Picky eater needs to gain weight...

[Anonymous]

My 10 year old neurodiverse kid just had their check up and they've lost weight since last year. Not good. They're fairly picky about what they eat but I need to get more food into them that's not just junk for the sake of calories. Give me some ideas? I don't want to have to start loading her down with pediasure...

[Anonymous]

There’s nothing wrong with pediasure. It helped me with 2 kids at various points in their growth. A dietician suggested a super high calorie milkshake or smoothie before bed (you can get a lot of extra calories in those with whole milk, protein powder, peanut butter, etc). I got an olive oil spray bottle and sprayed oil on whatever the would eat. I adjusted meals because they would eat really well right after school so I treated that like dinner instead of snack time. Real, full meal at 3:30.
Maybe if you shared what they will (or won’t eat), we could help more?

[Anonymous]

Also dealing with this now. Once my kid gains weight, we'll work on decreasing sugar, but not the priority right now.

Add butter or olive oil anywhere you can (bread, pasta)

Replace milk with heavy cream where you can, even if you replace just some of the milk with cream (mac and cheese, hot cocoa)

Ice cream (the good stuff)

Peanut butter and Nutella

Muffin, croissant, bagel and cream cheese for breakfast instead of cereal or waffle

Nuts

Whole milk yogurt (alone, with granola, or in smoothie)

Refried beans (in tortilla with rice and cheese, or scoop with tortilla chips)

Stop worrying about snacks or drinking too much spoiling their appetite for meals. Whenever they want to eat, within reason, let them. If there's something with a lot of calories and healthy fats and/or protein that they like and want to eat all the time, let them and don't worry so much about encouraging variety right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also dealing with this now. Once my kid gains weight, we'll work on decreasing sugar, but not the priority right now.

Add butter or olive oil anywhere you can (bread, pasta)

Replace milk with heavy cream where you can, even if you replace just some of the milk with cream (mac and cheese, hot cocoa)

Ice cream (the good stuff)

Peanut butter and Nutella

Muffin, croissant, bagel and cream cheese for breakfast instead of cereal or waffle

Nuts

Whole milk yogurt (alone, with granola, or in smoothie)

Refried beans (in tortilla with rice and cheese, or scoop with tortilla chips)

Stop worrying about snacks or drinking too much spoiling their appetite for meals. Whenever they want to eat, within reason, let them. If there's something with a lot of calories and healthy fats and/or protein that they like and want to eat all the time, let them and don't worry so much about encouraging variety right now.

^^ By the way, we're vegetarian. And kid turned down Fairlife milk and Carnation Instant Breakfast.

[Anonymous]

My kid who isn’t gaining weight and has delayed bone growth has made me do all the things I swore I wouldn’t as a parent (high sugar things, making different meals for just one kid, etc). We do:
1) Fairlife or one of the other extra-protein milks with strawberry nesquick
2) Mac and cheese made with extra butter
3) peanut butter on anything she will eat it on (including straight/with a spoon)
4) basically whatever snacks, whenever
5) pushing for extra bites at meals and encouraging an extra snack before bedtime

[Anonymous]

What foods does your kid like to eat OP?

[Anonymous]

My daughter lost 7 lbs in 6 months and was in the 3rd percentile. She has gained it back since our last check up. This is what we did:

Smoothies with ice cream in it
Bagels with cream cheese (she used to have them without a fat on it)
Hummus
Guacamole
Lots of cheese (she loves cheese)
Peanut butter on crackers or apples and lots of peanut butter toast
It was stressful but I also put more effort into dinners. Let’s say I would do spaghetti and meatballs and roasted broccoli and garlic bread
Taco nights would include rice AND tortillas plus lots of cheese and guacamole.

Basically she knew she had to eat more and she made more of an effort to do so, which was helpful

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 10 year old neurodiverse kid just had their check up and they've lost weight since last year. Not good. They're fairly picky about what they eat but I need to get more food into them that's not just junk for the sake of calories. Give me some ideas? I don't want to have to start loading her down with pediasure...

Sometimes my kid gets UP to the 2nd percentile. We do pediasure and have open house on fruit, veg, and yogurt. Kid is given 2 starchy snacks of their choice morning and afternoon. We ALWAYS have dessert (for those that eat a good dinner). She doesn’t eat much but it does fill her nutritional needs and she looks healthy (shiny hair, strong nails, good muscle tone, clear eyes, beautiful skin). We also don’t have quantity cutoffs or ban any foods - we encourage the ‘good stuff’ goes in first.

[Anonymous]

Have been through this with my ND kid. Are there ANY high calorie foods he likes or can tolerate eating frequently? For us it's: whole milk at every meal if she'll drink it (I will sometimes add chocolate syrup just to ensure she drinks the whole cup), using butter biscuits or croissants instead of regular bread a lot, and offering high calorie desserts after meals (full fat ice cream, baked goods).

Yes we also work on ensuring she gets veggies, fruit, other fiber, whole grains, and proteins. But she will take a few bites of those foods and push them away, and we need to up her caloric intake. So if that means a meal is two little bites of chicken, one piece of broccoli, and a glass of chocolate milk and a croissant, so be it. She's still eating the healthy stuff but she's not hungry all the time and she's growing again.

[Anonymous]

We are vegetarian too. If your kid likes any sort of sauce like tomato sauce on pizza or pasta, you can sneak things into the sauce (especially roasted vegetables). I even grind cashews to a fine powder and put them in a sauce to add protein.

[Anonymous]

Premier Protein makes kids' shakes that are delicious. And then just aim for healthy fats - add olive oil, real butter to food. Avocados and bananas. Full fat yogurt. Mix butter, full fat yogurt, heavy cream into sauces. Whipped cream with fruit.

[Anonymous]

15:14 again. We also discovered we could really up protein content in a lot items (especially smoothies and baked goods) by adding chia seeds or, even better, hemp hearts. I'd never used hemp hearts before but they are a super easy addition to a lot of recipes and just have a mild, slightly nutty flavor. This can up the caloric intake and ensure a vegetarian is getting enough protein. I make a dense wheat bread with hemp hearts added in, that gets served as part of a meal or a snack with either butter or jam on top. Never get any complaints about it.

[Anonymous]

Take the foods your kid likes and use them as building blocks to move around. Meals should come with plenty of “sides” even if they’re not commonly thought of as such. My picky kid loves hummus and pretzels so they are a side for chicken breast and spaghetti. It would be pointless to insist he eat garlic bread with spaghetti because he doesn’t like it.

[Anonymous]

Whole milk Greek yogurt with maple syrup ( granola, nuts and fruit/dried fruit are good too); string cheese/fresh avocado/ hard boiled egg all cut into cubes plus guacamole or kewpie; banana nut corn muffin; fried eggs with soy sauce etc. My skinny picky DC always has very low growth percentile, said milk really made her too full and couldn’t eat other things, so I stopped giving her milk, and switched from regular yogurt to Greek yogurt instead. Sometime I mix unhealthy food with healthy food so it’s more appealing to DC.