Q. My husband and I are desperately concerned about our daughter's weight.
At 9, she is 52 inches tall and weighs 84 pounds, which puts her in the 25th percentile for height and the 75th to 85th percentile for weight.
She has always craved carbohydrates and sweets, and became chubby around 5.
The more I've tried to guide her diet, the more she has resisted. She is preoccupied by food.
We've tried to limit second helpings of sweets and carbohydrates like pizza, buttery pasta, bread, bagels, nachos, chips, doughnuts and cookies, but she often sneaks snacks at home and loads up on fattening foods at parties and on play dates.
Our 11-year-old son likes snacks, too, but his weight, like ours, is average and he doesn't eat large amounts of food the way our daughter does. In fact, he often forgets to eat lunch if he is playing.
Our meals are healthful, too. We have fast food or takeout only twice a week -- our daughter often whines if she doesn't like what I'm fixing for dinner -- and we let the kids have microwaved popcorn, crackers and occasionally cookies only after school, but they get the same treats we offer to company.
I worry because there is diabetes in my husband's family and because her weight is affecting her self-image.
She loves clothes but has to wear oversize, sloppy-looking athletic outfits. And though she is a good student -- much praised by adults for her sweet, easygoing nature -- she is less secure with her four or five close friends than she used to be and more self-conscious in a large group. Now some kids on the bus are teasing her about her weight.
And yet she's almost always on a team and has one practice and one game a week, gym three or four days a week, outdoor play at recess and bikes occasionally.
A. Your child -- like most children -- may eat too many goodies on a play date or at a birthday party, but that shouldn't be enough to make her chubby.
The weight-gain culprits are nearly always at home -- in the fridge, the cabinets and the breadbox. Change their contents and you'll change your daughter's weight, but first you have to change your own mind-set.
Even though you serve healthful food at mealtimes, you may be giving your daughter a second helping of pasta when she still hasn't touched her salad.
It's time to toss out the sugared cereal, the doughnuts, chips, bagels and foods with high-fructose corn syrup and start living by the government's new dietary guidelines.
According to these rules, a 9-year-old needs about 60 minutes of exercise and 1,600 to 2,000 calories a day, coming from 2 cups of fruit (not juice); 2 1/2 cups of vegetables (the darker the better); 3 cups of low-fat or nonfat milk; two-thirds cup of lean meat, fish, chicken or beans; three whole grains out of six grain servings; and no more than 25 to 35 percent of the calories coming from fats, including as few saturated fats and trans fats as possible. To learn more, go to www.healthierus.gov/dietaryguidelines.
With diabetes in the family, it's good to develop the habit of eating foods with a low glycemic rating, since foods with high ratings, such as white bread and refined foods, are loaded with sugar.
The sweeter the food, and the more it's been processed, the more insulin it produces, causing first a spike in blood sugar and then a plunge. This causes more carbo cravings -- and more weight gain.
Your daughter needs unprocessed foods such as steel-cut oats, nuts, apples, oranges, berries (especially blueberries); lentils, brown rice, squash, broccoli, turnip greens, spinach, sweet potatoes and tomatoes, particularly canned tomatoes, because they are so concentrated.
She will object at first but if there's nothing else to eat, she'll start eating what she's served as long as you provide seconds only of green and yellow vegetables and of salad, and keep bread off the table entirely.
You may have to be more inventive in the kitchen, too. Cook oatmeal for breakfast, with a few walnuts and dried cranberries to make it interesting, or serve plain yogurt with a little granola or berries on top.
Simple high-protein after-school snacks keep the cravings at bay. A small handful of nuts and maybe a hardboiled egg, or natural peanut butter smeared on apple slices or celery, or cucumber spears dipped in hummus are ideal.
Plain yogurt makes a sweet treat for company, if you run it through the blender with frozen strawberries or other fruit.
With this regimen, your daughter should lose her chubbiness -- a process that will go faster with every inch she grows, particularly if the family bikes and hikes together on weekends and if you start cooking some of those fabulous low-glycemic recipes in the "South Beach Diet Cookbook" by Arthur Agatston (Rodale, $25.95).
Questions? Send them to advice@margueritekelly.com or to Box 15310, Washington, D.C. 20003.
