grew up to be healthy and happy. Do you think I go round calling her "chubs" and point at her belly and jiggle it or something?! What an earth about my attitude is going to lead to my daughter being obese when I'm looking for advice about nutrition and a balanced diet?

I'm not sure if you read the full thread but there seems to be a variety of opinions varying from "her diet is fine but you need to increase her activity" to "that's far too much sugar and I wouldn't eat that in a day and I'm an active adult".

I would suggest that if you don't have anything constructive to say then you say nothing at all. I posted her stats on an annonymous forum, looking for a bit of guidance and knowledge about what other people feed their children of a similar age, are you this shocked and horrified when other people post for advice relating to their own lives on an anonymous forum?

I would suggest increasing the veg and reducing the carbs, reduce pudding to once or twice a week (we have pudding on wednesdays and saturdays) as well as trying to increase exercise.

She doesn't need to join sports clubs if that's not her thing, but any form of movement that gets the heart rate up and makes them sweat is good exercise so dancing, running around the garden, scootering/cycling.

At her age (under 8) she should be getting 3 hours of active movement a day, with an hour of that being intensive enough to get her a bit out of breath. Challenge her to races in the garden if there's room? Make it fun by racing in different ways e.g. backwards, hopping, jumping. Younger DD can join in too.

I think the thing to remember is that she has a healthy BMI. We could all tweak our diets to make them better but with a 7yo you don't want to get her worrying about her weight.

Get her doing more exercise, if you have a yard could you put up a basketball net (not at full height for a 7 year old!)? Or have swingball? Does she have rollerskates or a scooter? Teach her hopscotch? Or even something like quoits or kubb or skittles? Maybe as a family do a long walk at the weekend or go for a cycle? I know it's a nightmare finding organised exercise to do at the moment, I'd suggest you insist on swimming lessons since it's a lifeskill but classes haven't started yet round here. But it's a great exercise for life. But if transport is difficult find one that is close by and insist on that. Exercise is as important as education.

For food I'd not stress too much. Look at reducing sweets to a once or twice a week treat, or maybe choose to bake together every so often instead and downscaling the recipe as much as possible to there's not lots of leftovers to eat through. Or freeze them for future 'occasional foods'.

Only drink water (we have the rule that if Mummy and Daddy have wine with a meal the DC can have a small glass of fruit juice. So that is a weekend dinner only thing). Talk about fruit and veg being important and how you have to eat a variety every day. Don't pander to their tastes, we have 3DC and work to the 'if one child will eat it that's going on the menu' rule, we regularly make meals that the DC won't eat all of. I think if you restrict what you offer them to what they like they'll start restricting even further. They get given a small piece of whatever offends them on their plate and are asked to taste it. They can take as much rice or potato or whatever they will eat. The most fussy child doesn't eat a lot of meat and so he gets offered fish fingers or a sausage and we sometimes boil some peas for him if we want him to have some veg. But I really don't mind if they don't finish what they are given, most children will naturally self regulate and they certainly won't starve themselves.

@Hoowhoowho

You are setting your kid on a road to obesity. The strongest predictor of childhood obesity is parental concern about childhood obesity.

Your daughter as you point out is not overweight, eats a variety of foods according to appetite and yet you are sharing her measurements and diet with a bunch of strangers on the internet because you think being high within normal BMI makes her fat. She has no problem. You on the other hand probably need a rain check on your attitude to food and weight.

Unpleasant & unnecessary.

@JaninaDuszejko

I think the thing to remember is that she has a healthy BMI. We could all tweak our diets to make them better but with a 7yo you don't want to get her worrying about her weight.

Get her doing more exercise, if you have a yard could you put up a basketball net (not at full height for a 7 year old!)? Or have swingball? Does she have rollerskates or a scooter? Teach her hopscotch? Or even something like quoits or kubb or skittles? Maybe as a family do a long walk at the weekend or go for a cycle? I know it's a nightmare finding organised exercise to do at the moment, I'd suggest you insist on swimming lessons since it's a lifeskill but classes haven't started yet round here. But it's a great exercise for life. But if transport is difficult find one that is close by and insist on that. Exercise is as important as education.

For food I'd not stress too much. Look at reducing sweets to a once or twice a week treat, or maybe choose to bake together every so often instead and downscaling the recipe as much as possible to there's not lots of leftovers to eat through. Or freeze them for future 'occasional foods'.

Only drink water (we have the rule that if Mummy and Daddy have wine with a meal the DC can have a small glass of fruit juice. So that is a weekend dinner only thing). Talk about fruit and veg being important and how you have to eat a variety every day. Don't pander to their tastes, we have 3DC and work to the 'if one child will eat it that's going on the menu' rule, we regularly make meals that the DC won't eat all of. I think if you restrict what you offer them to what they like they'll start restricting even further. They get given a small piece of whatever offends them on their plate and are asked to taste it. They can take as much rice or potato or whatever they will eat. The most fussy child doesn't eat a lot of meat and so he gets offered fish fingers or a sausage and we sometimes boil some peas for him if we want him to have some veg. But I really don't mind if they don't finish what they are given, most children will naturally self regulate and they certainly won't starve themselves.

The hoop is a good idea, I hadn't thought of that. The yard is quite small and I think swingball would kill the washing line (my sock hanger was killed this morning by a skipping rope!!) but I am keeping a look out for some outside sports type stuff we can take along to the park. So far we have a skipping rope and a little cheapy tennis set.

It's definitely the younger child I worry about with refusing to eat food, oldest DD will reluctantly try things but the youngest is so stubborn with anything she does not want to eat. If given the option of eat it or theres nothing she would chose nothing. Most times I just don't have it in me to end another meal with tears and tantrums. And also its such a waste of food when we are on a limited budget.

I will definitely look into sqimming lessons, our local pool is 5 minute walk away and she loves to go swimming. Organised sport definitely doesn't seem to be her thing, she enjoyed ice skating when it was me and her going and messing around but when it came to the group lessons she hated it. She also says toy suggestions that she's not good at it so doesn't want to go, eg football, gymnastics. When I say it's not about being good it's about learning and having fun she just says she doesn't want to. I did tell her this morning that I was using mummy power and signing her up for something. I've found a local trampoline club that is in a school 5 minutes away that I didn't know existed so I've booked her in for an hour. You can just book and go so I'm really hoping she enjoys it.

@JaninaDuszejko

I think the thing to remember is that she has a healthy BMI. We could all tweak our diets to make them better but with a 7yo you don't want to get her worrying about her weight.

Get her doing more exercise, if you have a yard could you put up a basketball net (not at full height for a 7 year old!)? Or have swingball? Does she have rollerskates or a scooter? Teach her hopscotch? Or even something like quoits or kubb or skittles? Maybe as a family do a long walk at the weekend or go for a cycle? I know it's a nightmare finding organised exercise to do at the moment, I'd suggest you insist on swimming lessons since it's a lifeskill but classes haven't started yet round here. But it's a great exercise for life. But if transport is difficult find one that is close by and insist on that. Exercise is as important as education.

For food I'd not stress too much. Look at reducing sweets to a once or twice a week treat, or maybe choose to bake together every so often instead and downscaling the recipe as much as possible to there's not lots of leftovers to eat through. Or freeze them for future 'occasional foods'.

Only drink water (we have the rule that if Mummy and Daddy have wine with a meal the DC can have a small glass of fruit juice. So that is a weekend dinner only thing). Talk about fruit and veg being important and how you have to eat a variety every day. Don't pander to their tastes, we have 3DC and work to the 'if one child will eat it that's going on the menu' rule, we regularly make meals that the DC won't eat all of. I think if you restrict what you offer them to what they like they'll start restricting even further. They get given a small piece of whatever offends them on their plate and are asked to taste it. They can take as much rice or potato or whatever they will eat. The most fussy child doesn't eat a lot of meat and so he gets offered fish fingers or a sausage and we sometimes boil some peas for him if we want him to have some veg. But I really don't mind if they don't finish what they are given, most children will naturally self regulate and they certainly won't starve themselves.

Also if we had the rule of juice when mummy drinks she'd be out of luck as I don't drink 😁 she'd be a bit luckier with her dad though! 😂

Also if we had the rule of juice when mummy drinks she'd be out of luck as I don't drink 😁 she'd be a bit luckier with her dad though! 😂

As I wrote it I thought it wouldn't work in a family where alcohol was consumed every day, didn't think about the alternative!

I wanted to suggest some things for the non sandwich eating child as I have one too. She likes having a Thermos with leftover pasta (I do extra when we have it for dinner and nuke in the morning for a couple of days), mash and beans, cous cous with sweetcorn, soup and crackers to dip. With a pot of peppers / cucumber / carrot on the side.

The meals sound fine to me, but there’s a lot of sweet treats and deserts that I wouldn’t give on a daily basis.

Hi Op, I have a tall, slim and active family and your dd eats more than my 6'4" DH does.

I would not have any processed food or processed meat in the house at all.

Lots and unlimited food such as frozen berries, natural yogurt, all fruit and veg, nuts, seeds, potatoes, pasta, rice, frozen fish and oily fish especially tinned.

Chop up carrots, peppers, apples, segments of tangerines, kiwis, cucumbers etc for a healthy snack or starter.

Good luck

@Newstaronhorizon

Hi Op, I have a tall, slim and active family and your dd eats more than my 6'4" DH does.

I would not have any processed food or processed meat in the house at all.

Lots and unlimited food such as frozen berries, natural yogurt, all fruit and veg, nuts, seeds, potatoes, pasta, rice, frozen fish and oily fish especially tinned.

Chop up carrots, peppers, apples, segments of tangerines, kiwis, cucumbers etc for a healthy snack or starter.

Good luck

More than a 6ft4 man? Her portion sizes are not huge, she still has her meals on Ikea kids plastic plates. In comparison to my normal 5ft11 partner who is a healthy weight she eats a lot less. I'm thinking it's more the lack of exercise and sweet treats that cause the main problem.

Sorry that sounded snarkier than intended, but I'm genuinely curious what your DP eats in a day if he eats less than my DD? Both myself and DP eat more than what she does, he is a healthy weight and I'm a smidge off a healthy weight.

Don't ask her if she likes certain foods as she will probably say no.Have a variety of good food available and model eating it without any pressure.Easier said than done!

I do think actually you have described your DD as sturdy, are concerned she is getting bigger but actually you say she is a healthy weight. Which is fine. She's growing and does not need to cut calories

I do think she needs a bit more substance tbh, there's a lot of sweet stuff, fruit etc which isn't very filling. More protein and fat less sweets. She doesn't really need a pudding and supper, id probably merge them into some yoghurt and fruit or similar after dinner. And a proper pudding once a week or something.

I would think carefully though about what you are concerned about, remember shes not overweight. Theres nothing wrong with tweaking diet and lifestyle of your have specific concerns Ie shes not doing enough exercise or shes eating too many sweets. But a bland 'be healthier' when you yourself can't seem to identify what it is you are concerned about, no ones diet needs to be perfect