Hi, my name is Alana. My 8 year old daughter, Salena, weighs 104 lbs and is 22 lbs over the maximum healthy weight for her height. Though I don't think that she has been teased about her weight, she tells me that she doesn't like to play tag because kids always tag her knowing that she's the slowest runner. She has always been off the charts even when she was breastfed (22 lbs at 3 months old / 36 lbs at one year old). I have always asked myself why she was gaining SO much weight when I have always fed her healthy foods. I don't mean healthy in the way that the general public views healthy "Oh, look, this can of spaghetti o's has vitamins and minerals in it!", I mean everything organic from health food stores and very few processed foods. My mom is a bonafide hippy health-nut control freak, so I know what health is.
Salena started to grow into her weight as a toddler, never skinny, but looking less like the Michelin tire man. Then she started kindergarten. I immediately had to go talk to the teacher about bringing in a separate snack for Salena. She tried to assure me that the crackers, goldfish, occasional oreos, and other crap snacks were all "FDA Approved". I told her that FDA didn't have any clout with me and that my daughter's health was paramount. I kept snacks for Salena in her classroom during the entire kindergarten year. The next year something was definitely different. I had less control over her food, so even if her home packed lunch was healthy, there were other elements that were out of my control. In first grade, after spring break, I made the BIG mistake of letting her have school lunch for the remaining two months of school. She put on a rather visible amount of weight.
In second grade, school lunch was only for emergencies. During the summer after second grade, my mom declared war on the weight. Salena lost a noticeable amount of weight, not yet in the healthy zone, but she was on her way. Then came third grade. It seemed that she and her classmates were being rewarded with candy at least a few times a week and by different teachers. One day she said that she got four lollipops. She has put on more that twenty pounds in the last school year and resembles the Michelin tire man, again.
Now we are embarking on the FTS way of life. She's excited about the things that she'll be able to eat now, like the peanut butter fudge. We have been making our own soda with xylitol and sparkling mineral water. Making pancakes with coconut flour. I've found replacements for breads, pastas, cakes and cookies. The problem is that my daughter is addicted fruit juices and I haven't figured out how to replace those yet. Over the past two years she has become unwilling to eat many meats and it has been increasingly difficult to find protein that she will eat. Strangely, she likes broccoli. I had been disguising hemp seeds in home made smoothies, but that won't work on the FTS plan. Any ideas for the picky kid who loves Jamba Juice?
