How to deal with greedy teen?

[JemimaThePuddleDuck]

DS is 15.
He used to be sporty and fit, he was always playing out with his friends and was slim.
over covid he got into online gaming and he and his friends now just want to sit on discord calls playing games together every night, he doesn't go out, doesn't exercise and just wants to lie around watching YouTube or playing games.

He gave up all his sports and now spends most of his time in front of a screen.

I've tried to limit screen time, but it doesn't make a difference, he doesn't want to go outside or be active.

The main issue is his greediness and his weight.

Over the last six months he's become really greedy, like he can't control himself.
he's also gained weight, to the point where his clothes don't fit and I would consider him overweight.

It's definitely greediness, he's got into a habit of eating his packed lunch at break time, so by the time he gets home from school he is starving,
we always have plenty of easy to prepare food but he will go for the laziness option and stuff himself.

I tried to talk to him, discussed options and got in snacks he would like, but he will gorge himself on them.

Some examples,
He asked for specific cereals,
But he will eat the entire box, out of the bag, like it's a bag of crisps.
He asked for wraps and cheese to make quesadillas, he then ate two whole packs of wraps (16 in total) and a bag and a half of grated cheese, in two days.
He asked for instant noodles, he will make three packs at the same time in one bowl.
He asked for yoghurts, but will eat the entire multipack in a day or two.
He will make an enormous bowl of pasta, literally 250g (half a bag) of pasta and just have it with butter or pesto.
Multiple bags of crisps in one sitting.
More times than I can count he has eaten almost an entire loaf of bread either as toast or just bread and butter.

These are all for after school snacks, he then still expects a full meal for dinner two and a half hours later.

The biggest issue is he has gotten into the habit of eating his packed lunch things.

I pre make his sandwich's on a Sunday and put them in the fridge.
He takes a sandwich, a bag of crisps, an apple and a cereal bar to school.
I will quite often find that he has eaten all of the crisps or cereal bars or several of his sandwiches (not ones he's taken to school) part the way through the week.

This evening I have just discovered he had eaten two packets of his crisps and one of his lunch sandwiches,
we had a full roast dinner at 4.30pm, so he's had that and then helped himself to those.

I don't think it's hunger, I think it's greed and probably boredom,
He knows it's there and is lazy,
We have other snack food, there is a pack of cheese and onion rolls, yoghurts, other crisps, fruit and bread.
But he chose to eat his packed lunch sandwich.

I'm so frustrated.
I'm sick of buying food for him to gorge himself on and it be gone in a couple of days.
It's not normal or healthy, at this rate he will be obese soon.

I don't know what to do, I've tried taking to him, planning meals and getting healthier snacks in, I tried tough love, explaining his weight is an issue and he needs to stop eating like this, I've tried shouting, I've tried begging, I've tried hiding food and rationing it.... nothing has worked.

I don't know what to do, has anyone else been through this?

It's not about being rude to someone doe being overweight. This is a mum trying to help her child stop over eating and gaining weight which will lead to serious health problems. It's not 'rude' to explain the realities of food and diet to a teenager. Particularly when the mum is the one expending her time and money on all the food and food prep.

Some amazing doormat like expectations here of a parent. Just be compliant provide all food all the time and never say a word if a child over eats.

Can you afford a fitness instructor - so he goes once or twice a week - this could produce quick results so he can see the improvement so might be more likely to stay at it, using weights etc
I feel so crap if I don't get exercise, and the less fit you are the more effort it takes.
It's hard to compete with the fun and excitement and instant gratification of gaming but he needs some exercise - I know near 30 year olds whose only hobby is gaming - after years how do you break the habit.
He was good at organising young ones - would he help at scouts or similar?

I've been through that phase with two DSs.

DS1 was impossible to fill but because he never put an ounce on I didn't worry. As long as he ate a healthy diet I didn't police snacks or quantity. He was 6' tall aged 11, early puberty. He's 25 now, 6'1" and 11 stone. Can't gain weight no matter what he does.
DS2 didn't have that growth spurt and by 15 was still smaller than his friends but he ate like his older brother and was overweight. I had a very difficult discussion about his weight and he changed his eating habits. It was tough having a sibling (and parents) who could eat anything and not gain weight. Then at 16 he shot up, eventually reached 6'4". He shed most of the weight but as an adult he is still prone to gaining weight and watches what he eats.

Both DC went through sedentary periods of too much gaming and not enough sport but again it was a phase.

You say he's put weight on but is he actually looking fat? My guess is not because if he felt self concious about his weight he might be more likely to acknowlege it.
Has he had a huge growth spurt? If not it may be imminent.

I'm just speaking from personal experience. My mother giving me her opinions about what/how much/how often I weight had zero impact on my eating habits. All it did was make me feel rubbish.

I'm not saying she can't be concerned. Of course, he's her son and she wants the best for him. But sometimes even the very best intentions do not have the desired impact.

@restedbutexhausted

There's a middle ground, I think.

Going on about anyone's weight, without context or other support is not helpful. I'm sorry your mum did that.

But discussing weight in the context of healthy food choices, exercise and lifestyle balance is important I think. ^^

Some amazing doormat like expectations here of a parent. Just be compliant provide all food all the time and never say a word if a child over eats

Says someone clearly with no experience whatsoever of anorexia and the serious and life long consequences of the condition.

Parents are rightly, very careful and mindful of language around food and weight. Perhaps if you nursed a child in hospital being fed through a tube you might feel differently.

Imho- this is the most important comment on this thread. I don’t know if this was your experience @Swayingpalmtrees , my heart goes out to you if it was. It’s an important reminder that children get plenty of social messages about being fat being one of the the worst things you can be, it’s important they don’t these messages from the people they trust most in the world.

I disagree completely. If your child is over weight it does them no favours whatsoever to pretend they're not and to pretend it's not a bad thing. Same as if they smell. Sometimes it needs to be blunt. Sometimes it needs parenting rather then ignoring the problem.

Anorexia is the most serious MH condition and takes the most lives than any other. No one became Anorexic because their dm told them that eating all the junk food was causing them to be overweight and explaining why that's a bad thing. Obesity kills just as much as fags and you wouldn't let you dc smoke so yes when my sugar monster ds got fat from eating too much and playing on his PC I did something about it and yes sometimes he was greedy, he had to be taught (like me as I am also greedy) you can't eat all the cake that's on the buffet table just because it's there and you want it.

I'm getting the impression that some people (not just here, in life in general) see weight loss as an achievement, without thinking about the potential harm it can cause. We must divest from the weight = health mindset.

One of my closest friends getting It has blown the family apart not to mention what it has done to the child, who still hasn't recovered, and it has now been two years. She has been withdrawn from school and was such a bright and lovely girl and her life as she once knew it is now entirely over. She is too weak to stand for long, and has developed heart problems and she is still unable to eat without assistance. Anyone sitting on the ward for any amount of time, and the shocking scenes we have witnessed would think very, very seriously before using examples of the language we have seen on this thread today.

No one became Anorexic because their dm told them that eating all the junk food was causing them to be overweight

That is precisely how you can trigger an eating disorder.
I should know, thanks to my Dad and his thoughtless 'observations'.

Jeez, they aren't toddlers, they are 11 and 9, and I am talking about sharing a bowl of crisps on Friday night, not daily tube of Pringles each. Personally I think being able to practice self-control and enjoy 'treat' food in moderation is healthy and isn't an unreasonable thing to aspire to, and it works absolutely fine for four members of our household of five.

This is one of the biggest myths. That a child will turn anorexic because a parent sat them down and told them that over eating and not exercising was putting weight on. That's not how it works. And to suggest a parent cannot be honest with their child is ridiculous. I doubt anyone is telling her to be nasty but she needs to be honest as honesty is the only solid foundation of which to move forward.
And yes I have known a young girl with anorexia who is the daughter of a friend of mine. All evidence points to it manifesting due to a coupling of huge problems. 1. Her so called friends bullying her over a long period on snapchat. 2. Her father dying and 3. That being coupled with her brother being of special needs so took almost all of her mums time. It was caused by a complete feeling of isolation. Not a parent telling her nicely but honestly that she was eating too much.
It doesn't work that way and parents shouldn't' be scared about being honest.

OP are you at home when DS is making these massive snacks?
I know its not a popular approach on MN but my DC aren't allowed to just go and cook whatever they fancy whenever they fancy it. If they eat all the pasta and pesto for eg I can't afford to keep replacing it. So if it's in the meal plan that week then there's no dinner one day.

Obviously I never let them go hungry. But they aren't allowed family sized portions of pasta as a snack. Or to eat the ingredients for dinner.

Hi OP,
Similar aged DD here and some similar issues we face so I empathise.
We don't get through the amounts of food you have described in your post.
However, I have stood with her in many a changing rooms consoling her as she cries her heart out that nothing trendy from the trendy shops fit her anymore. ( oh brandy melville and hollister how I hate you)
I have struggled to find the "correct" approach and largely tend to ignore so i don't make a huge issue of it.
However, the dentist was not happy with her state of teeth last week and now I know i have to do something about it. It's clearly the money I put in her lunch account plus the snacks I supply at home so they don't feel "cheated"

Sometimes it's not just about the weight or appearance.
It's affects other aspects of health such as in our case the teeth.

And don't get me started on getting teens to leave their rooms and just move!
All I can do is model by getting my yoga mat every morning while I live in hope something will rub off on her.

Stop buying white bread, only buy brown. Give him a protein breakfast. My 15 year old son likes 3 scrambled eggs and 2 bacon occasionally if up early enough he will add a hash brown too. At break time at school he will have a banana. For lunch a roll with ham. A pepperoni stick. An apple and a cerial bar. After school a yogurt or mini cheddars. Dinner spag bol, fish, mash and peas. My son still does a lot of sport. Monday 2 hours cricket practice. Tuesday 2 hours karate. Thursday 1 hour swimming and a 3k run. Friday 2 hours cricket practice. He has his dinner after his sport. My son has 1 hour a screen time a day week days, so if he watches TV then no computer. At the moment he is having a tutor after school for an hour each day working for his GCSES. I would not be allowing my son to lounge around and on computer for hours if he was not revising for his exams.

pearly I strongly disagree, and I assume you have no experience of eating disorders, or the triggers. I would not advise any parent to be 'honest' with their child, which is really just your own personal opinion you are inflicting on them, and your thoughts about their body and basically body shaming them. I really would strongly advise no parent to ever do that, especially at pre teen and teenage stages.

It is not being honest for 'their own good' that is the myth! Children have mirrors and can see when things don't fit and weight gain, they are not blind nor stupid. You are far better off quietly removing the junk from the house and encouraging family exercise than to start body shaming your child with unsolicited opinions of their body. You can cause the most enormous damage by doing so.

Unless you have had a serious eating disorder, and one can only assume you haven't had one given your post Pearly, then I would refrain from second guessing the causes and triggers of eating disorders in children, and focus on your own body and health.

I do appreciate the warning about anorexia. I had a

Did you even read the OP? 😳

They are vegetarian. OP's son does not exercise, or want to at the moment.

Congratulations on being such a model parent 🙄

In what way does your completely unrelated experience help the OP?

@Swayingpalmtrees is correct again here. More or less all of the research literature I’ve read points to negative attitudes of parents, such as body/fat shaming, having a significant negative impact on mental health outcomes including triggering eating disorders. Some research even suggests that parental views on weight and body shape are more important than peer group opinions in the risk of eating disorders.
Being overweight is the number one reason children are targeted for peer bullying, and evidence suggests that negative comments about weight can trigger disordered eating including AN but also binge eating disorders which lead to more, not less excess weight gain.
If telling people that they are overweight, and that a healthy diet and more exercise is the way to lose weight actually worked then we would have stopped the global steady rise in BMI already, a long time ago. Telling people they need to lose weight and get fit doesn’t work, it just adds to stigma and increases the risk of them taking drastic steps to avoid weight gain, or emotional eating triggered by stigma.

I think what many people are missing is how difficult it is to address disordered eating without shaming the child or young person.

Yes, you can remove junk food from the house, but by their teen years most kids will have access to enough pocket money and local shops to be able to sabotage that. What do you do then, cut off any access to money? Demand to see their receipts? Implement a curfew?

And as the OP has experienced, it isn't necessarily junk food, its binge eating on normal food. PPs have suggested laying down the law and forbidding free access to the fridge/store cupboard. Fine, but what do you do when they ignore the rule and eat it anyway? (Which trust me, they will). Yell at them? Sanction them? For behaviour they already feel shitty about?

PPs have suggested laying down the law and forbidding free access to the fridge/store cupboard. Fine, but what do you do when they ignore the rule and eat it anyway? (Which trust me, they will).

My dc don't. They aren't allowed.

Actually DC2 did eat all the tomatoes once despite being told he needed to leave 4 for dinner. I didn't yell or punish him. But the curry wasn't as nice as usual.

You sometimes have to learn to do absolutely nothing and let them work it out in their own time, as hard as it is.

We are their parents and our dc's one and only constant and ought to be their champions and confidantes. If our love is conditional on the size of their body at any given time, and trust me they will know body shaming when they hear it regardless of how you dress it up as 'concern', then what message are we giving them?

You are only good enough for me and to the rest of the world if you are smaller, lighter, fitter, better. You are not good enough as you are. Your heavily disguised disapproval will rip through their self esteem and confidence and create even more problems.

So go ahead if you think your 'honesty' will help, I have never heard any kid say 'thanks Mum for telling me that I am fat, I really hadn't noticed and appreciate your honesty' have you ever heard that? The backlash is likely to be emotive, wounded and hurt or silent which is even worse.

Your honesty is most likely to back fire best case, and worse case you can sit there holding your child as they waste away. Neither scenario will help your child address the root cause of over eating in the first place and you will crush the child, their trust in you and your relationship in the process.

Just to add to excellent points made by @Gettingthingsdone777 and @Swayingpalmtrees that consequences of these unwanted comments from family and close friends are not always black and white. A person doesn't have to fit the stick-thin image of AN that we often see to have AN. Also, just because a person doesn't have AN or another eating disorder, doesn't necessarily mean that they don't engage in disordered eating. Binging, starving, only eating for four hours of the day, juice cleanses, no carb diets* etc etc are all examples or disordered eating.

A lot of blame can be placed on social media 'influencers' and 'diet gurus' and 'what I eat in a day' videos. There is lots of harmful information going around suggesting that some of the behaviours I listed above are acceptable ways to lose weight. Extremely harmful to children who are easily influenced.

*I know that some people have to have certain diets for example low Fodmap or keto for health reasons.