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[quote=Anonymous]This child needs to have some more full-time help.  As has been diagnosed, she is emotionally  unstable and is using food to assuage emotional turbulence.  One of the problems is that as she gets heavier, she either feels less attractive or is interpreting reactions to her from other teens and/or other adults as negative and that is probably driving her to eat more.  I've seen a lot of people who eat when stressed and this sounds classic.

Someone needs to find out what her emotional stressors are and how to address them and how to highlight them so that she can recognize them and address them herself.  Even the most highly rated and successful of therapists are not right for everyone.  If she isn't having success with the current therapist, then you need to search for another.  For some, they do need medication, but not all overeaters need medication.  There are some very good resources through Overeater's Anonymous [url]http://www.oa.org/[/url] and especially through Overweight Teen:  [url]http://www.overweightteen.org/content/overweight-teens-overview.html[/url]  For some, having a forum of like individuals can help.  Your teen may find comfort in an on-line forum with other overweight teens, or in a group setting with other overweight teens.  Look through those resources and you may find either a forum or group session local to you that may help.  From some time ago, I knew a teen much like your daughter regarding exercise and what did it for her was finding another overweight teen who she became friends with and they started walking together where they would share and give each other emotional support and the walking slowly became hiking and jogging.  Although both were still overweight when they graduated HS, they were no longer obese and were significantly more healthy.  That's where some of the group sessions can help.  She might be able to find a true peer and through mutual support they may be able to get past the problems that adult therapists cannot.

Last, I would recommend monitoring her allowance.  Rather than cutting it off, perhaps you need to hold her allowance and you can help her buy things with it, to avoid her spending the money on snacks and drinks.  Impulse buying and emotional binges are some of her worst enemies and right now, she has no control over those.  You need to find ways to keep her from impulse buying/eating but you can still give her an allowance if you just keep it until she needs it and either buy for her or only give it to her when she has a specific need and it going shopping for those things.

Good luck.

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