Any tips on how i can get my dd9 to put weight on

[concern76]

She's painfully thin i am waiting on an ED referral but in the meantime if anyone has any ideas on how to help her gain weight ?Without setting up camp at maccers

Protein shakes for weight gain are a good place to start. Is she purging when she does eat?

My dd is also painfully thin. She prefers extremely healthy food, is a very slow eater, and has portions that are far too small but I haven’t gone down the ED route (yet). She has emetephobia and a whole range of unexplained fears around food - not classic ARFID though. She hates talking about feelings or about her weight and I’m nervous to medicalise a problem while her weight is stable. She has always tracked 10th percentile weight, 75th percentile height so as long as she doesn’t fall off that curve I try not to get worried (I only check every now and again, I do NOT weigh frequently) and it is natural in my family to be very slender, plus she is sporty and super strong so it is fairly hard for me to complain too much. I reinforce to dd that fuel for sport comes from food and she needs to be putting gas in her fuel tank each day so the engine keeps running. I involve her in food choices to help her maintain feeling of some control.

I have had a real issue with school curriculum in Year 7 as they have been pushing healthy eating very hard and telling the kids to fill half their plate with veg and not eat any unhealthy snacks. She hears what they tell her selectively of course and doesn’t calculate that she eats insufficient calories so if half of that is steamed veg she will waste alway. Arrrgh! DD is not an idiot though and she realises there are girls far more developed than her now because her limited eating is stopping her from growing up.

I do worry about sport. Should I stop her from exercising so much? She has to walk home 2 miles from school every day and I send her with snacks to munch on the way but does a KitKat offset a 2 mile walk? My whole life is filled with these incremental decisions about her health which I can never share with her. It is very tiring tbh!

I haven’t cracked it but I have learned to manage my own anxiety around it. We don’t live at Maccy D i am also happy to let her have treat food more often than I normally would.

my tips:

• Wait to dc asks for a drink with a meal you serve a very small glass of a light fruit juice so it doesnt fill up little appetites
• high calorie drinks outside mealtime - protein shakes are good if liked. Also other milkshakes, smoothies, fruit juice etc
• Find calorie dense foods that dd likes and make these very freely available for snacking - a little handful of peanuts, mini pancakes for breakfast, fruit jam thickly spread on toast for a snack, fruit with ice cream etc
• my dd LOVES roast dinner and salmon teriyaki so we have that often and she gets a plate with her veg, protein and gravy/sauce and one roast/small amount of noodles - she gets seconds of the carbs once the protein and most of the veg has been eaten but since she has carb snacks outside mealtimes I do like her to manipulate her plate towards eating veg and protein in her main meal
• my dd loves to bake and by time she was 11 I let her have complete freedom to make cakes and biscuits of her choice. I also supervise her making jam in summer and fudge from time to time. She does not always eat what she cooks but I will always encourage her to try her food even if it goes wrong, and it makes time spent around food fun and interesting. I invite her to enjoy cooking with me, she makes a mean chicken fajita and spaghetti Bol now and enjoys blending spices for curries (she doesn’t like curry but I still make it for rest of us). And she will come to the supermarket and help choose fruit (I find she is happiest when things appear absolutely perfect and fresh so it’s a case of buying little and often)
• make unhealthy variants of food - my dd always has extra butter and grated cheese with her mash/jacket potato
• I don’t give up on new foods. DD will go through spells of agreeing to try new things. Recently she decided she likes the whites of fried eggs having always hated fried eggs previously. And suddenly found the taste of fresh ground black pepper appealing - she puts it on lots of food now to pep things up. These little wins feel incredibly precious but I DO NOT CROW. I keep my response low-key and do my little victory dance when she is at school
• I am very careful about changing favourite recipes as unexpected variations can upset her a lot eg I stick to same brand of tinned tomato soup. This can be tricky as I cook from scratch a lot - and am naturally inclined to experiment! Last week I put baked beans in the sausage casserole I regularly make and dd obviously spotted them. She loves baked beans and I had
• a tense moment while she processed the idea that they were now irreversibly mixed in her dinner and then went “ok then”. But if she had said “oh no I can’t eat it” I would have said, “okay. If you try it and don’t like it I can easily fix you something else for tea”. And she’d refuse and then that would be a mealtime basically missed as she will not make up main meal calories in snacks. So I’m usually careful not to throw a spanner in a machine that usually runs well and keep “safe recipes” in my meal plan

Sorry such a long post! Just such a massive topic for me, for the past 8 years!

What does she like to eat.. Give her that, as much as she wants It's calories she needs so don't worry too much of what type or if it's unhealthy.

My DD is also very slender. I have to take in the waist of all her leggings as they never fit.

@PotKettel thank you for your post, reading with interest 😊

I think it depends on why she is not putting weight.

My DD is the same but she's only six and has always been like this so I don't think it's an ed but maybe more something like arfid. Below the second centile for weight. She is clinically healthy (did all the tests) but just doesn't like eating. When she eats she prefers low calorie food like vegetables. Which is great but you need to eat a lot of carrots and cucumber to get enough calories. :-(

I add fat to all her meals but especially in the evening (as far can be quite filling). So I put olive oil, butter or cheese on pretty much everything. I also let her eat whatever she wants and if she would rather have bread for dinner than what I've cooked I let her.

I also give her a big cup of.milk.before bed if possible jersey milk which has more fat (but she's going off it now).

No ED concerns, but very slender DS here.
Usually 6th centile, drops when ill.
Offer food more often. And offer the tempting stuff! What is she most likely to eat or drink? Offer that after they think they have finished eating. As a toddler, DS was on breakfast, breakfast 2, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, supper. It was endless!

Is she gaining weight, all be it very slowly? Or just not gaining?

Dc2 is 1st percentile for weight 75 for height.
Dietian started on a plan of 3 meals a day and 2 snacks. Plus a hot chocolate made with full fat milk every day. It's hard work but is putting on weight. Been encouraged to eat lots of creamy puddings, extra butter, lots of extras calories where we can.
Snacks are often flapjacks, rice pudding, cereal bars. Add marshmallows and cream to hot chocolate. Main meals always offer sides such as garlic bread, tortila crisps, pitta bread etc.
Dc has afrid. Wants to eat so we give foods that are acceptable in larger quantities.

Was also advised to alternate calcium supplements with a to z multivitamins (not gummys) to help with general health.

I understand that a dc who doesn't eat and is thin is worrying.
However what if your dc does eat well but is still thin?
My dd was always thin but I just accepted that was her build. One day just after beginning at secondary dd was called out of class by the nurse who quizzed her on her diet at home as they obviously though we weren't feeding her properly or ignoring an ed.
Dd found this hilarious.
I carried on feeding her the way I always had.