At a loss....seeking weight loss advice for my 9 year old boy

[Dream Girl]

My son has been heavy since about age 5 and it has been a concern of his doctor, but so far no medical problems. Problem is he is getting heavier and heavier. He is now about 115 pounds. It breaks my heart that we can't find pants that fit him and his wardrobe is stretchy shorts, sweat pants etc. jeans even husky jeans are impossible. He has a huge tummy and stretch marks!! I am at a loss. He is very active. This past fall he was playing three sports (soccer, flag football and water polo). He is a great athlete and loves physical activity like snowboarding and skate boarding and his favorite school activity is recess. He does have a hearty appetite, but we don't eat a bad diet though it could be much, much better. I try to push vegetables and read labels to avoid bad ingredients like high fructose corn syrup, etc. We never have soda in the house although he might get one once a month at parties, traveling, etc He does love to watch tv too and tends to snack while he watches it. This is the one thing that I think could be contributing to his obesity. My husband's two other boys were also quite chubby when they were younger, but slimmed down in their teens. One of them is downright skinny as a young twenty something. His cousins on my hubby's side also showed the same pattern. How worried should I be??? Will he slim down or take after my side of the family which tends to be overweight? I was slim until I hit my forties. ( I am cross posting this to the weight loss forum)

[AwakeAtLast]

1. I don't have a lot of answers

Does he like fruit? I have a daughter who would rather eat applesauce than just about anything else. If there is a favorite fruit I would try to make that the snack of choice.

My other suggestion is to take out everything that is processed.

[Tumbulu]

2. I would try to make sure all animal products are organic or at least free range hormone free

as the cocktail of hormones given to conventional meat and milk and egg producing animals all do the same thing. They switch the animals system into "get fat as fast as you can with the lowest input" mode. I think that these same hormones persist and effect us in the same way.

Plus the food tastes better and it costs more, so unless you have lots of money, you have to buy less of it.

Can you try to supply almonds and walnuts (in shell so he can crack them himself) instead of chips for snacking?

[Dream Girl]

6. That makes sense about the hormones, but we already

eats organic eggs and drinks organic milk almost exclusively and have done so since he was born. His school serves mostly organic products too (he's very lucky). Meat not so much, but he doesn't really love protein that much. I do get grass fed hamburger and will move towards organic chicken for the new year. We are not huge meat eaters, though he loves lamb which I think is usually grass fed. Except for the occassional In & Out burger maybe 2-3 times a year, we don't do fast food at all. He does like his carbs, bread and pancakes in particular. He will not eat whole wheat, so I buy the white whole wheat bread (which I'm not so sure about). I wonder if a low carb diet would work for him? Would be nearly impossible to implement.

[Tumbulu]

9. I would then go with MorningGlow's recommendations as that sounds

so logical. Good luck to all of you!

[TuxedoKat]

10. You don't have to do low carb

but you should be thinking in terms of better carbs, as in more complex carbs from fruits and vegetables and high fiber breads. I would ease out of buying white bread or any bread with less than 5g of fiber. The stores are coming out with more and more high fiber bread products, english muffins, bagels, breads, etc. If he doesn't like whole wheat bread, look for a high fiber multi-grain bread. Check out some of the Kashi cereals, Maypo and old-fashioned (long-cooking oatmeal). Some are quite high in fiber, be thinking 5g or more, the more g's of fiber, the better. Kashi has a Cheerios type of cereal that is good. If he doesn't like it, mix it with some regular Cheerios to start. Actually, one of the regular Cheerios --multi-grain, has 3g of fiber as opposed to 1g for Honey Nut Cheerios. The higher the fiber, the longer the food takes to digest, the longer his blood sugar will stay at a stable level and the longer it will take for him to get hungry. When the blood sugar level goes down, is when you get hungry and the impulse is to stuff yourself with carbs, which is actually the worst thing to do.

There are also high fiber pancake mixes, Fiber One (5g) has one, but you could throw in some ground flax seed to up the fiber content too (adds good Omega 3s and 6s too), you can also do this with oatmeal and Maypo. When looking at these products also be aware of the fat grams, sodium level and sugar grams. Some products are loaded with sugar (3-4 g = 1 tsp), so watch out.

Start teaching him to read labels so he will know if it is good for him or not. I've been doing this with my 7 year old and it has been working way better than I expected.

I will write more later when I have more time. One thing you should also do, is train him to eat his vegetables first and/or protein, then the starchy, bready things last. This will blunt the glycemic load and avoid putting the body into fat storage mode. Have to run now though but will explain more later.

[MorningGlow]

3. I'm going to risk sounding like a broken record, but

has the doctor checked his thyroid?

Your son's experience sounds EXACTLY like mine when I was little, and it turned out that I had a thyroid problem inherited from both sides of my family. I was a little chubby when I was 5 or so, and my family just called it "baby fat". But by the time I was 8, I was clinically obese. And this was in the early '70s, back when there were hardly ANY fat kids. It was torture--and I had done nothing to "make" myself fat. My physical system just went off the rails, and I started gaining weight like crazy, no matter what I did. Does that sound like your son?

My pediatrician tested my thyroid regularly, but I never received any medication. I don't know why, as nobody explained things to the 8-year-old they were sticking with needles. Maybe the doctor thought I'd grow out of it--but now we know that people don't "grow out of" a thyroid problem, as it's a chemical imbalance just like any other that impairs a body's ability to function properly.

Like your son, my diet wasn't bad. I was less active than your son, but that was because of other health issues (low blood pressure and a D deficiency that made me woozy if I was too physical). His high level of activity and decent diet should mean that he'd be a "normal" size. (Snacking is a problem, but if his metabolism were normal, it shouldn't be that much of a detriment. I have a normal-weight son who eats constantly and is less active than your son, and he's not gaining weight.) I was put on a strict diet and exercise program when I was 9, and it did NOTHING. My body did NOT budge for anything except puberty, when I slimmed down practically overnight, and I stayed skinny well into my adult years.

However, I found out later, that was because I had swung from hypothyroid (TSH too high, metabolism too slow) to hyperthyroid (TSH too low, metabolism on fast-forward). This happens with lots of thyroid patients (the pendulum swinging between the two extremes), and it's NOT healthy--contributes to weakened heart muscles in the long term. (Now I'm back to hypo and overweight; the pendulum swings don't stop.) Do you know if there's any history of thyroid problems on your husband's side?

The bottom line is a child who eats normally and is physically active should NOT be obese without some underlying medical problem that has gone undiagnosed.

I would urge you to request that your son's pediatrician check his TSH level as well as his free T3 level (thyroid hormone). Be warned, however--most doctors don't know the first thing about thyroid problems. Most just check the TSH and declare it "normal" if it's in the old acceptable range (between 0.5 and 5.0), which doctors who understand thyroid problems now have rejected as too broad. The new acceptable range is much more narrow. (As an adult, my TSH was 2.5 and I was half dead. It turns out that I function best when my TSH is around 1.0, which some doctors consider too low.)

Likewise, most doctors don't know how to treat thyroid problems, especially in children. Like I said, they expect them to "grow out of it", which does not happen. Thyroid must be treated with medication to balance the body's chemicals. However, most doctors will prescribe Synthroid, which is just about useless. Natural thyroid is better than synthetic by far, but lately natural thyroid has been difficult, but not impossible, to obtain. But that's another story.

In the meantime, you can read more about thyroid problems here: http://thyroid.about.com. See if the symptoms sound familiar. Most important, don't let the pediatrician brush you off. If you feel that there's something wrong with your son, hold his/her feet to the fire until you get to the bottom of it.

Best of luck. And feel free to PM me if you have any questions. :hi:

[elleng]

4. I agree, and being in the Bay area means

there should be plenty capable specialists around, endocrinologists, pediatric endocrinologists. Daughters pediatrician was informed, and referred us to one such at DC Childrens Hospital.

[Dream Girl]

5. Thank you so much!

I never thought about an imbalance; just was looking for a magic diet bullet of some sort. I will follow up on the thyroid question and see where that goes...I will check out the link you posted. I fully expect to get brushed off by the pediatrician. I hate taking him there because I get lectured about his weight and given leaflets about childhood obesity, diabetes, etc. It makes me crazy because I know his diet is probablly better than 80% of kids who are normal weight.

[Dream Girl]

7. Just realized it was you MG. I know you from another DU board

I changed my name a while back but we chatted briefly about our kids. My son was the one who hated cops!!! You are always so helpful.

[MorningGlow]

8. Oh hey!

:hi:

Happy to help. I'm a bit of a thyroid crusader--there's so much we don't know about the disease, yet so many people have it, and so many more are undiagnosed or, almost worst, mistreated with crappy synthetic drugs that don't work or antidepressants.

If you can't get anywhere with your pediatrician, please seek out a holistic m.d. who is certified in pediatrics/family medicine (there are directories online). They're real medical doctors, yet they know a whole lot more about thyroid problems than your average doctor, plus (and most important), they diagnose according to the symptoms instead of the test results. What I mean is, my TSH was always between 2.1 and 2.5, firmly within the old "normal" range, so doctors told me to get lost and go lose some weight (I was exercising and dieting rigorously the whole time but it never helped). I felt so bad, I honestly thought I was going to die--and I was only in my mid-30s. But my holistic doctor looked at my symptoms, diagnosed "subclinical hypothyroidism" (a real condition), put me on Armour Thyroid, and I was a new person.