How to deal with different dietary requirements without causing issues?

[HappyHallie]

Hi,

My two nieces have recently came into my care. Unfortunately, they are both extremely overweight. Fortunately, we have an appointment soon with a paediatric dietitian, and right now we're just concentrating on encouraging them to be active and basic healthy eating.

However, my daughter is on the opposite end of the scale and is currently trying to regain weight to get back to a healthy weight.

Right now we're managing to keep all four kids (I also have a son who thankfully has no extra dietary requirements) eating the same or very similar meals.

I'm worried that any changes the dietician recommends will mean they need to have visibly different diets to meet their needs and how I will explain why they need to eat differently to them without making them feel insecure about their weight or like they're being compared to each other.

I plan to bring this up with the dietitian but if anybody has dealt with a similar situation and has any advice it would be massively appreciated.

Just going to give this a boost before I have to go to bed

Could you give them the same 'core' meals but bulk out your daughter's for example butter both slices of bread in her sandwich, use full fat milk on her cereal, give her more cheese on top of her spag bol.

That's what I'm currently doing at the moment.
All four of them are getting the same meals but my daughters is usually changed slightly to bulk it up a little, usually without it being visibly obvious to the kids.

I'm just worried that their needs are going to so different that I'm going to have to give them obviously different meals to meet all of their needs

You’re going about it the right way. Unless they’re all very young you can find an age appropriate way to explain differences if you need to.

Thank you!

My main concern is my eldest niece and my daughter as they're the same age so I feel like the difference is more prominent and I can't brush it off as well they've got something different cause they're older/younger than you.
They both started school this year as well so I'm also a bit worried about them picking up negative ideas from their class mates once they're back, although hopefully they're still a bit young for that.

Does your daughter know she needs to have more ie is she underweight due to medical needs such as allergies?

She is aware to an extent.
We have to be bit more strict with her about things like how much she can leave on her plate so we've explained it's to help her get better and to help make sure she doesn't get ill again.

If the nieces are only just school age then it is likely that not gaining anymore weight/gradual changes will be enough. They will then grow into their weight as time goes on and you can still adjust portions just slightly.