Overweight teen - what to do?

[Claudia40]

Hello there parents

I have a problem and need some advice! My daughter is 14 and is piling on the pounds. She is straining out of size 16 jeans and just seems to be getting bigger and bigger. I am very concerned that it won't be too long before she is going to wake up a very obese and unhappy girl.

We eat normally at home and we encourage her to take exercise, such as walking, instead of taking the bus to school and suchlike. Her sibling and myself and my husband are sort of average really in terms of body shape.

Judging by the amount of sweet wrappers lying around her bedroom, I think her problem lies in the fact that she is spending her money at the corner shop - she must be going through at least a couple of chocolate bars a day. As she earns her own money by babysitting, it isn't as if removing her pocket money will put a stop to it.

At the moment she is pretty cheerful and doesn't seem in the slightest bit bothered that she needs a bigger size every time we go shopping. In other respects, she spends ages on her appearance so I know that this will become important to her...the bigger she gets, the more of a battle it will be for her to control her weight when it becomes an issue.

I really don't know how to approach this without knocking her self confidence. I have tried the healthy eating, healthy lifestyle chats but short of actually saying that she is on a collision course with obesity, I don't know what to do for the best.

I honestly think focusing the discussion on what her body can do rather than what it looks like is better. Concentrate on getting fit for the duke of edinburgh + not thin to get boys

The other thing is to try and substitute quality for quantity. Get her to save up money and buy some chocolates from some where like artisan du chocolate. A box from here will have to last a couple of weeks (one or two a day). Negliable calories but the taste is so so gorgeous that you might find her craving for cheap chocolate filled with fat + sugar to be less

I do agree witch am just throwing out some suggestions of what might work. My sister was very motivated as a slightly chubby teen to lose weight for the boy-appeal thing but it wouldnt have worked on me!

mmmmmm

Kewcumber, yes I admit it sounds critical. (I'm also getting comments from family members to help her do something about it). . I have told her not to diet because I believe that diets cause weight problems not cure them.

I've advised to cut down on the fattening foods that she loves and see them as treats, eat healthily and exercise. She is small so is looking chubby since putting on weight whereas before she was nicely curvy.

I'm laying off her now. If she is happy in herself then that's OK by me. She has adjusted her diet since and is taking more exercise.

It's very difficult to give advice on these threads and to seek it as anything to do with teen/childrens weight is seen as a sure fire path to an ED. Yet I am astonished to see that toddlers and children are being starved of all but the most low fat healthiest foods, nowadays in the fear of childhood obesity.

it is difficult isn't it. Tip-toeing the line between being over critical and letting what could become a serious problem go.

I think Abouteve is right about diets - it just makes you fixate about food even more!

I will really try the get fit route and buy a bumper pack of ear plugs and a large shoe horn to help with the campaign! She's a big softie so if we could do something to raise money for charity I'm sure she'd do her best.

i would totally disagree with telling it like it is. i was over weight as a teen and my parents used to try and motivate me to lose weight by telling me people would pick on me, but really the only people who ever made me feel bad was them! i honestly wasnt bothered by my weight and i did lose it when i left school, but they made me really really unhappy with what they said and they didnt really say much at all

you say if you are hungry between meals you go for toast/fruit etc, i find that i actually need more proper meals but smaller portions to lose weight, toast and fruit doesnt do it for me. maybe make up pasta or potato salads for her that she can pick at through the day. more likely to fill her up so she isnt picking at other stuff. do you know anything about slimming world? they focus on eating loads of good stuff with just a few treats. its quite common sense stuff but doesnt limit how much you can eat. i know you dont want her to do a diet but if you like i can forward you on some stuff i have been emailed and you can read it, you dont have to tell her what you are doing

i think its a lovely idea to excercise together, as an excercise hater i would suggest swimming, it doesnt feel like proper excercise to me!

just another thought - do you think your dd could be due a growth spurt (upwards)? I can think of several teenagers I know (admitedly boys more than girls) who grew noticeably taller quite quickly and in the space of six months went from a bit chubby to slim without any major diet or lifestyle change. That's not to say they necessarily will keep their new, slimline shap, but I have seen teenager's shapes change quite dramatically due to growth spurts.

However of course, eating well and keeping active are important for everyone, teenagers included, if they are to keep a healthy weight.

How about you and your dh - and other relatives? is there any sort of pattern?

(My 14 year old plays lots of sport but is chubby around the waist. He is one of the shorter boys in his class at the moment - he used to be average. He has seen lots of his friends shoot up in height and slim down. Dh and dh's father had a late growth spurt around age 15/16, so I am hoping ds follows suit.)

What are her periods like? If heavy/painful then pcos or similar may be a possibility -this can encourage cravings for carbs/sugar and a propensity to put on weight. Hormones are tricky things and there is not always a 1 size fits all answer.
I lost a lot of weight at 18/19 when i left home and felt it was for me and not nagging parents -but I did end up with (mild) bulimia for a while, and it did go back on in the end.
No easy answers -and i really doubt that she doesn't notice or mind. In my experience more likely teen bravado.

heavy or painful periods aren;t a symtom of PCOS absence or infrequent periods are so its very difficult (if not impossible) to diagnose in teenage girls as their periods are often infrequent. Its a good point though. However PCOS is genetic so someone else in the faimly would also have it - though if its a male the only way you would now is early onset baldness.

With respect Kewcumber ime they can be very heavy and painful -along with irregular and infrequent. PCOS is complex and many people who suffer from it have very different symptoms.
some info

I'm sure some people with PCOS do have heavy periods as do some women who don't have it but it isn't a clinical symptom of PCOS (only a possible side effect of infrequent periods)

The diagnosis of PCOS can be made on the basis of two out of the three of the following
? Oligo- or anovulation
? Clinical or biochemical signs of hyperandrogenism
? Polycystic ovaries on ultrasound or direct inspection

You obviously know what you are talking about -my point was more that in order to get these tests one must know what symptoms to look for,which is why I posted the link. I don't think anyone would argue it is an enormously complex field.

The problem with pcos and weight problems is that they each make the other worse so it becomes a vicious circle, which is why (getting back to the op) if it is a potential contender in her problems it can be treated sooner rather than later.

The problem with looking for a genetic link is that many people in the past may not have been diagnosed and so many people can have very different symptoms of the same disease. I consider myself reasonably clued up but had never heard of the male symptoms as being early baldness.

As I said I am in no way trying to argue with you Kew (wouldn't dare!). Hopefully it is nothing to do with this op at all, just a thought.

sorry wasn;t intended to jump on you just trying to point out that there are better things to look for if you suspect PCOS (and you should note I did say it was a good point ).

I agree the genetic thing isn't necessarily helpful but sometimes once you look for it you can find examples of symptoms in previous generations who weren't diagnosed - small number of children despite trying for more, hirsutism. Interestingly obesity was less common as a symptom as our diet was kinder if you had hyperinsulism and exercise levels were generally far higher.

Premature males pattern baldness is AFAIK the only sign of a male having the PCOS gene - caused by excess androgens.

I think at this age they can go through a chubby phase- hormones and all that- so my first advice would be to play it down.
The last thing you want to do is have food associated with guilt, and therefore starting a dieting/overeating cycle that will stay with her.
Secondly, I would suggest doing something as a family- cycling or swimming, and make it fun.

To clarify:
By play it down I meant come from a healthy eating angle rather than 'you will end up obese'.
Talk about 5 a day, vegetarianism, importance of local, in season produce etc

Hi Claudia, I started piling on the pounds at around 15 and at age 16 was the same size as your daughter. I didnt really care then. As you grow older it gets harder and harder to lose it though and i'm now 24 and just under 20 stone and utterly miserable because of my weight. I get turned down at jobs because of it, get hurled names at in the street from boys about the same age as me, on one forum I get called names if I ever put my picture on my profile and men dont really take a second look at me as a potential girlfriend. If your daughter won't take any notice please tell her to read this thread. Don't let her leave school overweight or it really will ruin her life.

If she wants a diet buddy, point her my way because I really struggle too.

If my dad hadn't rattled on and on about cholesterol and saturated fat, and instead my mum had sat me down and said "Look, if you keep eating the way you are eating, you're going to be fatter than all your friends and you'll never get first pick of the boys"

I may have listened.

I didn't give a shit about healthy eating when I was 15. I was invincible, remember? Who needs to eat healthily when a bad diet doesn't affect you until your 30s and you're practically dead by that age?

I did care about my appearance though. I wish I'd been told that eating x would end up in gaining x weight!

Thanks everyone for your input.

I did actually manage to have a little chat with her which I think went ok. Basically I said that I had noticed that there had been quite a lot of sweet wrappers hanging about and that this wasn't really the way to go.

I explained that she was ok as she was but needed to do more exercise and that she shouldn't put on any more weight because it would make her unhappy later on, even if she was ok with it now. She did get my point when I talked about the trajectory (sp?) of the weight gain and the truth was that she is a size 16 and not a 12 and she will be a size 18 on our next shopping trip if she doesn't exercise and give the sweets a miss during the week.

She had a think about wht she would like to do to be more active and today she has actually walked into town, yesterday she walked to the park with the rest of us, and she might take up beach volley ball because of the fit blokes(!).

So, if we focus on being more active and maintaining her size/ weight (as opposed to losing it) at this stage, then I feel we will have made good progress.

Interestingly, she did see that it would be much meaner of us as her parents not to say something at a point when we could do something about it, and she did understand that I was saying it because I wanted her to be happy and healthy, not because I just felt like being nasty.

Have just looked in the mirror and seen loads more grey hairs!

Sounds like you had a good talk, and your dd is keen to be more active. Good luck!

I don't want to add a downer, but FWIW my son has always been quite active - plays lots of cricket, and has just discovered tennis. He plays sport daily if he can. However, although he is (IMO) quite fit, this does not mean he is slim. And lots of his slimmer friends eat far more - and far more junk food - than him.

I am so proud that ds does not feel bitter and demotivated about this - he is by no means huge, but he'd love to be slimmer. He is not getting bigger round the waist, but not losing inches either - life is not fair!

I think you did just the right thing. I was a size 18 at around 17... Looking back I couldn't believe that nobody said anything. The turning point for me was a selection of pictures from a birthday party, I looked huge and it kick started my weight loss.

I joined a gym, changed my eating habits and lost about 5stone in a year and have/will never let myself get that big again. I am about a 12/14(boobs!) now but that is 4months post baby and my normal size is a 10/12. I wish somebody stopped me before I got so large!

That sounds good Claudia and if you don't mind me asking, how tall is she?