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.

I agree with those saying eat less but also, eat real food.

If you are going to eat crisps then eat proper crisps, not Skips (something like Tyrells/ Kettle chips which are made from whole potatoes). Just don't eat them often.

Stop buying this low calorie, processed nonsense. It is not food, it will do the absolute opposite of what you want it to and will keep you overweight.

Honestly - I was a size 20 at my largest. I used to buy these products - Skips, Go Ahead bars - because they were low calorie and 'healthy'. But it's a complete lie.

I have had a transformation with a personal trainer/ nutritionist and it has changd my life, I'm a normal healthy weight now.

Honestly - feed your body real food, and stop worrying about calories so much, and focus on how much whole food you are eating - meat if you like, vegetables, nuts, cheese, full fat milk (yes really!) Reduce your sugar intake as well, especially at breakfast. Have toast and peanut butter or avocado, instead of sugary cereal, for example (even bran flakes are processed and sugary!)

You and your daughter will be more satiated, and you will end up eating less. She's craving this rubbish food, processed wheat, which is making her overweight, because that is what she is being given.

Go ahead bars are processed, wheat based, addictive, sugary and unsatisfying. You are doing both of you a disservice eating this rubbish.

I also recommend checking out a book called "Why We Eat (Too Much)".

Thank you all for your messages and advice.

I know all the sensible advice and way to be healthy and lose weight etc. it's just not always as easy as it sounds.

I will work really hard to lead by example and DH too. I will look into getting her help if I feel she needs it. I don't actually think it will help her as I think she will struggle to verbalise how she feels about it. We also live in an area with so little resources like that and we are unlikely to find a specialist in this field.

I will cut her lunches and only have healthy snacks available.

Suggestions like nuts, grains, avocados, peanut butter are great, but she just won't eat them.

When a child has much smaller repertoire of foods it makes this so much more difficult and no I'm not going to starve her into it.

It's not going to be easy.

Can your husband not take her running with him? The weight will come off quickly

No, she would refuse.

I'm sorry, but you're in total denial. Your daughter is not eating the amount she is because she's hungry. Changing her meal portions and giving her healthy snacks isn't going to fix this because it's not tackling the reasons why she's eating the amounts she is choosing to eat. She is bingeing, concealing and stealing because she has a disordered relationship with food and her emotions.

Some posters have mentioned this may be due to undiagnosed autism/ADHD, which may well be the case. It may also be for more emotional reasons. What is clear from your posts is that both you and your DH have struggled with your relationships with food and weight your whole lives, and thinking that this hasn't had an impact on your daughter is incredibly naive. She has been around conversations around food/weight/appearance and ideas of shame her whole life. How on earth can this not have affected her relationship with food?

Whatever is going on here, it's bigger than what you can deal with at home and you need to get her expert help. You need to get to the GP and speak to your daughter's school.

I think involving a GP (doctors don't have any training on nutrition) and or a school will be shaming and unhelpful. The child needs something to boost her confidence like a hobby, positive attention from her parents and a counsellor to talk about things away from the scrutiny and opinions of people trying to pathologise her weight. There are lots of counsellors available online, location doesn't matter.

This child is stealing money to buy food, and is secretly buying/consuming food, the evidence of which she is hiding from her parents. This isn't behaviour that is normal and is indicative of an eating disorder.

The weight isn't really the issue here - it's the behaviour. The behaviour indicates emotional distress. This is why this child needs expert help.

Going to the GP and speaking to the school are not 'shaming'. They are the steps a supportive parent should take in getting their child the help they need to understand and hopefully overcome their self-destructive behaviours. A hobby and positive affirmation from parents are both good things, but they need to be in conjunction with support from professionals to address why the behaviour is happening in the first place.

I didn't say the behaviour was normal. I suggested a mental health professional. I didn't say weight was the issue.

Ultimately, diet culture makes us fatter. I have spent my life dieting, from being a preteen and for every diet that 'works', I have put back all the weight plus extra. Every time. Low cal, low carb, vlcd, keto, the special k diet (remember that!), liquid diets, whatever diet you can think of. The numbers on the scales have dominated by life since I was nine years old and it has done me and my health no favours. Accountability has only meant guilt and shame and despair. Please remember that a growing girl does not have the same energy requirements as a grown adult also. I'm so sorry I have no answers, but all I can suggest is to add positive habits wherever you can rather than trying to get rid of negative ones. So add good food that she will eat, rather than taking away/reducing. Aim to eat five different colours of fruit and veg in a day, for example. Keep trying to find any activity or exercise she does like - trampolining, swimming, anything that gives her a connection to her body and how to make it feel good. Foster her self esteem as best you can, and your own.

Amen to this..

I was an overweight child too, and I had NO idea the damage it was doing, and I had NO idea how to fix it. I also binged, due to so many negative comments about my weight, and the efforts of those around me to cut things down and deny me things my peers could eat all day and not have to worry about it. The Doctor gave me the answers I needed and showed me the way eventually. And treated me for PCOS ( diagnosed at 13 )

That said, it's so sad to see such judgement from so many on this thread, forgetting that there is a little girl in the middle of this, going through a time of huge change, biologically and emotionally.

Also, I saw the body pic the OP posted, and ( along with wondering whether she should have 😶 ) Wether that child is " very overweight" or not is utterly subjective.

Exercise is very secondary to food in terms of weight loss. It takes 2 hours of exercise to burn off a Mars bar, it takes 2 minutes to eat one. So I would concentrate on food and forget about exercise.

Your meals are all very carb heavy and you’ve recognised that the portions are far too big. So, all you can do is reduce portion size and replace the carbs with alternatives. There’s no other ‘magic’ strategy that will help her lose weight. Chuck out anything white - bread, pasta, rice - and replace with whole meal/whole wheat. Halve the portion sizes you dish up. Don’t give her money to buy food outside the house and don’t buy snacks aside from plain yoghurt and fruit.

Please don’t make her obsess over her weight. This is an issue of health, not weight. I know so many people who have got in a viscous cycle of weighing themselves for decades without making the fundamental lifestyle changes that they need.

I think you should go to your GP, but make it about health, not weight. I also think you need to read about ultra-processed food. Things like skips and things marketed as “low calorie”, and even supermarket bread and bagels, are all ultra-processed and very bad for us.

I would highly recommend listening to this podcast on UPF - it completely changed my outlook. The impact of these chemical processes on our bodies is quite terrifying:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017tcz/episodes/player

Exercise is very secondary to food in terms of weight loss. It takes 2 hours of exercise to burn off a Mars bar, it takes 2 minutes to eat one. So I would concentrate on food and forget about exercise

Stuff like this - and the previous post that equated running 5 miles a day with 1lb of weight loss per week - is entirely the wrong way to think about exercise, and exactly the right way to form a long term unhealthy lifestyle.

Yes, a 5 mile run "only" burns 500 calories or so. But it's about so much more than that. For example...
Exercise makes you feel better about yourself (the mental health benefits are proven), and higher self esteem means you're more likely to value yourself and not binge eat.
Doing exercise gets you out and about so you're not sitting around eating. When I'm out in an evening running or at a yoga class, I'm not snacking.
Exercise builds muscle, which burns more calories. So if you have more muscle, you expend more calories doing nothing at all.
Exercise changes your eating habits. Because if you're exercising in the morning - eg you're planning a long run - you're not going to eat a greasy takeaway the night before, or have a few glasses of wine (ok, so the latter doesn't apply to the OP's daughter, but it might to the OP if they commit to exercise together).

It's really sad that people are so short sighted that they see exercise purely as calories in and out. The benefits go far beyond that. Weight loss is the cherry on top as far as exercise is concerned, not the main point.

@fellrunner85 👏👏👏

If you read my post properly you would see that I agreed with what you've said here. I didn't say that exercise was pointless at all - in fact I said that it had benefits for mental and physical health.

But in the context of weight loss, unless you are going to be doing a lot of exercise, you need to focus on diet. My reference to running 5 miles a day to lose a lb of fat was to emphasise how the average person cannot rely on being a bit more active to counteract overeating. When someone is already significantly overweight, going swimming twice a week and having the odd bounce on a trampoline isn't going to bring them back to a healthy weight unless their diet changes significantly.

There was a thread a short while back called "Living with a binge-eating teen is wrecking my mental health" by @EmmatheStageRat

The circumstances won't be exactly the same, but there was some interesting and what looked like helpful advice on how to approach the issues. One I remember in particular is not to get a young child to "diet" but to stabilise their weight while they 'grow into it'. I'm no expert, just passing it on for a read.

I was a very overweight teen and am now average weight adult.
In my case my DPs were normal weight and food at home was healthy, it was more I think that I have a predisposition for sugary foods and at the time didn't enjoy exercise.

I'm sorry as I don't know what the answer is. I'm losing weight now - was shifting up for menopause- through restricting carbs and cutting out all sugar, but you can't force a teen to do that as it's really about willpower.

Maybe as you are overweight yourself, modelling healthy eating and trying to lose some weight yourself is the way to go. I've found DH is annoyingly losing weight without trying in our house as I have stopped buying chocolate or biscuits.