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"

Of course I'm sure it would be followed by "Oh no I couldn't possibly regurgitate that much food, it would be far too much food for DFledgling, far too much sugar for them too. I shall have to eat 1/4 of a worm tomorrow and that will be plenty for us both" 🐦

I agree with you about the most delicious way to consume calories.

However my blood group is probably "butter" so I may not be the best person to advise . . . 😅

Oh god my Mum’s like this 🙈 We’ll go to a spa and she always makes a big song and dance at breakfast the next morning about how she “couldn’t possibly manage a full English” “Just the fruit and yogurt is enough for me”. Then if it’s a help yourself breakfast, she’ll have egg and tomatoes with toast whilst I’ll have the full works. This is perfectly fine if she didn’t feel the need to keep saying “I don’t know how you eat all that at this time in the morning” or “I just like my eggs and tomatoes - don’t feel the need to eat so much”. Great - EAT THEM THEN!

This. This is exactly what I'd do- serve her a portion so small you need a microscope to see it and if she says anything say "Oh I'm so sorry- would you like more? I know you have a small appetite so I was trying not to overload your plate or make you feel awkward" 😂

'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'

Fair enough. My DP can be very fussy with bananas - any brown spots and he gets the ick. I thought the original fruit comment was part of some mad crusade to eliminate every atom of sugar from her diet

My blood type would be figs or dates were they not laxatives!

Fave part of pregnancy was having an excuse to order lots of the fancy expensive juicy dates in 3rd trimester because my midwife said there might be a correlation between dates & spontaneous labour 😉

Knowing MN it's the latter. Home of the famous 7-day chicken and all that.

Mind you, my favourite ever batshit food comment was from one poster who said that peas were basically sugar bombs.

As much as I'd love to eat my body weight in figs & dates on a daily basis, I also value not spending 4 hours of the day on the toilet 😂

I already said I don't really eat the cakes. That's because I have a medical condition where as a result I struggle to eat. No, not performative but an actual illness. As a result i don't judge others. I don't judge those people as greedy because if you had read my full post you would have seen the comment, "It's not greedy to consume a portion size intended for one".

I head it off by having serve yourself dishes and loudly heading off comments with a cheery "oh i love food, i'll have some of everything".
If i have to serve a portion i jusr say up front "ive put out servings, if its too much i'll not be offended if you leave some, if you want more we've plenty"

I'd think of some passive aggressive replies e.g.
Yes we're all such pigs compared to you
However do you have any energy the way you eat like a bird
Or just absolutely snap at her e.g
Do stop going on about how much you eat it's very boring
But the best would be to have her round and literally serve a minute portion without comment, or just completely leave her out of the next meal if she's been harping on about the salad will last her to the next day

@MrsJackWhicher

I hate all the cakes at work too. I take a slice, say lovely, I'll enjoy this with a cup of tea this afternoon. Then I put it in my desk drawer on a piece of copier paper and dispose of it when cake maker has gone out of the room...

My ex Mil was a bit like this. The poor woman very obviously had an eating disorder. She was stick thin, ate nothing and exercised to extremes (at least 3 hours, everyday) I did feel sorry for her, but going out to eat was an ordeal. She would make a massive song and dance about only having a starter and then only eat half of it, exclaiming every 5 seconds that she was “stuffed”. But she would also make endless comments on what the other women at the table ate (only the women, never the men)
“oh, you’re having a starter and a main? No pudding for you then”
”you’ve eaten half of that steak/pie/lasagne….don’t you think it’s time to stop”
”you won’t want any breakfast after eating all that”
”you really do need to watch your weight as you get older” (I was 25!)
I eventually stopped staying at her house when she refused to let me have any breakfast, because we’d been out for dinner the night before, I’d eaten 3 courses and I “couldn’t possibly have room”……she made bacon sandwiches for her son though!

Meal times should be pleasurable. When it comes to portion sizes let her dish up her own, and restrict the discussion to whether or not she likes the food.

I used to work with a woman who would open the tin of biscuits in the staff room , twitter on about only being able to manage half one and put the other half back in the tin, leaving it full of broken biscuits nobody wanted. These were just normal size biscuits from a packet , I used to want to shout it’s a bloody biscuit just eat the dam thing. Mind you she was generally infuriating and used to boss me around when no one was looking so I may have been extra irritated by her…

Around someone like this I'd be really breezy and dismissive. I'd be wary of this approach if I thought there were any food issues or disordered eating, but otherwise I wouldn't be able to help myself.
'Oh I LOVE having a big appetite especially since I'm breastfeeding, I love food, I love birthday cake, if you don't want any, more for the rest of us etc. etc.'
Obviously you know your relative and know how sensitive you do or don't need to be, but I wouldn't let myself get wound up by it.

Ps, fusilli?

Agree with all the comments on being dismissive a,though I’d probably add a dash of passive aggressiveness - ‘oh I know what you mean, I feel ok this time though as I haven’t eaten for 13 days, I don’t know how I’d manage such a giant salad otherwise’

Sorry if it's already been said as not read the whole thread, but next time I'd put her a miniscule amount on her plate, eg one lettuce leaf with a teaspoon full of everything else if a salad, or 4/5 pieces of pasta with a teaspoon full of sauce, whilst serving yourself a normal amount.
Then I'd say something like 'this one's yours as I know you have a tiny appetite, but feel free to help yourself, there's plenty more if you want it' but leave the extra in the kitchen, so she has to make it obvious if she goes to get more.

I actually worry that people making such comments might be silent, secret and unhappy bulimia sufferers....

just eat your meals before you visit or they visit you! problem solved!

I don’t think you have read my post properly. You literally had a go at people for eating half a doughnut instead of a whole one. It’s obvious I’m not accusing you of thinking people who eat a whole one are greedy given that it’s the half doughnut eaters rather than the whole doughnut eaters you are criticising (which does rather give the lie to your claim you don’t judge others).

Hahaha your mil sounds like my type of woman!!🤣🤣

I have a family member who always asks for half a cup of tea, even when out visiting people or in a cafe. When I say 'Why not just drink what you want and leave the rest' I get a long lecture about how that's wasteful and how the mere sight of a full cup of tea puts her off drinking it.

The same relative has been known to demand that we stop on a journey because she absolutely must have something to eat now. Right now. She always knows exactly what it is she needs to prevent her passing out on the spot, and it's always sweet and strangely we often happen to be taking a route past a tea room or bakery when this desperate hunger comes over her. So we go in and then all the nonsense starts... 'I'd love a piece of that pie, but it's so huge I couldn't possibly... Have you seen the size of that scone, I couldn't eat half that... How could anyone east a piece of chocolate cake that big?' One one famous occasion I had to drive miles out of my way to take her to a place that she remembered had trifle on the menu. In we go, she orders a trifle (it's a tiny one still in its plastic container), she manages two teaspoons of it (anything sweet is always eaten with a teaspoon) and then it's all too much for her and she'll need to go and dig the garden to burn the cream and calories off, and we're off and out again.

Agree with you on performative anything. But performative parenting gets some people really on the defense here. Can only imagine they see a bit of themselves in the Performer.

If I ever heard someone say they ate like a bird, I'd have to regale them with the tale of the time I saw a seagull eating a roadkill pigeon down the back of Debenham's in Gloucester. Just to see what they said, really.