DD (13) is very overweight - advice requested!

[Julysky]

My daughter, age 13, is very overweight and wearing size 18-20 adult ladies clothes already and I’m lost as to how I can help her. My husband is very overweight and I have a son of 15 who is well built but would not be considered overweight. I compete in athletics so ensure I eat a healthy diet and I have a good understanding of nutrition. I have tried many things to encourage my husband to lose weight over the years (he’s always been heavy and has got worse), but have accepted that I can’t make him change. I really want to help my daughter to develop a healthy lifestyle and return to a healthy weight. In the past I’ve been able to persuade her to join a football team. The coaches were very inclusive but she never really liked it, doesn’t have great hand eye co-ordination, and her team mates could be unkind. She will occasionally play netball at school. I’ve also tried to do a fun couch to 5K training course with her using the Zombie run app but she refused to continue after doing it a few times. I encourage her to do Just Dance at home.

We don’t have sweets, crisps or many biscuits in the house and we eat a healthy diet at home, but she uses her pocket money and birthday money to buy things that are unhealthy and if we’re eating out or at a party she always seems to go for the most unhealthy items and eats more than the average person. However, I do know other kids her age who are the same and don’t put on weight like she does so I think it’s a combination of genes and habit that has created the problem. She’s never been skinny but she started putting on excessive weight from the age of 9. We were careful to keep our conversations focused on fitness and health rather than weight but over the last year we have broached the subject of losing weight. She says she would like to and will agree to us holding her pocket money so she doesn’t go to the shop, but then something will happen (usually within a week) and then she’ll be back to her old habits. In general she’s a wonderful girl and has many interests and friends. We have a very good relationship and she talks to me openly about her problems. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

It really is

The 'too serious a situation' was not just about her size but about her current and future mental health and her current and future relationship with her mother. Being size 18/20 at 13 is serious, having your eating disorder addressed badly by a well meaning parent is serious.

I agree with pp that you need professional help in this instance. I think your dd is beyond what you can do as a parent.

I can imagine some of these go-ho parents have kids sniffing glue and going out joyriding when they say they are doing homework at their mates.

How to estrange a parent from their child in a few easy steps.

Well of the pocket money she's having is causing her significant weight gain and health implications, you have to take it away, for her safety she current and future health!

Check on your kids… they are probably smoking crack in your shed at the moment.

Oh gosh, size 18-20 at 13 is very big. I’d be surprised if your DH isn’t feeding her. This has not happened through buying sweets with pocket money unless you’re giving her a lot of cash. I’d take her to a dietitian. Some serious education on food is needed.

I’d start by restricting the hours she can eat. She has a lot of body fat that needs using and has been living off glucose energy. She needs to eat an early dinner and then no food or drinks (water ok) after 6pm. It’s really helpful to stop snacking and gives her nobody and chance to metabolically switch to using fat stores. Pushing back breakfast is good.

@GrrCovid Wouldn’t you be concerned and scared, if the child you have responsibility for protecting, ended up in this state at 13 years old?

I felt terribly guilty when the vet told me that my dog was overweight, and concerned for his long term health, never mind a child!

It’s not okay to minimise being obese, and it’s not fair on children to do.

What in the 1990s? Kids don’t joyride and sniff glue anymore.

My DD had an eating disorder, and one of the things we had to do was withhold pocket money. If your child is spending their pokey money on things that are severely impacting their health of course you can’t let them continue.

I’ve just looked and for example an ASOS size 20 is 39 inches (edit: around the waist), the average height of a 13 year old girl is 62 inches. Pretending there isn’t an issue won’t help.

OP these is an eating issues board on here, you might find it helpful to post on there as well.

@GrrCovid yes it is enormous.

This whole thing is incredibly sad, incredibly serious, and needs sorting now. The OP was so silly letting her 13 year old child get to this size.

As PP said 80% of obese teens stay obsess for the rest of their lives.
She's THIRTEEN. Barely a teenager.

It needs to be dealt with in a very sensitive way, but a serious, prompt way.

@GrrCovid and what makes you think my child is smoking crack in my shed?

...are you on crack?

Takes one to know one.

A thirteen year old human being is intelligent and benefits from non-judgmental, solution-focused, supportive conversation and action in consultation with their parents. They’re nothing like a dog, or a four year old or something.

Your recommend parenting style suggests your children won’t be open with you. God knows what they’d be up to.

Now you are being silly. A 13 year old is a child. Also, a child who didn’t get this way overnight. We are responsible for providing food for our children, they don’t do a weekly shop at this age.

Pocket money needs to stop (in the same way it would stop if a child spent it on crack 🙄) and her food intake needs to be monitored, it’s a health issue.

Correct. Because your problem caused your body to burn fewer calories but you ate the same. You said yourself, same calories in. But it wasnt the same calories out.

I suffered for years with PCOS and was hugely overweight. I had terrible food cravings until I realised that I respond badly to certain types of food. I was also on medication for 15 years that gave me cravings.

But ultimately I was overweight because I ate more than I burned off

@GrrCovid

You're not even worth speaking to, you look utterly ridiculous 😂

Erm. I think I know what 13 year olds are like. They are not little kids. Your parenting needs to evolve as they mature. 13 is most definitely old enough to be absolutely on board with the whole thing.

Speaking from experience this is so hard to navigate as a parent.

I was 5 7” and a size 14-16 with very big boobs and size 7 feet at age 10. I remember a teacher at school trying to fit me with a costume for a play and when it wouldn’t do up saying “This is horrific, this is one of my belts.”

I never forgot it and at 13 I was weighed as part of a targeted health regime at my senior school (I had a close friend who was referred for a consultation on her height with talk of surgery to stretch her. She was about 5ft.)

My DM dutifully put me on a calorie controlled diet and I got down to the weight recommended by the school nurse (loss of two stone). Everyone was happy.

Funnily enough I have been within or at that same 2 stone zone my entire life and in my mid 40s now lead an active life and pre DC ran 25 miles a week. I just grew crazy quickly and was my adult size way too early and didn’t get much bigger. But this may be a slippery slope for your DD and you need to be on her team to help fight it.

I would get her some specialist eating therapy and then work with her to come up with a plan. My mum used to do a chart each week with a weekly table of all my meals and snacks calorie counted so I knew I could eat that and nothing else.

i have also found having physical stuff that has to be done as part of my day is massively helpful. Walking everywhere, I have animals that are very physical to care for etc but have to be done every day.

Good luck it’s very tough to tread the best line as a mum ❤️

Being 18/20 is not caused by just using pocket money or birthday money. She is eating a huge amount of calories to get to that size. What does she eat in a typical day at home?

OP I can read how mixed the advice is here.
That in itself suggests professional input from an experienced clinician in childhood obesity would be advisable.

Can I also suggest you have some therapy yourself and possibly relationship/couples therapy. Your husband’s issues with food and weight cannot be ignored in this.

But also, gently, how has it all got this far? A 13 year old does not get to a size 20 without sustained and significant over intake that must have been enabled at home by her parents and you have a responsibility here to not only address her weight going forwards but properly consider how you didn’t stop things before they got this bad.

It may well be that the whole family has lost sight of healthy portions but the information is out there and could have been accessed as soon as she visibly went well above a healthy weight.

I really feel for her and you because it isn’t going to be easy or improve overnight and I know you must be worried about your relationship with her being damaged as well as her lifelong relationship with food and her body.

I don’t think the advice on the need to tackle things is mixed, but how much OP is being advised to be a dick about it is.

@GrrCovid no, you only know what YOUR children at 13 are like.

Children are all different, at different developmental and maturity levels at 13.

I would've thought you knew this. But you can't compete with an 11-erife

I dont hold out much for for OP being able to access professional advice that also isnt split, professionals dont even agree how to address obesity, for adults or children.

It wouldnt surprise me if she just gets a referral to slimming world or equivalent. (not that this is a problem as such, its just about managing expectations)

Can you work through the book intuitive eating together. You can do a chapter a week and really take time to soak up the principles. It’s all about the psychology of our relationship with food and reconnecting with our bodies natural signals of hunger and fullness.