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"

My mil did it but to teens “ooh how are you going to eat all that tinkly laugh” which was unwise. “Are you trying to fat shame me granny”. Ouch! She deserved it though! Gen z don’t put up with this!

Guilting bore. Don’t offer her the chance to ruin your biscuit. No cookie for the PA dullard.

Hurrah for Gen Z!

My performative competitive undereating aunt once made a comment my performative competitive undereating pregnant sister - who was craving carbs - about how little she had always eaten even in pregnancy.

FIRE IN THE HOLE

My mother also does this. She has always had massive issues around food. She is basically obsessed with her kids weight and eating. Three of her daughters (inc me) have had issues with food. This filters down the generations. One of her grandkids has an obvious eating disorder. I’m really really sad to see that she’s quietly and slowly starting on another of the grandkids. ‘She has a FINE appetite’, ‘look at how much she eats’, ‘look at how big she is next to her cousin’. I adore my mother. But this is a large reason why she doesn’t have much to do with my kids.

She will talk endlessly about her eating habits, what she ate that day, how much exercise she did, how her appetite is tini, etc etc etc, how she could still fit into my clothes etc etc etc.

It is sometimes hard to be around her to be honest. And i recently lost my temper and was v mean to her - I said something to the effect that there comes an age where being thin really isn’t optimal as it makes you look haggard and older, move more stiffly etc. She’s 80. Didn’t like that at all. I usually wouldn’t lower myself to hurt her like that but the pride at having a lifelong eating disorder and transferring it to all her female (notably she does not care about weight of males) relatives is jarring and got too much that day. It shut her up for a while.

I'd be having fun with this.......Next time you see her serve her 3 pieces of pasta with a sprig of basil on top.

Or half an egg with one soldier......maybe make a roast dinner with half a roastie, a gnarly slither of beef and a teaspoon of peas. Get her a teeny tiny dolls plate to assemble it on for the great teeny tiny eater.

Sometimes it's true though, I can't always manage big meals. There are times when I can only eat one large pizza in a sitting, for example. Or I might a cook myself a "dinner for six" but only manage four platefuls.

Omg yes the cutting things in halves or quarters!

If you don’t want the whole thing then fair enough but don’t make such a production of it and tell every staff member.

My one does all this performance and then eats a whole one later anyway.
So many times I want to comment about how she’s just had 1 and 1/2 cakes and how unhealthy she is and how I couldn’t possibly manage to eat all that.

Getting people to serve themselves would still result in commentary from the Teeny Tiny Eater in my family.

Comments on the size of the serving bowl food in centre of table: “Oh my look at all that food! We’ll have so many leftovers. We won’t have to cook again all weekend!”

Comments on how little they need: I’m just going to have a teaspoon full, because I have such a Teeny Tiny appetite! It really is so Teeny Tiny.

Comments on how full they are: Oh my! I’m so full! That teaspoon of food was just soo filling! I couldn’t possibly eat another thing for hours!

Every. Single. Meal.

It is so tedious. Yes I get it, you have a small appetite. You’ve been telling me that for 30 years at every single meal we’ve eaten together. No-one cares.

I actually work in education where, generally speaking people aren't shy about eating treats. There are always cakes on the staffroom table for one reason or another. What really irritates me is the peope who cut a normal sized cake for one in half. I mean, who eats half a ring doughnut?! Either just eat the whole thing or don't.

Imagine how annoying it would be to be around someone who eats what they want and still stays slim, like my SIL

I have a friend like this and whilst it's mildly irritating because I'm bloody envious, he doesn't bang on about how he can eat lard all day and still not put on an ounce. I don't like food bores full stop - whether that's competitive undereaters/overeaters/dietary choices etc. So I'd rather eat with him than a number of relatives who really struggle not to commentate every morsel of food that's within their eyeline.

IME people who are genuinely concerned with wanting to eat more healthily - whether that's to lose weight or improve their health etc - don't bang on about it endlessly.

Mil does this, especially infuriating as shes not teeny tiny and clearly normally eats alot. So attention seeking..

Although....we had the opposite.
A family member loves her food, as do i, (fine, although is frustrated that she feels she can't wear the clothes she wants) and chose a restaurant where they serve dish-after-dish rather than courses. We ate loads and were full and agreed they needed to stop bringing us plates of food.
Said family member didn't feel she could carry on eating alone.
in fact lost her shiz and accused us of being weird around food and performatively underreating. We were really shocked and the evening was only jist rescued.
It's a really emotive sensitive subject I think.

HOWLING

"She doesn’t like cheese and always acts disgusted when people have it after dinner, once describing them as “lumps of fat” whilst we were eating it 😂"

That's more or less the comment I get from 'my fitness pal' when I log that I've eaten cheese.

I did say commenting on others food is different. That's extremely rude.
However I was referring to the OP where the relative is commenting on her own food. My point being this isn't necessarily something she's doing 'to' the OP, to show off. It could well be simply the verbalising of the constant self policing of a women terrified of weight gain. There does seem to be a view that if you're 'priveleged' to be slim then you never need to think about weight ever again, other than to swan around all day feeling great about yourself by comparison to larger people. When ime many slim women worry about weight and food consumption a great deal.

Only on first page and this pretty much nails it for me. Performative daintiness is exactly it! Love this term.

TheaBrandt · Today 09:23
My mil did it but to teens “ooh how are you going to eat all that tinkly laugh” which was unwise. “Are you trying to fat shame me granny”. Ouch! She deserved it though! Gen z don’t put up with this!

This is brilliant.

Comments on the size of the serving bowl food in centre of table: “Oh my look at all that food! We’ll have so many leftovers. We won’t have to cook again all weekend!” this reminds me of something a relative told us once.

They and another couple were invited to dinner. It was roast beef etc and everything was put on the table for people to help themselves. All the way through the meal the husband of the couple who had done the dinner talked about how much meat there was. “Oh I’m going to put some of this in my sandwiches/make a lovely curry/maybe there’ll be enough to have for a dinner a couple of nights in the week.”

Bearing in mind that this meat was on the table for everyone to help themselves to. So this relative and the bloke from the other couple did. To all of it.

Oh my mum completely. At points I entertained myself by dishing up the tiniest portion to see if she would ask for seconds, she did.
But it's been a 55 year campaign so far, getting worse as she gets older.
Apparently she was always slim, unlike me. Yup and you spent 30 years chain smoking and starving.

But it is rude. Presumably you wouldn't be talking out loud to yourself about how little you're having and how you have to halve everything and how you won't eat for the rest of the day if you were alone in the room, so it's a clear intention to involve the rest of the diners.

I am also maintaining a significant weight loss, so I understand the need for awareness. But to do that by ensuring everyone at the table hears me talking about how little I'm having is pretty much the definition of the problem. It's not that you don't eat much, it's that you aren't satisfied unless everyone else hears about it...and it must be less than what they're having, or else why say anything at all?

It's just bloody awful behaviour.

I have a weird visceral reaction when anyone offers me half of something. Do you want to share this piece of cake/muffin/slice of pizza? No, I want a whole portion or I want nothing. I don't say what's in my head though. I just say 'no thanks.' Maybe it's from always being made to share EVERYTHING as a child. Yes, it's polite. But sometimes it's nice to have something for yourself. My sister used to save her pocket money and buy my brother and me a small bar of chocolate or packet of sweets, so that she could have a giant bar of Cadbury's to herself without feeling guilty about not sharing. She was smart😅

@FKATondelayo you might need to cut them some slack over asking about gluten. I'm no teeny tiny and I'm gutted about how my coeliac diagnosis has taken the joy and spontaneity out of eating out. I feel like a huge inconvenience and attention seeker sometimes but I have to protect my health.

I just love the description 'performative daintiness'. And I am now going to refer to every type of pasta apart from lasagne and spaghetti as a squirl.

In my experience, performative daintiness sometimes goes along with a complete inability not to comment on someone else's clothing, even if that person is just a stranger walking by.

Sometimes people give a running commentary without meaning to, but if it’s performative and every meal, I usually do a concerned smile and ask them if they’re constipated. That usually shuts them up.

Sharing a donut is a great idea