To wish my relative would stop harping on about portion sizes

[Averagesizedsalad]

I have a relative who is doing my head in with their repeated "Oh I'm so teeny tiny, oh this is so much food however will i manage" dramas. I need to rant before I explode! Share with me your infuriating virtue signalling teeny tiny stories? Maybe I am just extra cranky because I am HUNGRY everytime I see them because I'm breastfeeding 🤷‍♀️

Said relatives recent examples:

• When served a totally average sized salad for lunch, lamented "Oh this is so large, however will I have room for dinner later? I shall have to skip dinner, this salad will keep me full until morning" (I WISH I was joking, but alas I am not)

• Recently cooked a meal of pasta for lunch, in which I could count the number of pasta pieces on one hand. Of course accompanied by "Oh what a large meal, I shan't want dinner later at all!" It equated to about 1 normal sized portion of pasta dish split between 2 people, so fair enough that might be considered a light lunch if you're expecting a big dinner later, but not so much food that you wouldn't need to eat later on!

• Lamented that after having a normal sized slice of cake at a party that they were "Being sooooo naughty and would need to go on a big diet afterwards". It's a single slice of cake at a birthday party for goodness sake! You're not eating 1/4 of a cake everyday for dessert!

Obligatory: relative doesn't suffer from any health issues that might result in a small appetite blah blah blah. They are just insufferable and enjoy attention.

Thanks for listening to a hungry lactating mother complain after having about 10 curls (pieces? Squirls? What is the correct term here??) of pasta for "Lunch"

In an ideal world this would be the truth bit it's not. I'm often spoken to as if I'm one of these performative under eaters by colleagues and friends of friends/friends of in laws etc. when I literally don't say a thing about portion sizes or reasons for turning down food offered. Ever.

I have a daughter and nieces and am very conscious of not contributing to them having body issues or unhealthy attitudes to portions. It's nobody's business whether I'm turning down a cake because I don't like the flavour, a sandwich because it has too much rocket, a meal because it contains something that will give me a bad tummy, or because I have an event coming up and am following planned meals for a few weeks. It just doesn't matter. I don't want other people to comment on my eating so I don't comment on it myself. However people very often do.

DM loved her food and ate a lot (she was a child during the war and experienced rationing so I can understand it). She struggled with her weight practically all her life but I'm eternally grateful for when I read these threads is that she didn't police our food, she didn't involve us in her weight struggles and she never, ever commented on our food intake (apart from the cost of buying food for three eternally hungry teenagers with the metabolisms of a blast furnace).

Lol to answer some q -

The relative in question is of an average sized build, neither extremely skinny nor overweight. The pasta dish, they offered to cook for me as they were visiting me + newborn and I thought "oh how lovely for someone to cook me a hot meal while DH is at work"... it was a nice meal, all 2 mouthfuls of it 😭

I wouldn't even mind if it was an occasional thing. I have definitely sometimes gotten portion sizes completely out of whack if I didn't realise how big a recipe would be or how filling it would be, and I will always have a chuckle at my cooking then at the dinner table by saying "Oh sorry for the big portion of rice/whatever, I completely messed it up and didn't realise how much it would make - just eat however much you want!!" If my relative simply said on occasion "Thanks for the meal, it's lovely but I'm not very hungry today so I'll just have a little bit" that would be fine! But it's the going on and on and on. And on and on and on and on for the entire meal that is infuriating

'I remember ages ago a thread on here where a woman said she found fruit so incredibly sweet, she could only manage a piece every few months'

🤦🏻‍♂️
Haven't seen this but I can well imagine. There are some sad scary views about food on here

I know exactly the type of situation you mean
Its so tedious.

Unfortunately and bizarrely there is a weird thought process amongst many women that food intake is somehow related to morality. As if you are a fundamentally better person if you eat less.

I am on holiday with a friend at the moment. Yes, I may be piling the food on my plate at the buffet but I'm not sure our holiday is the time or place to tell me ('as a friend') that I need to see a nutritionist about my eating habits.
Yes, I know I overeat and am overweight. I KNOW I need to sort it.
But just for this week, leave me alone! and I won't mention your smoking

😂😂😂😂😂😂

OP, take her at her word. From now on, if you're feeding her, serve her a half portion. No, strike that, make it a quarter portion. Should she do anything other than effusively thank you for your consideration, look puzzled and tell her that you've been reading about how people with small appetites can find large portions INTIMIDATING, and you want her to enjoy her food so you've made sure you've given her an APPROPRIATE portion based on her previous statement of what she finds a comfortable-sized portion.

She'd bloody well regret trying performative daintiness around me.

When someone says they “eat like a bird”, I’d want to say “really? Three times your body weight every day?”

When someone says they “eat like a bird”, I’d want to say “really? Three times your body weight every day?”

Hopping from branch to branch? hanging off birdfeeders? tugging worms out of the lawn?

😂😂😂

I'm so jaded with the deluded dainties that when I hear, "Oh, I shouldn't eat that". I say, "Well don't then", and talk to somebody else. Depriving them of their (zero-cal) oxygen is the only way to stop these numpties in their tracks.

I took my Mum to TGi Fridays and she was already scanning the desserts before we ordered. She loves chocolate, loves desserts and I tend to be forced to order one with her because she won't if I don't have one. I am a savoury person. I'd far rather order a starter again in place of a dessert - to have WITH her dessert so that we're both eating and enjoying.

She went on about sharing a dish and I said that I was going to order X and she should order whatever she wanted. She did but her eyes were constantly on my plate and it was irritating.

When we'd finished and she was looking at the dessert menu she mentioned how much 'we'd' eaten and we'd better share a dessert. I told her to order one for herself as I didn't want one anymore.

I adore my Mum but her behaviour and stream of consciousness around food and eating makes me so tired and sad, it really does put a blight on what should be a good, easy relationship. I will never do this with my daughter.

I like to amuse myself from serving very tiny weeny portions to people who show off relentlessly about how small their appetites are....

FIL does this (learnt from MIL) I gave him 1 sprout for xmas so he had to ask for more.

ha ha, now that wasn't me, I promise, but once as a child I was ordered to eat a piece of fruit that was on the turn, and there was something about the sweetness that still makes me kind of gag now. Well, I approach fruit cautiously. Certain fruits. Doesn't mean I won't have chocolate though, but I do understand that poster saying she finds fruit too sweet. It can be. If it's not perfectly ripe, but not a split second too ripe. If it's a split second ''too ripe'' then argh euch

I am with you on this.
It wasn’t me either but it could have been, I do find fruit too sweet, though I am not anti calories just prefer to eat them in the form of fat. Deep fried butter on a stick would be my food heaven if it was real.

Unfortunately and bizarrely there is a weird thought process amongst many women that food intake is somehow related to morality. As if you are a fundamentally better person if you eat less.

This is absolutely the crux of it. We are no longer a religious society, but as a species religious ways of thinking are ingrained, so we have mapped them onto other things including food/healthy eating. In the old days, these women would have competed over who goes to church most often, or whose children know the most bible verses, or whatever. It’s all to do with fear of death, I think. If we pray often enough/eat ‘healthily’ enough, we won’t die.

Wow. Your colleague may sound mildly annoying but the rage you respond with is also not very normal....

Clearing up roadkill in the gaps between vehicles?

"And then regurgitating the meal later for your offspring" ? 😂

Just give her very tiny amounts and tell them to leave what they can't manage.

This would bring me close to murder, I must admit.

Is your relative doing all this 'oh how much food, I won't need dinner' as distraction for how much they actually eat in a day? They don't need to eat everything you serve them!
Maybe putting stuff in dishes so they can help themselves would be a solution.

My boss goes to the coffee shop and gets cake, but then cuts it in half and attempts to force cake upon unsuspecting people. It's like she cant eat cake without someone else eating it too.

Doing some work the other day I suddenly realised there was half a piece of cake on a napkin lurking by my elbow. She knows I'm diabetic and try to limit cake, and yet there it was, just sitting there.

😂😂😂

Both of you! Brilliant!

Oh lord! This too!

Meant to add an 😂😂😂