How to help my skinny kid on ADHD medication actually gain weight

[Anonymous]

DD8 has been on meds for ADHD for about a year. She has great energy and is doing really well, but I don’t think she’s gained a pound this entire year.

She eats about 1.5 meals a day. She’s fairly picky, but will blow through a whole box of Annie’s Mac and cheese for dinner. That’s usually after a day she’s barely eaten anything.

She’s about 49 inches tall and 45 lbs.

She’s never been a huge eater, but I get worried that she’s not gaining any weight.

Any tips? Thanks!

[Anonymous]

See my recent post (today) about protein shakes ("hangry" in the subject line). Could help. We also always offer lunch even if they say they arent hungry. And by offer, I mean, we make something and plate it and ask them to come to the table. They will always eat SOMETHING when this happens. But without doing so, they will gladly skip. Then we offer an additional snack before bed.

Also we focus on breakfast a lot, and we do not give the stimulant until food is in the system. For example, we try and pack in protein for breakfast with things like protein waffles or Kodiak cake pancakes with extra eggs in the batter. My kiddo will also eat some egg dishes, sausage, etc.

Good luck and keep up posted for more brainstorming!

[Anonymous]

High fat foods.

[Anonymous]

When my child was younger we did a huge calorie dense breakfast, lunch (whatever was eaten-which was little to nothing), after school snack, dinner with family, second dinner before bed.

Honestly, things evened out at puberty. DS ate like a teen even on the meds and gained a ton of weight (he started puberty not even on the growth chart).

[Anonymous]

PP were the meds just as effective in those teen years you mentioned?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When my child was younger we did a huge calorie dense breakfast, lunch (whatever was eaten-which was little to nothing), after school snack, dinner with family, second dinner before bed.

Honestly, things evened out at puberty. DS ate like a teen even on the meds and gained a ton of weight (he started puberty not even on the growth chart).

This for our teen girl as well..

[Anonymous]

DS used to drink an Ensure every morning.

[Anonymous]

I need to lose weight and one kid needs to gain. We serve keto recipes, which are high-fat, but serve them with enough carbs that the kid isn’t entering ketosis. I just go ahead and keep keto.


So something like this broccoli cheese soup:
https://thebigmansworld.com/keto-broccoli-cheese-soup/

Make the kid garlic toast with conventional bread so she won’t lose weight.

[Anonymous]

Take diet advice and reverse it

Candy and chips, high calorie drinks.

[Anonymous]

I skip meds on weekends and holidays so my kid will eat more (unless we have an activity he needs to be able to sit still for).

Big breakfast before meds are given. I gave permission for him to buy ice cream at school, because he at least gets some calories that way. I gave up on packing real lunches, I pack a lot of favorite things so he can graze.

He's picky, so I make sure there's something he likes with dinner every night. Dessert every night. He is usually hungry again at bed time, so he usually gets apple or banana with peanut butter and a glass of milk as a snack so he's getting something kind of healthy but with fat/protein.

[Anonymous]

I asked about this recently too! Increasing fat worked. Adults still have 2% milk and yogurt but child has full fat of those. I stir in some extra butter or olive oil into the kid's food.

Also worked with school who is quite used to this to have protein bars available if they stay late at school.

[Anonymous]

As other have said target breakfast before meds and think the opposite of healthy eating to add as many calories as possible. For example I started cooking my kids eggs in butter vs using a nonstick spray; whole milk vs our usual skim, etc. I also found through trial and error that there was foods with high enough value for my son to eat for lunch even on the meds. Fried Chicken legs, plain McDonald's cheeseburgers, pizza, and PB&J ended up being our high value foods and so we try to do those for lunch on as much as we can when he's home to balance out the days he's skipping lunch at school.

[Anonymous]

Op, my child only gained about 2 lbs in 4 years, so we have tried everything by this point. At a low point, DC was <1% for BMI, now DC at 5% which we are very happy with.

If your child is under 8, can do feeding therapy to increase calorie dense food options your DC will eat - nuts, avocado, etc. over age 8, can work with a therapist to do the same. This was only moderately helpful for my DC, but we did try it.

There are also appetite stimulants - usually allergy medication that also makes people hungry.

My 11 year old DC used an appetite stimulant for about 4 months and gained 10 (much needed) lbs. before that DC was not eating enough to maintain their own weight.

We also had DC trial non-stimulants for ADHD which DC could not tolerate - one of them actually took away even more appetite than the stimulant (for ADHD). DC needs to be medicated for ADHD so stopping any meds was not really a good option.

DC is now off the appetite stimulant but still does high calorie milk shakes (whole milk, ice cream, milk powder or pediasure powder, heavy cream) 4-5 nights per week.

[Anonymous]

I 'm on this Struggle bus with my 11 year old ADHD daughter who is 60 pounds and 4'6. Kid hates Cheese, doesn't care for protein shakes. Also was never a big breakfast eater even before meds so stuffing her in the morning doesn't help. We just changed meds as she need more help with Attention in school and the doc didn't want to increase her existing med. Hoping the new one Vyvanse doesn't take the appetite as bad as Quillivant did. She is also now willing to take pills, which gives us more options.

[Anonymous]

OP I have been there. If your child is below normal BMI I know some on here and even doctors will say add junk food, do whatever you can to get the weight up and there are risks being underweight;however, dieticians will not tell you that (at least good ones). The massive increase in digestive system cancers is due in part to processed foods (I think we are beyond correlation at this point) so avoid all the chemical stuff like Doritos for weight gain. Processed foods today are worse than they were when we were growing up, in fact, in the US we are using worse chemicals than what is allowed in Europe.

The way we got weight up is by drizzling healthy oils (Olive or avocado) on some dinner foods and vegetables. We always have guacamole in the house to put on whole grain bread or other things and we use avocadoes on their own a lot. I buy whole organic milk-the fat in it may have some benefits. Go for calorie dense and healthy. If you add desserts for weigh tgain at least use real ingredients like eggs, oats, honey and not mixes. Yes, I know with working, etc this is all hard, but you can find short cuts with decent ingredients. You don't want to trade one problem for another down the line.