How to help overweight daughter

[NeedSleepNow]

My daughter is 12 and is overweight for her age/height. She was always very slim previously but gradually put on weight over the last 3 years since her Dad and I separated. It was very gradual to begin with, a combination of a bit of emotional eating and her Dad feeding her nothing but crappy food. She then went to secondary school and she put on a lot more weight as she ate a lot of junk there. I tried sending healthy packed lunches but she threw most of it away and bought fast food from the canteen instead (I wasn't putting money on her school meals account, she is eligible for free school meals so there is always £3 available on her account each day so she knows she can always buy something).

She is very unhappy with her weight now, cries a lot about it and is asking for help. I talk about the importance about being healthy, eating a variety of good foods, eating certain things in moderation, getting exercise but have always tried not to talk about anyone being fat/overweight etc.

She does a lot of dance but doesn't enjoy it much now because of her weight (she hates seeing herself in the large mirrors there), has given up swimming as she's too selfconcious in a swimming costume. It's really starting to affect her confidence and day to day life.

How would you tackle this? She is desperate to lose weight but is really struggling with healthy eating. She has quite a restrictive diet which makes it very hard to give her healthy balanced meals as she just won't eat most of it (there are lots of sensory issues with food, I suspect she is autistic and the school have suggested going via the GP to try to get a diagnosis). I desperately want to help her tackle this before it affects her even more.

What weight is she? What height is she?

Does she have 3 stone to lose or 1?

can she walk to school? My two walk 2 miles school and get their 10000 steps in everyday through that.. also no sweets Buiscuit at home, porridge , with fruit for breakfast..

I would start by teaching her to cook, from scratch, 5 healthy balanced meals which she enjoys eating.

Once she can do those competently I would encourage her to cook once a week at yours and offer that any time she wants to cook for her dad as a treat that you’ll pay for the ingredients.

Is there a regular fast food place he takes her? If so I would sit down with the menu with her and help her choose an option that she likes without too many calories. And do the same with the school menu so she has a reasonably healthy option which she can buy each day.

How many days does she spend with her dad per week? Except for dance how much physical activity does she get? Is her bmi actually overweight or is she just bigger than what she previously was?

This is an important point.
My DD gained some weight at a similar age. She had always been a petite child but she is her father’s daughter and suddenly looked larger than was healthy. She struggled with portion control. Would eat pretty much anything but didn’t know when to stop.
I was careful not to vocalise my concerns. Tried hard to feed her appropriately and kept her as active as possible. She never expressed any worries about her size although she was aware her friends looked different I think. She was about a stone and a half too big I reckon.
Then just as suddenly she started to slim down. Need less food. She’s never going to be a size 6 but she’s a healthy size 10-12 now.
Puberty may well be factor for your Dd.
I’m not saying she doesn’t need to make changes in her eating habits but hormones might not be helping.

You mention food issues, does she have arfid? Very hard to manage

She's quite short for her height, around 4"7 and weighs 8st 12lb so she has quite a lot to lose to reach a healthy weight

At the moment we are miles away from the school so she has to get a lift to school and back each day. We are moving to near the school soon and she will be able to walk each day but our new house is too near to get many steps in!

She has quite a good breakfast each day, although given the chance she will dish up 3 times more than she needs. Portion control is definitely an issue.

Yes she is definitely overweight based on her bmi. She stays once a week and then sees him a couple of times mid week too when he always gives her sweets, cakes, biscuits etc.

When he gives her and her brothers pocket money he just takes them to the supermarket and gives them money to buy food - she'll often come back with a double pack of biscuits, giant chocolate bar, tonnes of sweets etc that she bought. I've talked to her dad about it to try to get him to help but it has made no difference as he keeps buying it (despite him having lost 3 stone at slimming world and refusing to eat junk food himself!)

@Smartiepants79 I think hormones could definitely be a factor and portion control is a big problem.

When she first started gaining weight I tried to ensure what she was having at home was as healthy as possible, go out as a family on walls for exercise etc and never mentioned her weight. It is only recently that she had really noticed herself and is very unhappy with how she looks

I don't think she has arfid @babasaclover , but there are certain textures, smells of food etc that she just can not cope with. It's got a lot worse as she's got older

Unless your family are all tiny she's due a big growth spurt. But in the meantime I guess it's all about calorie counting.

What's her TDEE (I think it's called that, the amount of calories you need per day)? Then you can see how many she'd need to lose weight.

That might help in that she can still have junk food as long as she incorporates it in moderation. She could do volume eating if she has a big appetite. Things like roasted veggies with chicken breast, big salads, porridge?

It depends on what she likes but getting her interested in cooking and the nutritional content of foods might be good.

@BillieWiper and @NewUserName2244 getting her interested in cooking is a really good idea. I've suggested to get with go through all of my recipe books and she can pick a few things that she would like to try and that we cook them together.

She doesn't like eating food that's all mixed together so won't eat anything in sauces - she likes food to be very plain, dry & seperate on the plate which makes it very tricky!

When my DS was eating a lot of junk someone on here recommended reading this guide from the Caroline Walker Trust. I read through it then talked about some points wiyh DS. We agree to make a couple of changes and it worked.

If she’s so small, I’d also recommend looking at her daily calcium needs and tbink about giving her a daily vitamin with iron and calcium.

Can you up her exercise too? Maybe go for a walk together, start Parkrun, or do some shirt YouTube workouts together?

My dd is the same. She turns 12 soon and weighs 9 stone. I’m not sure how tall she is, maybe 4ft 10? She’s autistic and hypermobile so struggles a lot with physical activity and food and it’s really hard. I started packing on weight at her age and spent my whole life overweight until I turned 35. She hates absolutely all exercise - god knows I have tried and tried with her. All her friends are super slim and are constantly eating rubbish and it’s hard for her feeling bigger and not understanding why she can’t just be like her friends.

@BillieWiper I've just used an online calculater for her Tdee and it says her maintenance calories are 1457. I'm not sure how much lower than this she would need to eat to start losing weight at a safe stay rate. My side of the family are quite tall but all the women on her Dad's side are quite short so she may not be due a big growth spurt unfortunately.

Thanks @SleafordSods i'll have a look at the links you posted.

i bought my dd a ‘picky plate’ from Amazon and will put random things in each part so they aren’t touching and she can try different things. I think it takes the pressure off a bit compared to a normal plate of food.

https://amzn.eu/d/hfLPlJA

It’s very tricky when they are of an age that you can’t control their intake, especially now when she’s under her fathers care.

I think the fact that she’s open with you is great, that she is leading on wanting to make a change.

I think as part of discussions, you can start enforcing financial literacy at this age with pocket money, and showing that if they want £x more expensive items, they have to save up for it. or have little role play games involving ‘Right you have £50 budget a day, rent is £22, electric £6, fun stuff is £5’ etc, to learn that money doesn’t just run through their hands like water, but has to be accounted for.

Following the same principle, you can talk about calories are the bodies pound coins. Work out her maintenance calories, and ask her to decide how she wants to spend them.

Some people will be appalled by the mention of discussing calories, but honestly as an overweight child I so wish I’d had it explained and nipped in the bud sooner rather than later. She’s on the precipice of becoming emotionally distressed due to her body image and being uncomfortable, and the one thing that will mask those feelings with pseudo comfort is bingeing on addictive high calorie foods, a truly vicious cycle.

Once she knows what she’s got to play with, and how many biscuits you get for your buck, it at least gives her knowledge of jer choices.

You cannot outrun a bad diet, no matter what age you are.

Obviously she needs to be moving, because that’s important for all of us - but you need to start logging what she’s eating and teaching her the maths and science behind calories. It’s hateful, but a lifetime of misery due to not understanding the relationship between calories consumed and burned is more hateful imho.

Also halving her portion size is a very quick way of starting, so she doesn’t immediately see that she’s missing out. One round of toast instead of two. Weigh cereal - that’s a big issue for a lot of people. Cereals aimed at children are very unhealthy. Not everyone needs three meals a day. Also try to explain how far she would have to walk to burn off a chocolate bar.. that might do it.

That's a good idea @MyMelody123 I'll order her one of those, see if it helps her.

It's so hard for them isn't it when their friends seem to eat similar things but stay very slim and they can't understand why. I've tried to explain to my daughter that we all have different matabolisms needs so we can't all eat the same amount each day but I don't think she understands.

Initially, I wouldn’t try to go for a deficit. I would give her the 1457 daily allowance, and also talk about just like you can get your weekly pocket money, you don’t have to spend it equally every day if she wants a treat on dads day, if you’ve saved for it.

At 4ft 7 she should be due some growth, even if she is from a petite family, so if she sticks with maintenance then she should see a levelling out, while gaining learning about nutritional values.

What sort of (healthier) things will she eat?

I know you don’t want to be talking to her about dieting, being overweight and so on, but if you keep skirting around it she just won’t make the connection between the things she’s eating and how she feels about her body.

Maybe next time she gets upset, as well as comforting her you could gently explain that all the junk she buys at school and at shops with dad isn’t good for her body, and if she would like to change things she needs to try really hard to have less of the chips and biscuits. Could she spend the supermarket money on magazines or hair clips instead of food (assuming she won’t buy fruit instead, and that it’s not the only food she gets at dad’s).

@ItsOnlyHobnobs and @Flingotheflamingo I had avoided counting calories or mentioning it to her for so long but I'm starting to wish I had looked at it with her sooner. Instead I just stressed the importance of good nutrition and exercise to stay healthy etc.

It's really affecting how she feels about herself now and I would hate for it to affect her as she moves to adulthood or for it to become a lifelong problem so I agree that now is time to look at it with her. Hopefully by looking at what she needs each day and educating her about calorie content of foods she likes it might help her to make more informed and better choices.

There are calculators that tell you how much to eat to lose weight safely. It may be around 500 less than that. To lose around a pound a week. That's just a guess. But you must take into account exercise as that raises TDEE.

@DownThePubWithStevieNicks in terms of healthier foods she does like most fruit, yoghurt, she eats chicken, pork, eggs. Veg wise I can only get her to eat boiled carrots and sweetcorn.

She seems to feel constantly hungry and would snack all day long given the choice.