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.

Lots of the advice on this thread is basically a guide for how to give your child an eating disorder. This is a 12 year old, people!!
Please, please do not put her on a diet, count calories openly, or try to do things like calculate her tdee and take some away. One poster suggests 1000 calories a day - this is a recipe for disaster for a pubescent pre teen. They need fuel.
Talk about healthy choices, exercise, sort out the root cause of emotional eating, try to talk to her dad... and make sure she eats regularly, meals and snacks to keep her blood sugars steady as she is still growing. She is at puberty, and still waiting for a growth spurt. Those adult calculators and advice and diet plans for adults do not apply. She shouldnt be trying to lose weight, just to maintain until she grows into it.

I imagine she is hungry all the time as she is eating too much sugar and carb heavy meals.

Luckily she likes chicken, pork and eggs. If I were you I would drastically increase the portions of those things at every meal she has at your house. So omelet for breakfast, lots of chicken and veg for dinner. I buy anything with high protein in for my kids that are always hungry. You can get high protein wraps which are good.

As she is eating so much crap outside your house I think all you can do is ensure she has no crap when she’s with you and shed loads of protein.

If she is fussy with food, maybe think about sticking to similar foods each day - meal prepping some lunches might help. I recently lost some weight and found that a monotonous and predictable diet worked best. I allow myself more treats now, but still stick to it mostly. I know that, roughly, this amount of calories will keep me on track. You don't need to share the number of calories with her, but perhaps check whether the portion sizes are correct - if she's still hungry, maybe see whether you can up her portion of meat and veg with the meal, so that it's still a filling meal, just more balanced.

I've never been into any form of exercise and, really, getting a grip on my diet is the only thing that will control my weight.

This is the kind of thing I have most weekdays:
Breakfast - protein yoghurt and an apple
Morning snack - small bag of popcorn
Lunch - grilled chicken kebab, pitta/cauliflower rice, salad - all with a low calorie, spicy salsa or tzatsiki
Afternoon snack - apple
Dinner - grilled meat (pork, steak, chicken, koftas, meatballs, bolognese etc), green veg, potatoes/pasta/rice - I vary the seasoning or sauces throughout the week

For evening snacks, I make little snacky plates to pick at while watching TV which come to about 300 cals and make me feel like I've had a treat - mini bags of haribo or skittles, wafer bars, fruit, carrots, baby cucumbers, ice lollies, popcorn. The mini bags really help me with portion control!

I also agree with getting rid of any fizzy drinks - squash is fine, but I found even sugar free pop had an awful impact on my gut. I'll have a can of cold san pellegrino once a week now, as an actual treat. Sauces like ketchup and mayo can also up the calories in a massively, if she has them.

Aww I really feel for you OP.

It's so tough because you don't want them to pick up unhealthy habits that affect them, but at the same time you want to help her.

We all know as adults keeping an eye on your calorie intake is extremely important, but explaining that to a girl at a vulnerable age, just doesn't feel like it's the right way to go.

I agree with getting her to look for recipes and being involved in making meals. The BBC good food website is brilliant and has all the calories on the site so you could say 'we need to make sure it's under x calories for us all as we want to make sure we're being healthy' type of thing.

People on this thread offering up their own dieting strategies, STOP. This is a child, not an adult.

Restriction leads to bingeing and disorder eating. You need to focus on adding food in not taking away - adding lots of protein, good fats and fiber, and eating frequently, so that she isn’t as hungry for junk snacks.

@NeedSleepNow you say ‘I talk about the importance about being healthy, eating a variety of good foods’ - I am afraid this is harmful. Don’t label foods good/bad, this puts certain foods on a pedestal and makes th m more appealing.

This proven approach is called food neutrality - look up the Division of Responsibility approach and the Ellyn Satter institute.

She would probably really benefit from some therapy too. A psychotherapist who is also a trained intuitive eating specialist would be ideal

This!

Fill her full of good protein and whatever veg you can get her to eat.

have you tried her on rice or noodles bowls if she likes things separate?
bowl of rice or couscous or noodles
then separate meat, veg, salad options for her to add
you can add things like seeds or nuts and garnishes to make it more interesting, same with dressings or marinating things- but hers very plain unless she wants to experiment.
ask ChatGPT for some suggestions of different bits to put together and always have lots of safe options, but maybe a couple of different elements in case she wants to try them.
portion control the carb element for her

Does she like potatoes? Slimming world style chips in air fryer is a great alternative to fast food.

I don't know if this will help at all, but it sounds to me as if she has got into the habit of comfort eating - self-soothing with foods that taste good and have a pleasing mouthfeel. Just as smokers need to find something else to do with their hands and to put in their mouths, so she needs to find some displacement activity to soothe and steady herself, so that she isn't always turning to food.

When I was giving up smoking I nibbled on carrot sticks and drank galloons of coffee. I don't recommend coffee for a 12 years old, but maybe interesting flavors of caffeine free tea? And something like knitting? Something she can do with her hands while watching TV/Youtube/Tiktok/whatever.

In my home we have a rule that the only sweet things we eat in the house are the ones we made ourselves - cakes, biscuits, puddings, etc... When my kids were small, I had a cookbook for making your own candy, and we often made fudge, or marshmallow, or peanut brittle, together at weekends.

I agree- up the protein to carb ratio
C25K do it together
mainly this will be a portion control thing rather than an exercise thing, but exercise will help especially if you get the portions under control
I absolutely wouldnt go for a dieting approach, just a healthy diet with a good anmount of protein, and she’ll slim down as she grows.

£3 worth of school dinners each day does not cause a child to become overweight. It’s what she’s eating at home that is obviously doing the damage.

@NeedSleepNow (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).

Is there no way to block this?

Regardless, I'm having a difficult time seeing how a child can become overweight by spending £3 a day at school on food. She is eating food from elsewhere also.

She's 12, so that means you can control her finances. The answer here is to ensure she doesn't have access to money so she can't buy food outside of what you give her at home.

I wouldn't worry about it. That's not hugely overweight for that height (although given her age she should probably be a stone or two less). However, she'll presumably grow another 5 inches or so so she'll thin out as she grows taller. I'd focus on her not putting on any more weight. Not losing but not gaining. Much easier to do and she'll then be a much healthier weight as she grows taller.

if she is autistic then this needs to he handled differently.
firstly which parent is the autism inherited from?
your husband is a major hurdle here. it’s important this is tackled together as 2 parents otherwise it’s going to become a fixation and a crutch.

if you think you’re autistic then could your husband have ADHD (it’s incredible the amount of couples who “find” each other because of this dynamic).
if he has ADHD then it’s going to be a massive struggle to get him onboard.

its as simple as calories in vs calories out. But if you use a tracker (like my fitness pal) your daughter may become fixated with it. But it is the most sensible mathematical way to do it. It’s not hormones or anything like that. It’s simply choice of food and portion size.

I haven't read through all the replies to see if this has been mentioned, but it could be linked to puberty and PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) which can cause weight gain as hormones fluctuate (especially around the middle). I don't know if she has any other symptoms, but it could be worth a Google.

Autism isn't always genetic and the OP's child isn't diagnosed so may not even be autistic.

Could you help her to join a gym and attend with her?

Eating disorders are very easy to impress on young girls. If you make any changes they should be about adding more filling foods, rather than limiting portion sizes or telling her not to eat certain things.

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-weight/childrens-weight/advice-for-parents-overweight-children/

A few tips here, avoid adult sized portions and using a smaller plate for meals and start with smaller servings etc.

It's hormones as well. Its a shock when you go from being a kid who can eat anything to suddenly ballooning out. I had a really long paper round before school, walked to school, but still chubbed up around 13. IT slowly went back down again as my hormones settled. Secondary school is bad for having crappy food everywhere.

It’s almost always genetic. There just not the data to prove it

I don't think you should ever be teaching a child to calorie count.

I think it’s very important you teach your daughter to be happy and confident in her skin, and that her weight doesn’t define who she is or what she can do as a person. You need to separate her value and self worth from her weight, and deal with the 2 separately. Right now she’s not badly overweight, just over a stone to lose to be in the healthy weight category. However, she’s clearly internalising this idea that she’s fat, and therefore worthless/ hopeless/ less than. I speak from bitter experience when I tell you that being a stone overweight is not worth the permanent damage that disordered eating and internalised sizism will do to her. Do not put her on a diet or introduce the language of diets for the sake of a stone. That’s how you make perpetually obese adults with fucked metabolisms.

I was your daughter, and my mum put me on slim fast at 9 years old (it was the late 90’s) because my grandma pointed out I was chubby. I was just over the top of the healthy weight range. I dieted all my life after that and as a result I hit 21st at 5ft 5 aged 27 at my biggest. I had a ton of metabolic shite I had to unpick and fix before weight would drop off me and it took YEARS. My BMI is 30.4 now, so probably about the same as it was when mum kicked all of this off by being too ashamed of having a fat daughter to see the damage she was doing by trying so hard to fix me.

Anyway, I achieved all my biggest life things when my weight was high. Great job, relationship, friends, family etc all happened when my weight was going up, not down. I was A LOT happier fat than I ever have been at a healthy weight. The 2 aren’t related unless you internalise that they are. You can be happy and fat or unhappy and slim. I’ve been both and bother the other way around, too.

Teach your girl her weight doesn’t define her, and that if she wants to make her body stronger or healthier then she can choose to do that, but there is so much more to life and to living than something as boring as BMI. I wish someone had said this to my mum.

If you truly want to help her I suggest stopping buying carbs other than above ground vegetables and for fruit only berries.

She needs to eat almost only fat and protein and then her body will learn how to convert protein to glucose and her hunger hormones will reduce.

No grains. No starchy veg.

Please please please don't make a 12 year old count calories. She needs to eat healthy meals including all food groups, and limit treats.