Anonymous wrote:My daughter (7) has always been in the 97+ percentile for height and weight. Right now she's 53.5 inches and 86 pounds. I've always served healthy food and followed her hunger cues. Dessert is a once in a while treat and we don't have junk food in the house. She does soccer, dance, and swimming. We go on walks. But her BMI is in the range for obesity and she's definitely visibly overweight. At every doctor's visit, I privately ask if we need to be worried and the doctor just says to serve healthy food and make sure she's active. I feel like they aren't taking this seriously. I don't know what to do and I feel like I've failed as a parent for letting her get to an unhealthy weight.

Anonymous wrote:Gosh you folks have really swallowed the healthy at any size bs. Yes, some people have larger frames and are built sturdier, but no one is “naturally” obese.

As for OP, it sounds like she is eating a healthy diet and is active. I wouldn’t do anything right now except keep up the good work.

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Anonymous wrote:Is her body size and shape drastically different from everyone in your family? Some people put on weight as adults through lifestyle factors and hormonal changes, but other people are just born into bigger bodies and will always be larger than other people.

The fact that she is also 97% for height implies she has a large frame. Even for heavier kids, isn’t the goal to keep them roughly on their growth curve? If her weight % keeps increasing relative to her height, that would seem more concerning than her height and weight increasing in the same proportion as her prior growth.

Height and weight have both moved higher than the curve recently to 98th and 99th. DH's family has weight and diabetes struggles and she basically looks like him in a wig.

This is your answer. What did he look like as a kid? Does he have sisters? The question is not “how do I turn my child born into a larger than average body into an average size or slim child?” Your question to the Dr or a dietitian should be “how do I help my child grow into a healthy adult who doesn’t yo yo diet or have an eating disorder”

Plus one thousand million

Ditto. I recommend reading Ellyn Satter's book "Your Child's Weight: Helping Without Harming" which directly addresses this.

Thank you. I just requested it from the library.

I think Ellyn Sattler gives out terrible advice for kids who have a tendency to gain weight in families that have obesity.

You have to restrict food if you want your child to be a normal weight and the sooner you do it the better. You can’t leave it up to your child to listen to their hunger cues because it’s messed up. Knowing both my DH and I have obesity on both sides and we both struggle with weight when our kids were little we never allowed extra servings of food. We ordered pizza but as a preschooler you just get one slice. If you are still hungry we had our kids go do something else or took them to walk the dogs.

If your child is obese eating the food you posted then it comes down to portion size. Don’t listen to Sattler, she just believes some kids are going to be fat. That kids can eat unlimited amounts of food you present to them for dinner if they are eating a balanced diet. Every year you prevent your kid from being overweight /obese is a win. I realize at least one of my kids will be overweight/obese eventually but I am trying to do all I can to prevent it.

So serve smaller portions then go do something else. Many kids aren’t even that hungry for breakfast. Start cutting back breakfast proportions. On the weekends we moved back the time we eat breakfast until 10 or 11 am so then we eat an early dinner. That means one meal less and we eat airpopped popcorn while watching a movie or go out for one scoop of ice cream at night. That is way less calories than a whole meal.

Restricting food absolutely leads to binging and ignoring hunger cues and a future of yo-yo dieting and food issues. The key thing with Satter's approach is that you decide what is served for meals and when they happen. The child chooses how much but that doesn't mean it has to be totally unlimited. It's OK that there may be limited amounts of some things, e.g. I only made x amount of macaroni and cheese or one piece of chicken per person and everyone has to share what's available. If you are still hungry there are other things on the table to eat. So if dinner is pizza, it's going to be served with salad and fruit. Still hungry after your slice, you have other things to eat. Nobody should be getting told that going around hungry should be the normal course of life.

When you are obese your hunger cues are already disordered. There is nothing wrong with feeling a little hunger. Up until the last 40 years or so unless you were ultra wealthy there wasn’t an unlimited amount of food at meals. Everyone got one serving and that was it. There wasn’t an endless supply of snacks including fresh fruit and salads. All those extra servings a child -who has a family history of obesity -eats gets their body used to eating a lot of food and then they gain weight and keep gaining weight.

OP’s kid is eating too much during meals of healthy food. That means portion sizes are too big and/or the child is eating multiple portions.

My family is unfortunately fat. My sister is a big proponent of Sattler and her kids eat huge amounts at meals. They are eating healthy things but are never told they can’t have seconds or thirds. So now they are used to eating more than they should. When I visit family members in another country I noticed there weren’t endless servings. You got one serving and that was it. Kids from that side of the family are all normal weight.

Maybe obesity is predominantly a genetic tendency—in which case your kid’s hunger signals came installed in a screwed up way, but then no amount of dietary restriction will lead to the outcome you seem to want, which is a thin child.

Or maybe obesity is the result of poor learned responses to hunger signals, in which case what you are doing is underlining that poor learned response and will have bad outcomes.

Pretty much no matter how you slice it, telling a hungry preschooler to walk a dog instead of eating is a form of child neglect. I am sorry that our culture is so whacked that you apparently feel it is both necessary and something you can get away with.

Dp. Isn’t this like saying my kid is dyslexic so I’m not going to try to teach them how to read because they will feel oppressed? we know that childhood obesity will cause op’s child lifelong health problems, not to mention social stigma. With no other issue, learning disability or diabetes or whatever, regardless of her predisposition, would we just throw our hands up and say there’s nothing that can/should be done. I understand there’s a risk of developing eating disorder but the consequences of doing nothing to change her bmi are much higher.

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Anonymous wrote:Is her body size and shape drastically different from everyone in your family? Some people put on weight as adults through lifestyle factors and hormonal changes, but other people are just born into bigger bodies and will always be larger than other people.

The fact that she is also 97% for height implies she has a large frame. Even for heavier kids, isn’t the goal to keep them roughly on their growth curve? If her weight % keeps increasing relative to her height, that would seem more concerning than her height and weight increasing in the same proportion as her prior growth.

Height and weight have both moved higher than the curve recently to 98th and 99th. DH's family has weight and diabetes struggles and she basically looks like him in a wig.

This is your answer. What did he look like as a kid? Does he have sisters? The question is not “how do I turn my child born into a larger than average body into an average size or slim child?” Your question to the Dr or a dietitian should be “how do I help my child grow into a healthy adult who doesn’t yo yo diet or have an eating disorder”

Plus one thousand million

Ditto. I recommend reading Ellyn Satter's book "Your Child's Weight: Helping Without Harming" which directly addresses this.

Thank you. I just requested it from the library.

I think Ellyn Sattler gives out terrible advice for kids who have a tendency to gain weight in families that have obesity.

You have to restrict food if you want your child to be a normal weight and the sooner you do it the better. You can’t leave it up to your child to listen to their hunger cues because it’s messed up. Knowing both my DH and I have obesity on both sides and we both struggle with weight when our kids were little we never allowed extra servings of food. We ordered pizza but as a preschooler you just get one slice. If you are still hungry we had our kids go do something else or took them to walk the dogs.

If your child is obese eating the food you posted then it comes down to portion size. Don’t listen to Sattler, she just believes some kids are going to be fat. That kids can eat unlimited amounts of food you present to them for dinner if they are eating a balanced diet. Every year you prevent your kid from being overweight /obese is a win. I realize at least one of my kids will be overweight/obese eventually but I am trying to do all I can to prevent it.

So serve smaller portions then go do something else. Many kids aren’t even that hungry for breakfast. Start cutting back breakfast proportions. On the weekends we moved back the time we eat breakfast until 10 or 11 am so then we eat an early dinner. That means one meal less and we eat airpopped popcorn while watching a movie or go out for one scoop of ice cream at night. That is way less calories than a whole meal.

Restricting food absolutely leads to binging and ignoring hunger cues and a future of yo-yo dieting and food issues. The key thing with Satter's approach is that you decide what is served for meals and when they happen. The child chooses how much but that doesn't mean it has to be totally unlimited. It's OK that there may be limited amounts of some things, e.g. I only made x amount of macaroni and cheese or one piece of chicken per person and everyone has to share what's available. If you are still hungry there are other things on the table to eat. So if dinner is pizza, it's going to be served with salad and fruit. Still hungry after your slice, you have other things to eat. Nobody should be getting told that going around hungry should be the normal course of life.

When you are obese your hunger cues are already disordered. There is nothing wrong with feeling a little hunger. Up until the last 40 years or so unless you were ultra wealthy there wasn’t an unlimited amount of food at meals. Everyone got one serving and that was it. There wasn’t an endless supply of snacks including fresh fruit and salads. All those extra servings a child -who has a family history of obesity -eats gets their body used to eating a lot of food and then they gain weight and keep gaining weight.

OP’s kid is eating too much during meals of healthy food. That means portion sizes are too big and/or the child is eating multiple portions.

My family is unfortunately fat. My sister is a big proponent of Sattler and her kids eat huge amounts at meals. They are eating healthy things but are never told they can’t have seconds or thirds. So now they are used to eating more than they should. When I visit family members in another country I noticed there weren’t endless servings. You got one serving and that was it. Kids from that side of the family are all normal weight.

Maybe obesity is predominantly a genetic tendency—in which case your kid’s hunger signals came installed in a screwed up way, but then no amount of dietary restriction will lead to the outcome you seem to want, which is a thin child.

Or maybe obesity is the result of poor learned responses to hunger signals, in which case what you are doing is underlining that poor learned response and will have bad outcomes.

Pretty much no matter how you slice it, telling a hungry preschooler to walk a dog instead of eating is a form of child neglect. I am sorry that our culture is so whacked that you apparently feel it is both necessary and something you can get away with.

Anonymous wrote:How fat you are allowed to get before 18 impacts health and weight struggles for a lifetime.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/fat-cell-numbers-teen-years-linger-lifetime

Anonymous wrote:My mother in law was born during WW2 in Europe, was somewhat malnourished as a child and lived in Europe until her mid-20s. She was already overweight despite eating minimally-processed and small quantities of healthy foods. She has a number of friends her age who are also "overweight" who are also healthy older adults. Despite her weight she has lived for 80 years in full health, she was an athletic person and still walks several miles outdoors every day. So yes, I believe that there are a variety of healthy bodies.

So yes, there are plenty of different types of bodies and many of them can be healthy. And you're assuming that all bodies process foods in the same ways - this is simply not true. A family with multiple members can all eat the same food, even in the same quantities and end up varying sizes.

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Anonymous wrote:It makes me sad to see so many parents here refusing to own up to their own failure.
Big boned, muscular, strong, eats veggies, genetics, dad is the same... bla, bla, bla.
It's not the kids, it's YOU.

You do realize there are lots of different, normal, healthy body types, right?

Anonymous wrote:It makes me sad to see so many parents here refusing to own up to their own failure.
Big boned, muscular, strong, eats veggies, genetics, dad is the same... bla, bla, bla.
It's not the kids, it's YOU.

Anonymous wrote:DEXA scans are far better than BMI as a measurement. They are available at Bodymass Gym in Arlington. They measure bone density and lean muscle mass. That's what is really important. You can be normal weight and unhealthy, hence the term "skinny fat."