V Overweight DD12

[Teddypops]

Before I start. I know this is a very sensitive subject. I don't wish to push my DD to have an eating disorder. I know I need to approach this in a sensitive way.

However, I have in the past approached this in a sensitive manner and we are here. She is very over weight. She had a large stomach and is the largest in her year.

I have been trying to encourage her to be more active. She goes to dance classes, netball classes and tennis lessons each week. All of these activities I have had to encourage (push) her into as otherwise she would do literally nothing. She had tried every sport under the sun and never stuck at anything apart from these. She now enjoys them. (Yay!).

However she still binges. She hides food in her room and eats at each and every opportunity, I get that she gets hungry and I try to compensate for this by giving her a big heathy packed lunch. (Brown roll with ham and maybe cheese, carrot, cucumber, cherry toms with hummus, Babybel, yoghurt, skips or low cal crisps or a go ahead bar). And fruit for lunch. But she is getting bigger and bigger.

If I give her money for school dinners she eats pizza, chips, cakes etc.

We have had to start hiding food from her as if I buy a box of protein flapjacks or crisps (low cal like skips or baked etc). They are gone within 24 hours.

There is always fresh fruit and veg available. But she rarely eats fruit.

I am overweight too, I'm a size 18. Struggled all my life with my weight. My mum tried everything I have tried and I ignored it all. I am now at a point where I am losing weight but my skin is saggy and ruined.

She is not depressed. She is into her clothes and beauty and is very pretty with blond hair etc.

I have tried to approach it in the past but she shuts down on me and thinks I'm the worst human ever.

Without judging me, if there is anyone who has been in a similar situation and has any good advice I would be happy to hear it.

We generally eat good healthy meals at home. Normal meals would be -

Pasta with meatballs - 5%mince, wholewheat pasta. Tomato sauce.

Chicken with home made chips and salad.

Cottage pie - 5% mince

Tuna pasta

I know we have too many carbs and I am on a lower carb diet at the moment so will be looking at lower (not too low) but upping the protein and the veg but lowering the carbs.

I'm going to start making dippy eggs for breakfast. She often has wholemeal bagel with marmite as I hoped it would fill her up.

We have the occasional meal out, but she doesn't like Chinese or Indian food so she doesn't have take away.

I'm at a bit of a loss.

I don't believe there is any medical issues at play.

Ok - so honest question. It sounds like you eat well at home, and encourage the family to be active, so why do you think you are you so overweight yourself?

It sounds like there's something missing from this overall picture. Have you recently changed the way you eat, for example?

Have you looked at Beat's website for binge eating disorder? Perhaps there might be some signposts there that could be really useful.

This is going to be a very hard journey for you both. I have no advice really, but I hope someone comes along with a great way to start and then maintain her weight loss journey. 💐

Also, I don't think low carbs should be implemented for a teen. She may be overweight, but she is still growing. In my opinion (and I wonder what others think?) I don't think a teen should follow your diet restrictions.

I wonder if the hidden sugar in Go Ahead bars and low calorie snacks like Skips are worse than anything else you provide for her. I've always been told low fat, high sugar. And that means unhealthy weight gain. (I am coming from a standpoint of recovery from an ED so I apologise if my response is all wrong.)

Yes I eat too much. My husband eats too much. Our portions are too big.

She is exactly like me. My weight has gone up and down over the years.

She has got her bad habits from us but now I don't know how to change it.

She keeps telling her friends that she is upset that I give her healthy packed lunches. She thinks she is hard done by. This is why I give her crisps (albeit 80/90 cals per pack).

I tell her often she is beautiful. She doesn't have a low self esteem, she is always doing videos with her friends pouting etc.

I have over eaten all my life and have screwed up what is normal. I know I need lower carb and higher protein to not put on weight.

She just rejects any attempts to help her.

Could you say you want to get more active- do 10k steps or whatever and get her out walking with you? Exercise and 1:1 time might be nice although I appreciate she might not want to (I have an 11 year old who probably wouldn’t be impressed with the suggestion but would come along for a walk with me if I insisted).

you sound like a lovely caring mum

This sounds like a fair question. Do you binge on junk yourself? It could be that your portion sizes are way bigger than necessary. To be fair this is a problem for many of us - we have lost sight of what constitutes a normal size portion.
What if you don't buy the crisps / chocolate / biscuits / protein flapjacks? If you're offering and providing decent meals and there is fruit on hand, these foods aren't needed.

We do try but she argues with us a lot. She makes up fictional issues such as a bad knee or thigh chafing etc. Things that have happened in the past that but turns out to be a lie.

@elevenplusdilemma I do eat too much.

I have a very stressful job right which takes up a huge amount of my time both at work and at home. It means I don't get a lot of time for work exercise myself.

DH eats too much too but he is a runner so manages to keep the weight off. She sees him fuelling and copies him.

The one person you can change is you. Keep doing what you are doing re providing healthy food for you all but work out YOU and how you want to eat / be / do. Our kids do what we do, not what we say. (This takes time for sure!). Good luck x

I do wonder if it's worth her seeing someone. But I think she would hate me for it.

Another option is to work with her. Weigh her and let her see a lb come off is she eats well for a week etc. but I know this this is often frowned upon.

To make her more accountable, to learn how much energy she consumes and how much she uses.

I also have a 12yo who will eat a whole pack of snacks in one day if he has access to them. We have a large, padlocked crate and everything like that lives in there. I even had to put the flour etc in there because he started making himself several mug cakes per day. We have blunt with him that the snacks are in the crate because he doesn't have the self-control to stop himself from eating them all in one go, so they are in there to make them last the week. He doesn't really ask for them if he can't see them/ knows they are not available to him.

With regards to dinner, which does sound heavy after a big lunch, I would just make 1/3 of the amount you normally would and fill the rest of the plates with salad or veg.

To be fair I have tried this for the past year or so. She just sneaks off and buys sweets or I I find empty packets in her room. She steals money and buys food at school.

I think we are beyond this.

The reason why I mention lower carbs and higher protein/veg is because I know it helps me to eat less as it keeps me more full.

You eat too much. She eats too much. You give her a massive amount for lunch.

There's nothing complicated here. You all eat too much and need to eat less. Don't get side tracked with low carb, high protein, more exercise etc etc. Just eat less. It's a simple as that.

Your choice of words is interesting...
Pretty with blond hair....
Saggy and ruined....
Biggest in her year......
What size is she? I only mention words because I remember things my mom would say to me and words do matter.

I was into clothes and beauty and was still depressed at school. Some of the low fat snacks have alot of sugar.

Portion sizes.... this may sound silly but have you tried smaller plates? I hadn't realised how huge my dinner plates were because I loved the set so much until inrealised my friends plates were so much smaller lol.
Also the home cooked meals you listed sound fab. Maybe reduce the main meal size and have 2 portions of veg with each meal?
You may have tried all this already and I wish you luck and I know from personal experience some people can eat anything and others just look at cake and gain a pound!

I don't keep sugar or hot chocolate in the house as she will help herself to spoonfuls of it.

What you've tried so far hasn't worked so you need a different approach. I would ignore her weight, make sure the food in the house is good quality and not processed. If you can afford it find her a counsellor to talk about her life (not her weight). Food issues can be about something other than food. Ask her dad to include her in some way with his exercise (without criticism or judgement).

It doesn’t sound as if she’s really eating badly at all? She’s twelve. You know already that your mum tried all these things with you and they didn’t work, so why would they work on her? If I were you I’d leave it. At twelve, I was chubby and my mother went on and on about it until I developed severe anorexia. Now as an adult I’m a size 12, probably the exact same ever so slightly overweight I’d have ended up anyway. Children have to want to change and she’s more likely to start considering what she can do if at 15 or so she decides she’s heavier than she’d like, than if you go on about it.

Clever!! You know I never thought of that!

I try to full her up on the healthy stuff in an attempt to stop her from snacking or bingeing.

I'm trying to encourage healthy choices with veg sticks and hummus etc. if I give her much less she comes home and binges.

She's only doing what she's seen you and DH do - weighing her to make her see a lb come off and that sort of thing is going to give her a horrific complex.

Honestly I think you need to lead by example, it sounds like you're possibly projecting a bit on her, she's only 12 and I could be the stage before she loses her weight and suddenly has a growth spurt or not.

My mum was overweight and weight obsessed. She's managed to bring up three children with different eating disorders because of this, it's a massively slippery slope.

I think if you sort your diet / exercise out, it'll show her a good example and she might want to follow. At 12 she's still so young to be worried about all of this too, I think it's lovely she's into clothes and pouting with friends and it's cripple by body issues.

If she is stealing money and hiding food this is emotional eating and I think you need to look at this. She may seem happy but is she really? Food gives her something and you need to work out what this is, it is deeper than just hunger.

I think there definitely could be a genetic component to being overweight. That doesn’t explain everything but it’s definitely a contributing factor.

I think growing up with a very slim mother who didn’t eat much and now a slim DP who also doesn’t eat much helps me keep myself in check. There’s no one around me overeating or having large plates of food and in turn it would be peculiar for me to do that. So one thing you could do is make changes at home so your daughter doesn’t see others doing things that you expect her to not do.

In terms of helping her lose weight you really can’t do that to her. She has to be fully engaged and a willing participant. Of course you can encourage exercise and good eating but if she finds way to sneak eat calorific foods you are on
a hiding to nothing. So you might have to watch and wait and just do everything you can to change your own behaviour in the meantime.

If you think your issue is portion size, then getting rid of carbs/adding protein probably isn't what you need, you probably need to reduce portion size.
Smaller plate, as a PP has said, or have you thought about trying Noom? You can do a few weeks for a few ££ and go through as many of the lessons as you can - they are really helpful for teaching you WHY you eat too much and how to slightly trick yourself (and hopefully DD as well) to eat less.

It's really really difficult to reduce portions and general food intake overnight, unless you are very very motivated. It doesn't actually sound like she is?

Would she entertain a frank conversation? If she's actually hungry then snacking on junk isn't the way for her to manage that, so would she be open to talking about other alternatives? I don't buy into low-carb, not for children anyway, so you might actually be better to give her two rolls and ham for lunch and leave all the extra stuff (apart from veg). Calories-wise the difference wouldn't be anything really, but she might feel fuller?

The reality is though, that you buy the food at home so you can control that, but otherwise the only person you can control is yourself. If you are overweight and overeating then you can start there if you're unhappy, but you can't make her do anything and putting her on weigh-ins is a recipe for disaster.