My 12 year old dd is very over weight. She gets very angry at me when I try to help. Any advice would be really appreciated!

[Welshcakesareyum]

My dd is very over weight, it has crept on over the last few years. She has always been a fussy eater. I am joining the gym with her in jan but she won't eat anything healthy at all! She is being bullied and it's heart breaking!
Do I tell her it's that (healthy option) or nothing at all. Or a bowl of cereal?
All she will eat is:
Pizza
Chicken wraps
Sandwiches/crisps
Yorkshire pudding/chicken/gravy
Cereal
Toast
Bread
Anything sweet
If I restrict unhealthy food, she will pick at anything she can (cheese, dry bread, ham).
I have tried just allowing treat at the weekend. She spends all of her pocket money on sweets/chocolate.
I encourage healthy food but she refuses to eat it! When I try to talk to her about it, she gets angry at me.
I am struggling here, I have no support from her father. I would really appreciate some advice 😊

you notice in the list of things she eats there is flour in each ?
Cereal & Sugar are your enemy.
Give her eggs & bacon, etc. but no toast. etc.
boiled eggs
She will be angry, she is effectively detoxing, (except for school lunch)
but after a few days her stomach will debloat & she will feel the hunger less.
Drink LOTS of water

This is took off a scientific food site....Chewing will send a signal to your brain that you’re actually eating something solid. This helps your body to feel full faster.

Apples

Thankyou everyone!
Dragongirl10 thankyou, that is exactly how I will do it. I feel so anxious about it but your post helped me feel calmer.
I really do appreciate everyone's post.
I can do this! I keep telling myself, it's for my dd. She may not like me for a while but in the long run.

Glad you are finding a way forward from the suggestions, op,

l don't think you can half change this, I do think you will need a plan.
You decide first exactly how to approach it, get DH on side and agree how to handle her anger, what to say (or not say!) and food shopping and whats brought into the house.
Its a lot easier as a team, my DH now respects my requests for no impulse buying of unhealthy stuff now as he sees how much better DCs eat.( he used to randomly shop and bring home all sorts of sweets, and l was a stone heavier because of it and my late night lack of willpower! ) He agreed he wanted the Dcs to have a healthy attitude to food so has got much better.

Over Xmas we all overate and had a lot of sweets and chocolate etc, but New Yrs Day l get rid or give away whats left and restock with healthy foods.
I do the same after Halloween and parties/family events, we may have cupboards full of the fattening foods but, l never leave it there after the event, (painful as it is to give/throw away!)

As far as my dcs are concerned there is no choice over meals, they can ask for favourites, and l will try to accomodate, but are expected to eat what they are given, also no vegetables no dessert, l have been doing that since toddlerhood.

If you can stealthily change the food eaten at home and make it impossible for her to buy junk out by no pocket money ( to make it fair you could do 6 months of ...'we are all going to save for something special and so all pocket money will go to X special toy each week chosen by each DC, then go and buy it', you will not make her feel singled out)

Dragongirl10 thankyou 😊 it's good to jave an idea how to handle it to so you jave been very helpful. I need to do This, what you do. They have so much at Christmas and Halloween.
I'm a single parent so I can't ask anyone for help/advice, unfortunately. My exh doesn't take an interest. I have tried to e plain to him but he has no input at all so given up asking for help. He won't spare any thought or time. They see him 2 days a month.
That's why this post has really helped me. Your post and others here have felt really supportive. I got to a point where I felt it was so out of control, I didn't know where to start. I feel calmer now.
I have to be strong and prepare for the tears and tantrums.

Sorry about the typos 🙈

Whilst in most ways it is much more difficult to be a single parent, this perhaps will help here, as your house, your rules and no one to disrupt that!

If DD is only with exh 2 days a month that will not matter.

I am prone to piling on the weigh fast like DS, DD is naturally v skinny like her father.
So l know how hard it is to always be eating super healthily whilst others have lots of bread and roast potatoes, but having a DS like me, has really motivated me to be aware of getting him to accept through seeing for himself, that once treat times are done, ie parties, Xmas, healthy eating is the norm and can be enjoyable too.

Yesterday DS called out 'just getting a snack before dinner ' he had a huge handful of green beans, raw, in one hand and a chunk of cheese in the other. If there was plenty of chocolate or biscuits in the cupboard l doubt l would be able to keep him at a healthy weight.

You do have to be prepared for the tears and tantrums, as your DD is used to having what she wants with food, but remember it is not making her happy being overweight, ( or healthy) and as soon as she feels better and lighter she will be delighted.

l find if my mind is really made up regarding a difficult issue and l am not prepared to discuss it, because l am sure l am doing my best for them they soon sense my resolve and calm down.

Be prepared to stay calm and not react, shout or justify. Hope it goes well.

Welshcakesareyum I have the same problem with my daughter who is 13 years eating healthy no junk and fizzy drink very sportive danse , athletics , swimming but still overweight . Its so frustrated nothing fits her I have took her to GP who's said she will loose it and everyone is telling me that she will loose it when grown up . I am very slim but his dad was overweight on his teens and lost the weight by running thats why I am worry . Apparently too young to join the gym

A good meal is wholegrain wrap with chicken pieces, cucumber and humus. Apparently thats a fairly balanced meal in itself and she does like wraps. You can also have them for breakfast as wrap + small amount of peanut butter + banana/apple.

I did notice that even with her "after dinner snack" meal she was still having crisps and then saying "we are allowed treats!" about no mcDonalds, she doesnt seem to see crisps as a treat/snack food which they are, even the lower-fat ones.

Crisps are the food of the devil..... Just do not buy them.
she is 12, you are still able to decide what she can & can't eat.
She will get angry, she will become extremely unpleasant, she needs her carb/sugar fix.
She will not die of starvation, she may be stubborn, she may refuse to eat perfectly good food, but she will not starve.
New Year, New rules. It may seem hard in view of being a single parent, the bullying & general stress of life. But being overweight is something she will have for life, You are responsible for trying to rectify this now

I agree - things that work for weight loss are cut snacks, dinner on smaller plates, only water to drink and up your exercise.

Offer veg before main meals - with interesting (but not too fatty) dips. They taste best when you are hungry. (Good for nibbling at while chatting and waiting for main meal.)

It is REALLY hard to think of your own child being hungry but try not to get too emotional about it. Hang on to the greater good. Hunger isn't dangerous in itself. She isn't suffering terribly if she has refused something less attractive to eat - or she would eat the other things offered.

If she has eaten just a bit of the meal - then she is just a bit peckish -
not actually hungry. If you are really hungry, then even things you don't like start to taste good! If you are actually starving - you will try things that aren't food. (Think of extreme examples where people want to eat fish eyes and raw liver!)

Weight management is 90% food intake, 10% exercise

If the whole household quietly stops buying the food that none of you need
and has smaller portions without making a fuss
then you will all benefit

but exercise is max 10% of weight loss

TREATS
What has been done to deserve the treat ?
Too many people treat themselves just for doing what they should be doing anyway.
THe Treat culture and the treat foods are always sugary shite is one that is better to move away from

I could have written your post a few years ago OP. I think this is a lovely thread, full of non judgemental support and sensible suggestions. I must say when my daughter was overweight (which seemed to happen overnight when she was 11) I felt very judged by other mothers, as if they thought I was force feeding her and some quite hurtful comments. The reality was I had two children, one a beanpole and one overweight and I wasn’t doing anything substantially different for each child. My daughter refused to eat sensibly and would constantly snack. She was also non-sporty and stubbornly refused to take part in activities like cycling or walking, doing only what school required and any walking I could build in to every day life. I managed to keep a lid on her weight until she had more freedom at secondary school and then her weight increased so that by the time she was 15 she was 5’ 7” and nearly 14st. During this time she was a typical teen and pretty much everything I said was dismissed and she certainly wasn’t going to exercise with me at that stage. During this time I got her cooking and taking an interest in food which I think was a good thing and elected to say nothing about her body size...it was really hard not to beg and plead with her but I stuck to my guns. The other thing I did was to model different behaviour so that I very quietly lost two stone myself. I never talked about diets, I never criticised my own body. I never made certain foods ‘treats’, all treats were none food. Slowly, around GCSE time she started to like me a bit more and to be prepared to cook with me and do a fitness class with me. She began to get into healthy eating and look after herself better. I think she was able to make this adjustment mostly as a result of growing up but also because I hadn’t panicked outwardly (inwardly I was very very worried about it and felt very guilty that I hadn’t somehow caught it early), so she wasn’t defensive about her weight.

My daughter is now nearly 18. She’s now about 11st at a guess. Not super slim but not fat either. She loves cooking and eating but seems to have developed wider tastes in food and has lots going on in life so I suppose isn’t always thinking about food. OP, I think you are doing great and I think that if you keep your head and keep the larder at home sensible by quietly making the changes suggested and help her to develop her interests and her own personal hinterland then food needn’t be a massive war zone. You’re coming up to some possibly tricky years -though you might get luckier than I did- but I am sure she’ll come out of the other end of the teens just fine.

YouOKHun, you sound like my mum. I was heading into bad territory at 12 and my poor mum tried hard. We never had choc or processed food in the house, I just ate anything I could get my hands on. When I was 15 she sat me down and said we're going to do this together. She didn't have that much to lose, but she made a huge push with me, we spent loads of time together doing things, shopping, cooking etc. I enjoyed it so much and lo and behold dropped 20kgs, which I kept off until I started having kids.
It took my mum 3 years to get me into it though. So glad she persisted!