Have my 7 year old on a "diet"

I think you are doing great and made the right decision. It's a subject that really needs to be tackled when the kids are young.

One question; how did he get so big? I'd assume overeating the wrong foods? Are you or your husband heavy?

I too am a nurse (home care for last 28 yrs) and I see a direct correlation between the size of the occupants in the home and what is in the fridge and cupboards.

Just to put out there i am a mother of a 12yr old incase anyone wants to come in with any 'bet you haven't got kids' stuff.

So why is weighing him so important all the time then if you're not aiming for something? Surely then you could back the kid off the scales and maybe only have him pop on them every month or so?

I see what you're saying i commend you for the healthy eating as a family, but the impact on him isn't going to be that if he's always on and off the scales, it is a diet and it will affect him.

I wouldn't even consider those things a "diet", as you said. We don't allow sugary cereals in our house, and sweet treats are limited to special occasions like someone's birthday or something.

This. It sounds to me like he's eating food. :-)

Sounds like you're doing a good job. Good to instill healthy eating habits in your children while they're young.

My son is 4 and about 44 inches tall and just under 40lbs, so on no way overweight, but we're still careful about what he eats. We don't have sugary cereals - breakfast is either scrambled eggs and baked beans or porridge (oatmeal). He's at school now (kids start at 4 in England) and they have a piece of fruit at break. He takes a tuna sandwich and a yogurt for lunch. Sometimes he has a snack after school, and dinner is something healthy. He gets treats like ice cream sometimes. Usually if we have treats we prefer to make them ourselves, like little cupcakes or something. We also have a 2 year old daughter who is tall like her brother. She weighs about 24lbs.

I want my children to grow up with a healthy attitude towards food.

Sounds like what you're doing is working a treat. I don't think you need any suggestions until/if his weight loss stalls or there are any side effects - lack of energy I imagine would be the biggest for an active child.

Sounds to me like you're both doing great. Are you sharing his diet i.e. you're not telling him he can't eat a cupcake while eating a cupcake, are you? If you're leading by example I would think it would be easier for both of you. If you can get a dialogue going that benefits you both, it's something you're both going to stick at much longer.

So....very...much....this.

Children rely on internal cues up until about the age of 3 when it comes to hunger. Then they become conditioned to rely on external cues and their sense of what is normal in terms of hunger, portion size, food choice and so on is mostly determined by their environment.

Make this a whole family change towards a lifetime of health and happiness.

Doesnt even sound like a diet. Cutting junk =\= diet.

Well done you for doing what a lot of parents don't seem to want to do! Still discuss with the doctor and make sure that you're taking a measured approach. Don't want a future manorexic

No advice on helping a child to loose weight, but just thought I would put my 2c worth in on BMI. BMI is largley worthless unless you are compleatly averge. if your son play's a lot of sport and is more muscular becouse of that BMI is just about usless.

IMO BMI isn't entirely useless - although it's true that very muscular people won't necessarily be a healthy BMI you would have to do huge amounts of sport to get to that stage. BMI is a useful tool for doctors who can say you are overweight because your BMI is in the overweight range. It is a non-judgemental way of telling people they are fat without being insulting! In that respect, it is useful. I assume that because the OP has discussed this with her doctor, he has said this to her. It's also a useful guidline for people who do normal amounts of excercise to know roughly what weight they need to be. I wouldn't recommend going obsessive about it, but ignoring it is equally silly for the majority of the population.

I don't agree about the huge amount of sports. It depends on a ton of factors! I was born with much more muscle mass than my brother for example. You could tell from a very young age that I had more muscle mass than most kids. It has always been very easy for me to build muscle and create definition and when I was crazy into sports, I was obese according to the BMI scale even though I was a size 6-8 and ridiculously healthy! Even when I wasn't active and I was sick, I got down to what was on the high end of a "healthy BMI" and seriously I looked skeletal. You could count my ribs, you could see my hip bones, the doctor was like, you need to gain weight. When I am healthy, strong and happy, I am considered on the upper end of overweight but the doctor says I am perfectly healthy.

Though it can be helpful in some circumstances, that so many people/doctors use it as an end all be all really annoys me!!

If all you are doing is encouraging him to more regularly opt for "healthy" choices when it comes to snacking & reduce (not eliminate) the frequency of "unhealthy" snack choices, I wouldn't consider it a diet, you are simply trying to encourage him to eat well and enjoy a wider variety of foods & that is a really positive thing.

As a child there was always a full fruit bowl in my house & if I wanted a snack that was pretty much my only option. Every Saturday I remember always getting a chocolate eclair from the bakery as a treat which I very much enjoyed and every now and them my dad might randomly come home with some small treat but it was occasional and not expected. Treats were not banned and I would have plenty on birthdays/Christmas but special occasions aside, they were not for everyday consumption & to me that was & is totally normal. The same with fizzy drinks, I don't think I knew they existed until I was 10-11 and I will have the odd one now but cannot imagine wanting to drink them all the time, I genuinely prefer water.

Exposing your son to plenty of nutritious and healthy food options as a child whilst still allowing him his favourite things in moderation will help widen his palate & encourage him to eat in a balanced way both now and in the future so I would say you are doing a great thing by making this change

Well done you for doing what a lot of parents don't seem to want to do! Still discuss with the doctor and make sure that you're taking a measured approach. Don't want a future manorexic

No advice on helping a child to loose weight, but just thought I would put my 2c worth in on BMI. BMI is largley worthless unless you are compleatly averge. if your son play's a lot of sport and is more muscular becouse of that BMI is just about usless.

IMO BMI isn't entirely useless - although it's true that very muscular people won't necessarily be a healthy BMI you would have to do huge amounts of sport to get to that stage. BMI is a useful tool for doctors who can say you are overweight because your BMI is in the overweight range. It is a non-judgemental way of telling people they are fat without being insulting! In that respect, it is useful. I assume that because the OP has discussed this with her doctor, he has said this to her. It's also a useful guidline for people who do normal amounts of excercise to know roughly what weight they need to be. I wouldn't recommend going obsessive about it, but ignoring it is equally silly for the majority of the population.

Hate to burst your bubble, but BMI is a tool designed to measure populations, not individuals. It is frequently misapplied in this way by our society because it's the cheapest way of assessing ratios of height to weight, but its use in individuals is fundamentally flawed because it does not consider any of the many other variables that affect a 'healthy' weight and size for any individual. It may be used as a guideline of vague (very vague) use for comparison against others of similar height on an international scale, but for large swathes of the world's population it either over- or underestimates what their weight 'should' be for optimal health, because it cannot consider, among other things, build, body composition, ethnicity, local nutritional standards.

OP - my one caution would be to be aware that the chances are strong that your son will be influenced by what he sees his peers eating as well. Be careful that he doesn't feel that he is being deprived of all the 'fun' foods. I mention it because my mother insisted on only healthy snacks, and wouldn't buy the vast majority of the things my peers ate regularly that I coveted - anything processed, sweets, soda, crisps, cake etc - which meant that I felt left out and deprived of those experiences and pleasures, and developed strategies to get those things, and feel more like my peers. Those strategies included eating far more of them than was reasonable when they were available (at friends' houses/birthday parties/celebrations etc - binge-eating, basically), hiding and hoarding those foods when I could get my hands on them, which sometimes involved stealing small change from my parents' dresser - this was the 80s so 50cents went a lot further! - and finding substitutes out of the food that was available (lots of toast with heaps of butter, sugar and cinnamon, or handfuls of chocolate chips from baking supplies etc.). Essentially, Mum acted with the best possible intentions, but over-restricting basically set me up for a very disordered relationship with food - just something to be aware of.

As far as the weekly weigh-in, yes, I do want to keep track of what's going on because I don't want things to get out of hand and him lose too much, too quickly. My husband and I are both nurses so maybe that's part of why we are so particular on documenting and keeping track of things on a regular basis. My son is very proud of his progress as well and he's been getting a ton of compliments from people.

and what happens the week he doesnt lose weight... and doesnt get the attention for 'doing so well'?

Is there a need to "attack" her for trying to do right by her child? I feel like if she wasn't keeping track with how much she was losing you'd cry the opposite, how dare she not pay careful attention...

That was in no way an attack, but your comment(s) are certainly coming close to one (see: logical fallacy). It was a pretty legitimate question to ask. If OP wasn't willing to look into these sort of possibilities (ex: kid suddenly stops losing weight, doesn't get positive reinforcement, and possibly gets into disordered eating habits to achieve it), then there'd be a problem. OP responded and has experienced this, so it got answered.

Yes, it did get answered, it got answered the first time it was asked and there was no need to keep on asking.

If you choose to feed your child ONLY whole, healthy foods prepared at home you would NOT need to limit portions. Malnourishment stimulates over-eating. Address the malnourishment and over-eating stops.

I also hope that you are not adhering to the low fat craziness. Your child needs lots of healthy fats. Yes, saturated fats from ethically farmed animals, avocados, coconut, eggs, butter etc. Low fat is a FAIL, not just for children.

I would tell your mother that she needs to respect your parenting style and if she can't "keep him on track" when he is in her care, you will be forced to find someone else to watch him that will respect your parenting style.

I don't have children yet, but my mom is the same way with my nieces and nephews and now she no longer has unsupervised time with the kids. Everytime they would walk in the door, my mom would hand them a pack of fun fruits and she would keep the junk flowing until they left. Often times, once the kids would get home, they would complain of stomach aches or my nephew would be uncontrollably bouncing off the walls.

Sometimes, you have to do what is best for your kids, even if it means angering someone close to you. You wouldn't allow that from a daycare provider, so why would you allow it from your mom?!

I would tell your mother that she needs to respect your parenting style and if she can't "keep him on track" when he is in her care, you will be forced to find someone else to watch him that will respect your parenting style.

I don't have children yet, but my mom is the same way with my nieces and nephews and now she no longer has unsupervised time with the kids. Everytime they would walk in the door, my mom would hand them a pack of fun fruits and she would keep the junk flowing until they left. Often times, once the kids would get home, they would complain of stomach aches or my nephew would be uncontrollably bouncing off the walls.

Sometimes, you have to do what is best for your kids, even if it means angering someone close to you. You wouldn't allow that from a daycare provider, so why would you allow it from your mom?!

Not sure who you are responding to here, but it doesn't appear to be the OP. (Original Poster)
If you are responding to someone else's post, please click the quote button, then scroll down to the bottom of their post and add your remark after the / quote.

This will let everyone know whose post you are responding to.

I see this is your first post on here, so you may not understand how to respond to posts yet. Thought I might help!

I also have a 7 yr old active son. He weighs 56lbs. You are doing the right thing. The only caution I have is that you may want to make it clear to him that you are weighing him so that you can make sure he isn't losing too fast and stop weighing him if you sense any annoyance from him at all. You can easily see how you are doing by his pant size. Thanks for being humble enough to put this post out. It's been helpful to me as well. Hoping for the best for you as you deal with this difficult issue.