Reply to Don't ask people about their weight loss.

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "Don't ask people about their weight loss."

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]My MIL always comments on my weight even though I have neither gained or lost any.

Many women of her generation were just socialized to think about weight ALL THE TIME and it's how they relate to other women and they compulsively compare their weight to that of other women. My mom doesn't talk about it like MIL does but she definitely has this mindset.

I have also met women my own age (40s) who are like this, though it manifests a little differently -- more overtly competitive but also more likely to use "healthy" as a euphemism for "thin" and "eating clean" or "eating whole foods" as a euphemism for "dieting", so the intent is obscured.

I am combating this for myself and my daughter by taking the radical approach of just not giving af about weight, ever. I don't actually know what I weigh, and neither does DD (we could look it up in our medical records if we had to, the doctors office is the only place we ever get weighed). We don't talk about weight in our house. We do talk about how our bodies feel and how we feel about them, but the focus is on energy levels, being able to do things physically (like I'm rehabbing a sports injury right now and being restricted in what I can do sucks and I complain about it), that kind of thing.

I think the only way to replace the obsessive weight/diet culture is to just eliminate it as a category of knowledge/discussion/interest. So I agree with OP. Don't ask, don't discuss. It's fine to take about health, exercise, etc. Weight? Every body is different. People are healthy or unhealthy at different weights. There's no point in discussing it because it's not a useful measure of anything on it's own and it's impossible for people to contextualize it properly because they live in a different body with different proportions.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics