My child is overweight

[NickMyLipple]

Hello!

Looking for advice and suggestions - my daughter is 6 years 5 months and is overweight, but this is proportionate to her height. She's 134cm and 37.6kg.

She's quite literally off the centile charts for both height and weight, but they're tracking on similar lines (if that makes sense) and the NHS BMI checker suggests she's "very overweight".

She is an excellent eater and eats pretty much everything. We cook from scratch every day at home and she goes to a liberal school and has a very home-made healthy lunch every day. (She doesn't actually like typical children's food like chicken nuggets/fish fingers/potato waffles!)

She definitely eats too much (she can probably out-eat me for most things) but if she has smaller portions, she will complain she's hungry.

A typical day would be:
Breakfast - crumpet with marmite
Snacks - apple and a couple of bread sticks
Lunch - budha bowl (rice salad, veggies and protein)
Dinner - stir fry with rice/noodles, broccoli and green beans
Snack - yogurt

She isn't a big snacker in between meals but we are often out and about and when she does have a snack it will be stuff like crisps, a sandwich etc.

We don't limit chocolate particularly but she does have leftover Easter eggs which are broken up and she might have a couple of broken bits of chocolate every couple of days.

She does a dance class once a week, swimming once or twice a week and we go to the park/outside running around type activities every day.

I'd like to support her to recognise that being overweight is really hard in many aspects and encourage her to eat less and make healthy choices with food. My partner is losing weight for health reasons so our family already have made lifelong changes to how we fuel our bodies, but my daughter has really grown in the past few months and she's significantly bigger than all of her friends. I obviously can't make her get shorter, but I'm keen to hear from other parents of children who've struggled with their weight about changes they've made and how we can support her to recognise the long term benefits of being a healthy weight.

Thanks!

I would keep a food diary for a week and then see the practice nurse/GP for advice.

My daughter is bordering on overweight but the opposite to your daughter she is at the bottom of the charts for height but is an average weight. This gives her a BMI on the 85th percentile. She is on a limited diet due to allergies, reflux and "toddler" diarrhoea. No one is concerned about her weight and actually are always very pleased she's an average weight despite being on the 1-2nd percentile for height. She isn't the best eater so I don't know how she puts on weight!
Every time she is weighed by someone new I'm always anxious about being told off about her being overweight. Some times you have to look at the child as a whole and that's where seeing a professional can look at the big picture. If there are improvements that can be made to their diets or portions they would be best placed to issuing that advice

A family we know did a good diary by photos on their phone. This way, you can see the portion size. Butter amount used etc. Less time to record by having a close up click of photo dated. Does the sport activity use reward with chocolate treats etc?
Drinks: juices amount, chocolate milk or fizzy drink etc.
The family realised the amount of apple juice was rather high and the portion was very large for their child. So they reduce apple juice and portion and it all balanced out.

"I'd like to support her to recognise that being overweight is really hard in many aspects and encourage her to eat less and make healthy choices with food"

It sounds like you have a good grasp of her food intake and want to help her but you are placing too much emphasis on your daughter being in control here. She is 6. She'll eat what you give her and follow your examples. It could be damaging for her to be so aware of her weight especially if she already has a height difference among her peers. You said your family are making good choices so she will follow that example. Please do not put the onus on her to make good decisions at 6.

That dinner is high in carbs. Protein and fat are more filling.

Does she look visibly overweight i.e. rolls of fat and no ribs showing?
It sounds like your diet is pretty healthy so it feels like something else could be going on.

She is well over a stone overweight. And for someone who weighs almost 6 stone, that is not good. You will absolutely be able to tell by looking at her.