Teen overeating and putting on weight

[vilamoura2003]

Can I ask advice about how to help my teen DD. She is a happy go lucky girl really. Doesn't have much of a friendship group but has the odd few that she can see socially. Good at a school, no real issues - apart from what I think is an extremely unhealthy relationship with food 🤔

She massively overeats, won't choose to eat anything healthy unless I tell her she has to and will eat multiple amounts of any snacks, etc that I buy. Obviously there are other people in the house hold who might like the odd choc ice or cereal bar so I need to buy them.

She is 16 years old and has not long had a bank account to which her pocket money is paid (she is trying to find a job but there's nothing out there at the moment). I think she is potentially spending some of this pocket money on sweets and crap from the shops.

I have had the same conversation with her over and over and over again about portion sizes, choosing healthy options, maybe only one snack a day, how bad sugar is for the body, how it is addictive. How being overweight can make you feel sluggish and lethargic. It just goes in one ear and out of the other.

I came home from shopping last week at lunch time and by tea time I had found she had eaten a rice crispie square and two 99 cal snickers bars. I have asked her what healthy snacks she would like and if she was really hungry she could have those, but she will have those as well. If given a choice she would choose the double sized chocolate bars or Mars or snickers (the one where there is two in the pack), and says the normal size ones are small 🤷🏻‍♀️

My husband likes a hot chocolate and I buy the Cadbury one. She will take the suggested teaspoons of powder and will add more powder and milk. She will say it tastes watery 🤦🏻‍♀️

If I buy something and I think 4 days later, I just fancy that - I can go to the cupboard and it will have all gone. I have to specify for her not to eat things if I want to save something for myself 🤷🏻‍♀️

At 16 I don't feel like I can really control what she's eating anymore. What do I do? Just leave her to it and let her make her own choices 🤷🏻‍♀️ She potentially will go off to uni in 2 years time and has to make her own decisions about what to eat. I worry she is going to be so overweight 😕

She is snugly fitting in a size 12 but has weighed herself this morning (after I asked her to), and she has put a stone on in the last 5 weeks and is now up to 11st 7. She has been in for 10 days self isolating after a close contact at school so she says it is because she hasn't been very active.

I have even offered to take her to the doctors if she wants to talk to someone else 🤔 She gets defensive and says she's happy as she is.

I don't know whether I'm doing the wrong thing - does anyone have any advice? I really worry that she has such a bad relationship with food 🤷🏻‍♀️

Nine year old twin boys ...one slim and enjoys healthy food but the other very chubby and totally obsessed with food, when the next mealtime will be , chocolate and always wants seconds/ thirds ....He appears as soon as he hears anything rustling in the kitchen as he’s hoping for anything going ....we’ve had to stop buying treats ( shame as l love them ! ) and trying not to make a big deal out of it. He closes his eyes when he eats with a look of bliss ! We’re hoping he’ll be a chef 👨‍🍳

but has weighed herself this morning (after I asked her to)

Pre-order Dr Joshua Wolrich's book and leave her alone until it arrives. You're not only on a hiding to nowhere with your approach, you'll end up with a daughter with an eating disorder.

Thank you so much for the replies.

Hard to read as it seems the general consensus is I'm potentially going to make her have an eating disorder by trying to help her.

I see people saying they don't think her weight is a problem, but I definitely don't think putting on a stone in weight in 6 weeks is healthy 😕

This has built over years and years of the same fascination with sugar.

I can understand people advising for me not to buy it, but she now has a bank account and her own money which she will just buy it herself 🤔

So should I just leave her be - not buy stuff and not raise it if she puts more weight on?

Vilamoura- l said one thing only to my dd.

I asked if she knew what emotional eating was? And was she happy and did she need any help with it. I told her it was her body to choose what to put into it. But in terms of health it wasn’t very good for her body to keep it up.

It made no difference. But at least l tried to put it out there.

I don’t have an answer it’s hard. It seems all the advice is about preventing it which is fine. But then lockdown or outliers appear. And no one tells you how to deal with emotional overeating except not to mention it. It’s a bloody nightmare.

Fwiw Dd was born hungry, and was constantly asking for food as a toddler. 20 mins after eating she’d be hungry again. Saying her tummy hurt.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow 🙏🏻 Thank you so much for your reply.

Like you, DD has always been this way. I have posted before when she was about 11, she asked me to buy a Christmas present for her friend at school, she picked out some chocolates, but before she got chance to give them to her, she ate them 🤷🏻‍♀️ I definitely was not trying to reason with her back then about making the right choices so I don't think I can have caused this.

Apart from not buying any unhealthy food, how else do I help her without speaking to her about it?

For the avoidance of doubt, when I speak to her, I'm not shouting or ranting or shaming her. I'm asking if there is a problem and suggesting healthy choices. Suggesting she keeps an eye on her weight and that eating should be a healthy balance.

So do I just leave her to come to her own decisions about her body and hope that she doesn't have a binge eating disorder (but what if she does - how do you help if you don't talk to her about it 🤷🏻‍♀️)

I don’t know. It’s so hard.

I do think teens like sugar, and they all overeat on it. I think it calms down as you get older. Just because they eat it now doesn’t mean they always will.

All I’m doing is leaving it and hoping she comes to it herself. But l don’t know if it’s right...

I feel for you both. One of my teens eats out of boredom and fed up since lockdown. I feel so frustrated that many issues that teens are having would not have occurred if it had not been for lockdown. if they were kept busy as in normal times there would be less time to be bored or stew. Not even exercise classes are starting yet, however I have been insisting that my teens go for a walk everyday if it's fine even if its only 10 mins.

As others have said, this needs to be handled really sensitivity as it may seem that she isn't bothered by certain comments by often it's a defence mechanism.
Asking her to weigh herself etc can be really harmful and it causes too much focus on weight.
Maybe I'm oversensitive about this as I was overweight/obese in my late teens and people in my family constantly went on about my weight (mum was the worst for it)
And now I have anorexia. It's taken over my whole life. I used to be eating constantly and now I'm the total opposite. It really can happen to anyone.
Just try to be supportive, maybe as a family reduce the amount of sweets and stuff that you are bringing into the house, don't single her out.

She sounds like me when I was a teenager!

I wish someone could have told my mum the following things:

• To check in with me and make sure I was eating sufficient healthy meals. I’d starve myself all day then eat 6 kitkats after school.
• Stop buying sweets and unhealthy snacks
• Instead, buy lots of fruit, berries, fancy veg and so on
• Don’t put a big serving dish in the middle of the table - dish up individual portions and only cook the right amount so there are no seconds.

As an adult I know that what works for me is having no snacks in the house. Lots of people are like this I think!

I also like to “volume eat”. So that means for me dinner might be a chicken Kiev with peas and carrots and salad - a huge plate but not many calories. Whereas if my mum was serving it’d be a Kiev, a few chips and bread on the side. She has the self restraint to have a tiny plate (and one snack a day) but I just don’t so I’d end up eating far too many calories.

I am a size 10 and run marathons. When I go back to my parents they still have to hide the chocolate though haha.

My dd same age is the same, eating all the time and is 12st , she told me that and I promised not to say anything to anyone. I am trying to get more active and hoping she will but she doesnt want to go for walks etc.
I will try and not have too many unhealthy snacks in the house etc