Overweight Daughter

[Gone4Now 4]

Well, tomorrow night I'm taking my daughter who is 10 (11 in May) to Weight Watchers, per her doctor's orders.

She doesn't really eat a lot when I'm around, but does when she's with my mother. (Long history of overweight women in my family. Abuse, comfort eating, etc...bad, bad stuff.) My daughter has been removed from the abuse, but that comfort food syndrome that we (my mom and I) exhibit definitely has rubbed off on her.

She's also tall, which doesn't help. She towers over her classmates, and she has muscles in her arms. Sad, but she's almost as strong as I am!

Point is, she's big and bulky and unhappy with herself. She likes to run, but has bad allergies and asthma. I bought a treadmill and a glider machine. The doctor said no glider - she needs aerobic workouts. Well, the treadmill is manual and not good, really, for running.

I feel terrible because I feel like I can't help her. I told her that I can be strong in every other area of my life. I am confident that I can do anything - except lose weight. It's my last hurdle, and I've been working on that, and do feel better since I have gotten the band.

But, how do I help her?? How can I teach her something I don't know?

[Nettie 1]

I think childhood obesity is raging out of control. I know I struggled with my weight from the time I was about 9. My dad was verbally abusive about my weight and still is and I am 33 years old. There is a wrong way and a right way to talk to your kids about their weight. My 7 year old daughter can eat twice as much as I can IF I LET HER. I do not let my children eat more than they should because I'm afraid she will have to battle the buldge like I have all my life. She's learning to eat healthy by my new eating habits. She loves salad and things that are really good for her so we are learning to eat healthy together and I'm keeping her active! She plays softball and takes Tumble. We go on bike rides and walks together. I know from experience how miserable I was being overweight growing up and I don't want her to have to deal with those issues. I would suggest that you try to get your daughter active and help teach her the right foods to eat, even if you have to learn that before you teach her. That's what I've had to do. Good luck to you and your daughter!

[heartfire 4]

Gloucester, I'm really sorry. I don't know that I'm any help either but I was wondering if she's had any counseling b/c of the abuse? If you're insured, do they have a dietition that you could work with? WW will help her only if she's willing to do the work and at almost 11, don't know that she will be. Take a good look at your fridge and cupboards and see if there are things you can change there.

I couldn't tell from your post if your DD is still spending lots of time with your mom. If she is, you're going to have to sit down and talk to your mom and get her help and involvement. Nothing will change until she's on board. (If that's still an issue.)

My other thought is to have your DD start a journal. Assure her that she can write ANYTHING in there she wants to: good, bad and ugly. Let her know that you would like to have the option of reading it but if she'd rather you not, that's okay too (as long as you are okay with that). Have her carry it around with her and every time she gets anxious or upset or what ever her triggers are for eating, to stop and write everything down first. That will slow her down and hopefully by the time she's done writing, she either isn't going to want the food or she'll have forgotten about it. If not, then she can have some veggies w/light dips or some fruit.< /span>

I'm not sure how else to help her. This has got to be very hard for you.

Take care and just do the best you can. That's all we can do with our kids anyway!

[abeaher 0]

Speaking from experience. (I was 10 and bigger than my classmates when I started weight watchers, as well) I think what I can tell you from my outcome is that I wish my mother would have recognized that my problem was not eating it was what made me want to eat. If my mother had made it known to me and explained to me what my problem was and told me she understood instead of showing disappointment when I messed up and ate a cookie I probably would not have suffered the anxiety of the failure of every diet since. I developed a complex and actually began to hide food and eat in private out of shame. Confront the problem, make her aware of it, don;t sugar coat it. She is old enough to understand and she will heal faster the sooner she understands her illness. I do believe that emotional eating is a mental illness. She is overweight for a reason and it is deeper than weightwatchers can help her with. Good luck, I am sure as a mother this is difficult.

[OH Juli 15]

I read this with interest because I have a 6 year old who is taller than average and thick. That's my way of not calling her fat. But she's muscular...but she's just not frail or tiny. She's never going to be.

I try to call her strong and athletic because she is. I Celebrate her height, I'm 5'2". I say when she's as tall as me she can ride in the front seat of the car. She'll be 9 or 10. I struggle with letting her eat sugar and teaching her balance.

I watch my friend with now controlled anorexia chide her daughter for wanting ice-cream on Tuesday, because she had a piece of candy on Monday, and how one must be mindful. I get the mindfulness but I also think she's setting her daughter up for closet eating. I dunno...

This is tough.

[ReadySteadyGo 8]

The only thing I can think to say is go on this journey togethor. Have your meals togethor and help her explore other outlets to replace repressive/emotional eating. That is something I think most of us are working on.

My family, also is a family of overweight, men-oppressed, and abused woman. WE have to learn to love ourselves despite what have been done to us, and to not punish ourselves with overeating. We are worth more than that.

And maybe your mother could be involved, not suggesting or knowing if she needs to lose weight, but it could be fun. You could all go to a painting class, or walk togethor. If you include her maybe she would be more willing to encourage better eating habits.

Either way, I hope this helps. Its a hard situation and I can only say that you and your family are not alone in this issue.

[TulipStar 2]

Let me preface by saying I mean this in the kindest way with no disrespect whatsoever.

This is a tough one. How tall is she and how much does she weigh? I agree with some on here that you should really help her by finding out why she is doing the eating. Otherwise it could be the wrong message that something is wrong with her and she needs to diet or be thinner in order for people to love her or herself. This could turn into a lifetime struggle or lead to worse eating disorders.

I am just talking from my perspective from my experience. I started dieting young -- before I was 10 and my first reaction was "something's wrong with me" and "I'm not good enough". By the time I was 11 I had developed a serious eating disorder and no one ever knew. I never had a clue until recently that all this weight was emotional weight that I had been carrying as a burden since my childhood.

And the line "I succeed in all other areas of my life except for my weight" is classic perfectionism/eating disorder. I have always said that too. What I found was that because something else was bothering me and I didn't want to feel emotion, I always focused on losing weight, dieting, etc. I was obsessed bc if I obsessed about diet/weight it I wouldn't worry about what was really bothering me.

I recommend reading "Don't Diet, Live It!" It really hit home with me...it was written by some counselors who have a decade or so of experience with women w/eating disorders and perfectionist traits. It was so spot on...I couldn't believe there are people out there who felt this way (even though I didn't know I felt that way at first). It is in chapter/workbook format with exercises and really fixes on healing the reasons why we emotionally eat and when it started in our childhood.

Good luck on your journey and with your daughter!

[Wheetsin 714]

What about sports? I was a scrawny kid, but would pudge up (well, like 10lbs... nothing I'd blink an eye at now) in the winter months when my sports weren't in season. Then as soon as summer rolled around and I was going to practices, games, etc. the weight would come off without me changing anything else.

Not that it's THE solution, but I think it would definitely help. Especially sports that involve aerobics, like soccer, softball, volleyball... waterpolo is a fun butt kicker, if you have it in your area (that was one that instantly whipped me into shape).

Doesn't address the eating issues, but a lot of times better body image will give you the incentive you need to take care of those.

Does your daughter "sneak" food, or eat openly?

Token economies, and hell - real ones too - can work well with children. Could you essentially "bribe" her to lose weight with something she's wanting? E.g. my parents hated that I bit my nails, so every week that I didn't bite them, they took me to the beauty college for a manicure. One of the off-seasons when I was pudging up, my grandfather offered my $1 for every pound I lost, and I could spend it on anything I wanted. Got scrawny again pretty quickly.

Anything you could interest her in during the summer, perhaps with some friends? E.g. local pool (heck of an aerobic workout) with swim classes, parent-child swim nights, etc?

[smwww 0]

Well, I admire the fact you are willing to help because you know what you have gone through. Help your daughter well she is young. So she want have the struggle we all have had with our weight. Be gentle in your words because she is a child and what you say and how you say it will effect her for the rest of her life. Tell her you are this together. Learning better eating habits together. She will love you for it.

[rharriet62 0]

Ok, after a seriously bad flashback of MY life...I was your daughter. I was fat from the time I was 4 or 5 and when I was 9 or 10, I was on the journey to diet land. Yep...pills, TOPS, WW, 1200 doctor directed diets...you name it. I lost some weight and got fatter and then spent my whole life fat. Anyway, PLEASE make it a family deal where EVERYONE eats healthfully. I used to have to be the only one in the family who had to eat special food and it was SO hard. Take her out for FUN (not exercise)...ride bikes, play basketball, do activities that are fun. You can join with her and make it fun. I just had to say this! I felt the way it was handled in my family really damaged my self esteem. Hang in there!

[Gone4Now 4]

Wow! Thanks to everyone who's responded. I will try the books...I'm reading one now about how to change the family dynamic.

She's pretty active. She plays outside for about an hour each day. She spends a lot of time with my mother. It's good for me in that I am a single mother and my mother is able to watch my daughter in the evenings for about an hour (during that time, I am not sure if either one of them is honest with me about the food.) I know she's usually outside playing when I get home.

She's also into soccer (we just got home from practice).

She's 5'2" and weighs 151.

But I was about 10 when I started to get really chubby and I keep thinking: what would have helped me?

She doesn't sneak food, I'm pretty sure of that. As a child I did sneak food, though. A whole box of Little Debbies and hide the trash under the bed. My mother would hide food from us, and my brother and I would hunt for it. I don't do that in my house, and actually don't have a lot of junk food. Our Snacks are the Special K bars and 100 cal packs, and she doesn't really touch those.

If I let her, she'll eat the house down. She just doesn't have that "stop" - and neither did I. I've started to ask her if she's really hungry...what did you have today...that kind of thing to get her head in it.

I am just so scared that I will create a worse problem by trying to fix this one. How do I not screw up my kid??? It's a toughie.

I really like the journal idea. She's also very private and will hold stuff in for months! All of a sudden she'll blow up about something that happened 6 months ago. So, maybe counseling wouldn't be a bad idea.

Oh, and I didn't mean to imply she's been abused. Both my mother and I were abused as kids. Bad family history and all that stuff. My daughter has never been around them so she's been removed from that.

[Jachut 487]

This is something I'm dealing with in my 12 year old son. Its so hard. Poor kid obviously got the shite genes from both Doug and I whilst his brother and sister got the good ones.

But its so personality driven I'm finding. He's lazy as all get out, just a couch potato. Its his nature, he plays basketball and will do active things when encouraged but that's it. His brother will play basketball, fill in for another team, come home and go and find some kids to go to the cricket nets and hit a ball with kind of thing. Exercise is one thing, but a basically sedentary personality is hard to overcome.

Foodwise, the ball's in your court. I just do not buy junk. My kids arent allowed to have it. We do not have juice, we do not have cordial, we do not have sodas. We dont have biscuits and cakes. We have fruit, crackers, yogurt, the making of sandwiches. And he's still becoming overweigth.

The only things that comfort me are the fact that he's going to be a BIG boy as in tall. He's almost as tall as me (and I'm 5ft 10), as heavy as me and has bigger feet and hands. Doug's 6ft 3, I'd say Fraser will easily be much taller. So he's chubby now but hasnt hit puberty, he MAY still have a huge growth spurt and thin out. Both Doug and I have weight problems, but neither of us was anythign more than "overweight" as teens, chubby but not one of those poor fat kids that cop the teasing, the ostracism etc. We were both active and sporty and able to keep up on that score. We both thinned out as adults in our 20's and got fat again in our 30's. At least I dont think Fraser's going to be morbidly obese in a year or two. He's just tubby.

As for your daughter, I think you're onto it, and I know what you mean aobut not having that stop - my son doesnt eaither. He'd trample anyone to get to food. I was so tall too like your daughter and it was awful. But there's nothign you can do about that. You cant put her on a diet for her height, its something she just has to deal with. It would break your heart but you could also have a child who was unfortunate looking or whatever and you cant fix that either. What you can do is help her to accept herself. My mother had me on diets from the age of 10 and seriously, it did not help me one bit. I was still fat. What did help me was the non intentional lifestyle lessons - the love of sport, a basically balanced diet. Those are skills that I've been able to call on now as an adult that have helped my success.

That's the way I'd approach it. She is who she is, you cannot live their life for them and MAKE them diet or exercise. If they are going to be fat, then in all probability, they WILL get fat, and you cant stop it. But what you CAN do is eqiup them with lifestyle skills. There's simply no excuse for filling our children with crap food, allowing them to develop disgusting habits and not exposing them to a wide variety of active leisure activities but instead letting them spend hours on the computer or playstation. You may not be able to prevent their being overweight but you might prevent morbid obesity and when they are adults if they want to do something about their weight, they will have the skills to understand what they need to do. As opposed to friends of ours whose kids think a nutella sandwich on white supermarket bread with red cordial is a healthy meal becuase its not pizza or McDonalds. It sounds like you're already doing those things and I think its all you can do.

Edited April 10, 2008 by Jachut

[plain 12]

Hey Gloucester. Have you / she given bodyweight exercises a try? They can be done at home (anywhere, for that matter) very easily. Because they build muscle, bodyweight exercises will raise her metabolic rate. Because the resistance is her bodyweight, the exercises won't build "bulky" muscle, like weights might. And if the exercises are done rapidly ("circuit training", in gym speak) it's also an excellent aerobic benefit.

You can find lots of bodyweight exercises on the internet, or I can recommend a really excellent book. They're pretty fun to do, and there's a big enough variety where they tend to not be boring.

Here's the million-dollar question: Does your daughter think she is too big?

[Gone4Now 4]

Yeah, she's always thought she was too big. Well, when she got into school. She's only recently gotten chubby, before then she was just a lot taller than the other girls. But, it's worse now because all her friends are almost too thin, and small boned, and she compares herself to them.

One little (very little) girl in the neighborhood was running around with a one-pound bag of M&M's the other day. She came home from school, grabbed it from the cupboard and headed out. My daughter said she didn't have any of them, and I believe her. She said the girls hands were dirty and she kept reaching in and that turned my daughter off of them.

But, that's hard for her to take. Seeing the "skinny" ones eat junk after junk and she eats good, but is still getting bigger.

Jachut - my daughter is like your son. She will move and play, but has to be motivated outwardly to do it. We were playing tennis the other day and she "gets tired". I told her no...you're tired because you're not used to moving for so long. Hell, if I can out-do her, I know something is wrong.

Now that soccer is back up, though, I'm hoping she'll get back into just MOVING.

She's more of a nerdy type than athletic. She'd much rather read a book than play sports. She loves soccer and that's it. She has also asked about Tae Kwon Do - - But, man! Sports gets expensive! :huh2:

I'm googling bodweight exercises right now! That's what she needs is to get her heart rate going and the blood pumping.

[Ninja 0]

Gloucester, I feel for you and your daughter. I've been overweight since I was 6 years old, with my first physician-supervised diet at 9. We moved around a lot when I was a kid and I discovered early on that it was a lot more fun to read and get lost in books than to go outside and try to make new friends. So I got bigger and bigger, making it even harder to make friends, so I stayed inside more, so I got bigger, and so on. I don't remember a time when I didn't know I needed to lose weight, which led to a pretty screwed up relationship with food (lots of secret eating when I was a kid). It's like my brain wired itself to gorge on anything that I happen to like because I don't know when I can have it again. Rationally, I know this is ridiculous--I'm an adult and can choose to eat anything I want at any time I want. But the 9-year-old in me with the "rules" of the diet posted on the fridge and the Little Debbie stashed under the bed says that I'd better eat all of the ice cream or pizza or what-have-you before I get caught breaking the rules.

I should say that my parents did everything right--they talked to me about health and never, ever criticized me or berated me or tried to make me feel bad about myself, but I did anyway. They were and are my biggest cheerleaders in life, but I think I decided at about 10 or 11 that my inability to follow the rules meant I was a bad girl and that I anticipated their disappointment in me if they ever found out how bad I was.

If it helps, I think you're on the right track, encouraging her to play sports and get out and move. The journal is a great idea, and I know counseling probably would have helped me tremendously, but it was the early 80s and that wasn't an option. I also second the earlier recommendation to make it a family plan to eat healthy, rather than singling her out and making her eat "special" food. It sounds like you're a great mom, and you're very smart to seek out advice from people who've been there. Good luck!