My mom restricted my food to keep me "skinny" and when I left for college and could eat whatever I wanted I grew an inch (and am female.)

I've had a weight problem since my metabolism started to slow down and since I have a hard time not bingeing on snack food and sweets. I avoid sodas, but if I buy a sweet or a snack I "have" to eat it all at one time until it's gone. To lose weight, just can't buy any of it or shop in stores that prominently feature snacks in the aisles.

My mother would tell me when I "should have had enough" so I basically never learned how to regulate my own hunger and food intake. I still struggle with that today and I'm 46.

My mom and her mom struggled with their weight, I remember going to WW with them for weigh-ins when I was younger. They never really restricted me or anything, just always reminded me that "I don't want to look like them" which is sad that they felt that way but didn't adversely effect me (I don't think). I am not as thin as I could be (like 10 pounds too much) but that's more due to my own laziness.

I have friends, a brother/sister pair, whose mother had them on the cabbage soup diet by age 8 (I am not sure if that's when the older or younger of them was 8, I'm afraid to ask.) Both struggle with weight and are obese, and have both been morbidly so over the years (the guy was semi-recently diagnosed diabetic and has dropped some weight.)

We went to Guadeloupe last year for my birthday and I spent half of the week sick with a stomach bug that had me throwing up for 2 days straight... their mother, when she heard, said "Oh, but I bet you looked great in your bathing suit the rest of the week!" We are all in our 40s-50s. wtf.

My mom has always controlled her weight by not eating lunch, or if she had lunch, she'd skip dinner. She had me do this for a few years as a teen/tween (though I had lunch on school days) and it was miserable. I was always ravenous by dinnertime. I did have an eating disorder in high school but it was never called that. Now I'm middle aged and "bigger boned," lol.

Anonymous wrote:10:24

Interesting - the opposite is true in my DH's family. His father is a food addict - I now believe this is a thing - and is in total denial about the effect of this on his health (leg amputated last year - he's in his fifties, congenial heart failure multiple times a year, diabetes, regular ER visits) and my DH is so far on the opposite end of the spectrum. He's obsessed with working out and hates junk food.

Though he may be taking the healthier route any obsession for or against food etc still is disordered eating.

Anonymous wrote:For example, put you on diets, made comments about good or bad foods, commented negatively on your body.... How did that affect your relationship with food?

No but we weren't overweight. We were pretty active, didn't snack on junk food, rarely ate juice, drank a lot of white milk and ate well. All summer we were in our swimsuits, had a bout 6 of them - was a lifeguard or out at the pool or lake house.

Today I don't snack much either, don't like much sweets (except dark chocolate!) and gag on must overly sweet desserts. Zero cavities as well. Same size as 2001, post 2 kids. Need to exercise to get cardio health back.


As a parent, I don't think it's right to comment on body of your child. Absolutely alright to impart comments on healthy foods and junk foods. As for diets, I just wouldn't have nor serve to much do-nothing calories (juice, sweets, processed snacks) and stress health eating of a rainbow of foods. I would never call this a diet. I'd call it a lifestyle and good eating habits. If my child was obese, I'd work on being more active and eating wholesome foods. If there was a different issue - thyroid, depression, anxiety - I would take the child to a specialist.

Anonymous wrote:My mother doesn't eat real food -- like meat, potatoes, dairy products, vegetables, fruit.
She skips meals, drinks lots of black coffee and then occasionally eats three donuts or an entire box of sugary cereal. She has osteoporosis , really dry skin and hair and some kind of weird vitamin deficiency where her fingernails curl up -- but she's thin! So therefore she has the answer to the obesity epidemic! Everyone should starve themselves until they're about to pass out and then eat a box of sugary cereal!

One year she bought me a scale for Christmas and forced me to weigh myself in the living room in front of all of the relatives who had come to our house for Christmas, and then commented all day on how fat I was! She sent me a subscription to Weight Watchers magazine when I lived in a group house with a bunch of other people,l which I found mortifying and shameful.

I'm now in a twelve step program for food addicted people slowly undoing the years of horrible messages I got about food growing up. I've lost fifty pounds since this summer. At Thanksgiving she literally said nothing to me. If she's not fat-shaming me, apparently we have nothing to talk about.

Ugh. You should have sent her a subscription to the American Journal of Psychiatry!