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"

Oh my mother is THE WORST for this.

I’ve stopped eating out in public with her now as she ruins every meal. She will talk endlessly about how she eats like a sparrow so will have a starter for her main course so she doesn’t waste too much food.

Will try to dictate what everyone else eats so she’s not tempted by something ‘fatty’.

Will spend the whole meal moving food round her plate and sighing about how she wishes she could eat more but she’s just built to be very small and not eat like the rest of us.

And once she’s had enough will expect everyone else to stop eating and leave because she feels sick at the sight of food.

She’s got severe osteoporosis from under eating and a binge eating habit she thinks no one knows about : under her bed is a graveyard of biscuit packets, chocolate wrappers and sugary drinks bottles. She will blame that on her grandchildren!

'DON’T BE SO FUCKING WET'

😂 It is wet, and it's very tiring to listen to. The cutting things in half and ANNOUNCING it to everyone 🤦🏻‍♂️eat what you want but stop explaining it to everyone!

I have a friend who I also work with, and she seems to feel the need to explain her lunches to whoever is sitting next to her - for example 'i thought I'd get all this (sausage roll and chips) coz then I won't need to eat tonight, yep, definitely won't be having any dinner tonight, oh gosh theres so much of this, help me out, have some chips etc etc'. No one ever comments on what she's eating but she seems to feel the need to justify it. To be honest, I find it really sad. She must feel a lot of shame around eating and is doing all the explaining to try to make herself feel better, instead of just getting on and enjoying her food

How often do you have to see this relative for it to be an issue?

@CurlewKate , I’m an older (pretty ancient) woman and I’ve never felt ‘conditioned’ to under-eat, or to pretend to, or to feel that I shouldn’t enjoy my food.

I agree it's not generational. I know some people my age that do it and tons that don't and younger people do it too.

However, it's not the eating less that's an issue, it's the imposing it on everyone else. If you want less on your plate, just ask if you can plate up your own food and definitely, definitely don't comment on what anyone else is having (or what you're having either - people just aren't interested tbh).

My grandma was the worst for this. It’s definitely a generation thing - my mum (born in ‘44) still wistfully talks about how thin she was at her wedding - because she had a stomach ulcer and couldn’t eat anything except eggs and white bread etc for a while!

for her generation (and my grandparents) it was almost shameful to be overweight - I think for them, it was rooted in the war and food shortages

we spent our childhoods being told we were fat / puppyfat/ ‘oooh you eat big portions!’ etc whilst simultaneously being told we had to finish everything on our plate

I detest sharing food / portions due to me constantly wondering if I’ve taken too much / other ppl with think I’m fat bastard etc due to early years conditioning. nothing makes me hangrier than the concept of sharing plates
as a result :D

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.

Oh my God. I hadn't noticed this, but you're right.

MIL once disapproved of the scanty clothing on the dancers on a TV performance. I had to remind her that they don't direct the show or choose the costumes, they're professionals who wear what they're given and do the choreography they're taught. And we definitely hear about how "she shouldn't be wearing that" when a woman walks by, minding her own business. The others do it too!

Surely its easy to ignore, much like non drinkers or non smokers commenting on booze and fags intake

My aunt (who I'm very very fond of) does this. She is very focused on her weight, but is a feeder, she loves cooking and baking and giving it to other people. She fed up her husband and 2 (now in their 50s) children a lot and they're overweight. She is an amazing baker and bakes for everyone, for birthdays, celebrations, leaving do's, we all ask her to make things for us. She happily does, then hands it over, and then says in a horrified voice "you won't actually eat it all will you???". Or after, she will ask, "did you/they eat all the cakes/pies/scones I made" and when we say "yes, they were delicious, thank you" she gasps, clutches her heart, and staggers backwards in utter horror! It's so funny. It's food! It's for eating! You made it so we could eat it! It makes me laugh how she is so shocked we ate the food she made for us to eat.
She does the performance eating too, saying "oh we wont need any tea will we", which we just ignore, and we do gently make fun of her by saying "oh you won't need to eat for a week now you looked at that slice of bread will you?".
We're all very fond of her and don't let it get to us, but I do love how she's scandalised that we eat the food she makes for us to eat!

Pushing food on others, including preparing it in huge quantities, is quite common behaviour in people with anorexia and other eating disorders.

I know that this kind of thing is disordered and not really the fault of the people doing it, but fucked if I'm going to get sucked into it. It's a shitty game and I'm not playing.

I'm actually quite heartened by the women saying they haven't seen it. I'm glad there are some pockets of sanity remaining.

It’s the person that orders a starter as a main course and then…. Eats all your chips and tries other people’s courses and then on your way home you notice them eating a huge bag of crisps when you pass them and they are on the bus by the window although … they didn’t have any room apparently.

The rest of us aren't small though 🤷‍♀️ She wasn't the biggest person at the table.

You should say next time, "we had a few bites but most went in the bin,"

Report back here with her reaction.

Oh god ZZZZZZ is this person a boomer? diet culture and eating teeny portions or carbs making you fat sound like the bull shit theories boomers were fed with. I would honestly bring it up and embarrass her. next time she makes a comment about a portion I would say something like 'Are you ok? you seem to have lots of concerns surrounding food and I'm starting to worry that you are becoming a bit obsessed? Has someone called you fat or something?' Or go in the opposite direction and start saying 'Jesus christ did you just finish that entire salad alone?'

This would really grate me.
Not quite the same but at my best friends wedding her then sister in law was playing her face constantly (not being centre of attention). She moaned about every aspect of the food and how she couldn't possibly eat it (it was all beautiful). When it came to dessert - Creme Brûlée- that was of course wrong... I just leaned over and went "fine I'll take yours off your hands then" !!! Her face!

Now I’d take the ring doughnut and then quietly dispose of half of it in the bin under my desk. You wouldn’t ever know I’d only eaten half.

Wasteful definitely, but at least I used to avoid the equally rude comments on how little cake I’d eaten.

I don't like doughnuts so I'd just say no thank you..but if I had to halve it, I'd wrap the uneaten half up and take it home. No need for waste.

Don’t worry for every dainty performative eater there’s always someone like me, a fully paid up three solid meals a day kinda gal.

Ffs why shouldn’t someone eat half a doughnut if that’s all they want?

I agree with those commenting about cutting food in half/insisting on sharing food.

I don't like sharing food and I especially dislike people who chose something in restaurants and then turn to you and say "shall we share this? I couldn't possibly manage it on my own." Urghh no! I don't want to share YOUR choice. I want MY choice and I want the WHOLE of it.

And don't get me started on people who "can't possibly manage pudding" and then steal everyone else's saying "just a taste"...😡. There is a special place in hell for those people.

Yanbu. Whip the plate away from her and say don't eat it if you can't manage

Absolutely fine to eat half a donut as long as you do it without telling everyone what you're planning to do and probably best just to throw the other half away rather than making a big production out of it's availability.

I've stopped eating sugar and carbs for the last few months and I don't declare loudly that I'm not eating cakes etc because they are so bad for me - I simply avoid them and if anyone tries to push one on me I just say I'm full or I don't fancy it.

Unfortunately my DM is like this, but for her it's a sad story of being conditioned by her own not very nice DM in the 1950s, who was very controlling around food, and then marrying my DF who has always been a misogynistoc fat shamer, long before the term existed. (To the extent of commenting negatively on the appearance of young women walking along the street as we drove past in the family car - ' Look at the size of that....' etc.) It was only when I left home that I realised how odd it was that we had a constant commentary on other people's eating habits growing up. DM would remark on the portion sizes and weight of everyone we knew ('Ooh, no wonder X and Y are so huge, Jane gives them half a tin of beans and three fish fingers each. That's way too much for a child'). Unsurprisingly we were underfed, hungry and underweight throughout our childhoods.

EDS likely as it’s excessive focus on food. Mention this to her. Even normal bmi people can have an EDS.

After reading this thread I'm worried now that people are calling me performative and a 'dainty' eater. I often struggle to finish portions kindly provided by others!