Realising how things weren’t normal for me growing up

[Jasminecandle]

I have a real issue with food now as an adult. I am overweight and I eat too much of the wrong things. I also use food as a comfort.

When growing up we weren’t allowed to help ourselves to food. I was so so skinny as a child and teenager and I don’t think it was particularly healthy.
My parents would feed us three meals a day, but usually quite small portions for me, even as a growing teen.
I remember being hungry in the evenings as we used to eat our dinner about 5/5:30pm. Of course I was growing, but I can’t even imagine helping myself to a piece of toast before bed. So when I became an adult and moved out, I was shocked that people I knew including partners would eat whenever they liked.

Even now, as an adult if I go to my parent’s house I don’t ever help myself to food without asking … I bring my own food and keep it in the bedroom where I’m staying instead.

I even remember my Nan trying to feed me extra of her homemade cakes to put some meat on me as a teenager, but my mum would insist I only had 2 of these small homemade cakes, no more as I need to stay slim.

AIBU to believe my parents controlling attitude with food has lead to my issue with food and my weight as an adult?

Snacking is rubbish as it is often junk food with trans fats, colours, salt and sugar, so no nutritional value. Children should be able to eat as much as they need of healthy main courses. Healthy snacks should also be available.

The situation at home does sound very restrictive and so potentially damaging. That type of calorie deficit can go either way, with it continued to the extreme (I know someone who had similar and became anorexic at uni) or breaking free from the restriction and going the other way.

You can be obese and malnourished at the same time.

You can be slim but hold fat around your organs.

Slim does not equate healthy.

This was normal for me, definitely didn’t snack as much then as people do now. Three meals a day is standard in the UK. We certainly never had chocolate, crisps, fizzy pop in the house growing up.

OP said she was born in the 80s, so she’s describing her childhood and teenage years in the 90s-early 2000s, not the 70s.
I’m pretty sure she also said somewhere that her family wasn’t struggling financially.

Back in the 80’s when I grew up we didn’t have endless snacks like kids now do. We did have biscuits and I remember a few treats such as packet or cornetto, 2 each for my brother and I, and maybe a nice mousse with cream on when we went shopping. I was allowed sweets from the sweet shop over the road so definitely more food than you. I don’t think you can blame your parents for your weight though. Yes I get why you ate more when you moved out but it’s your choice to continue to do that into adult life.

3 meals a day and no snacks was normal for my family in the early 1990s. But. .... If I had told my parents I was hungry, especially in the eve, they would have given me something, fruit, yoghurt, toast. I don't think being routinely hungry was normal in my house and if your child says they are hungry then if there is (healthy) food in the house, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to have some. We weren't allowed to just help ourselves though.

Massively unfair that your brother was treated differently too.

So I do see where you are coming from. Can you take some steps to address your relationship with food now you're out of the situation?

When growing up we weren’t allowed to help ourselves to food.

That’s not unusual is it?

Couldn't agree more.
These days food is at arms reach everywhere, even having it delivered to your food via an app.
And as a result just look at the state of 80%+ people wobbling around the place... progress eh!

If I think about it, the way we ate in my childhood would seem draconian by today’s standards.

We also had 3 meals a day. If we had a cup of tea, we were allowed 2 biscuits and no more. Apart from that, there was no snacking. I remember being amazed at friends’ houses where there were crisps, fizzy drinks and all sorts of crap!

I was a skinny child but I definitely never went to bed hungry though, my mum would’ve been devastated at the very idea!

I think people would consider us similarly strict as we never went down the route of endless snacking with ours and we never bought sweets or crisis or fizzy drinks. They also never helped themselves to food or ate more in the evening after dinner 🤷

How lucky you were! Shame you did not continue with this when you grew up. You parents were right to prevent overeating and it is a shame not many parents are like that. I think you should try and find other interests in life, apart from food. And I am saying this as a fellow overweight person, only in my case I was allowed to eat anything and everything when I was growing up.

OP your experience made me think of a book I read called “Secrets of feeding a healthy family” by Ellyn Satter.

The basic premise is that children are born able to regulate their own food intake (eating when hungry and stopping when full) and this is important for healthy eating as adults but we often lose that link

She gives examples of well meaning adults who restrict a child’s access to food to avoid them getting overweight, but if the child is regularly left hungry this teaches the child there is a shortage of food available so when they do get access to food they eat more than they need because they can’t be sure when there will be another opportunity. This sets up unhealthy eating cycles from early on. She recommends ensuring a child has as much (healthy) food as they want and with overweight children advocates against portion control but instead allowing them to select their own portion of healthy food from a communal plate so they eventually learn to trust there will be sufficient food and they don’t need to overeat.

Your situation doesn’t sound normal and I can well see how constant hunger has affected your relationship with food as an adult.

Were you 'really skinny ' or is that in comparison to people today?

Looking at pictures of my family in the 70s, they were all what would be classed as skinny today.

I really dislike this trend towards blaming parents for everything wrong with us as adults, but simultaneously cutting them no slack for their own upbringings.

Most of our parents (assuming you are 35 plus) were brought up by parents still touched by rationing. Life changed very rapidly from the 1950s to the 70s.

Your parents probably replicated what they were brought up with. Somehow this is their fault and they had the responsibility to change it but you don't have that responsibility.

I am 56 and grew Up in the 70s, teen in the 80s. I don’t really ever remember having a snack at home, ever. My parents were absolutely not controlling with food, quite the opposite, just that we didn’t snack, I don’t know why (possibly couldn’t afford snack type food - money was tight). I’m not a particularly snacks person now but whether there’s a correlation with my childhood I don’t know.

the People saying “it’s not your parents’ fault you’re overweight” really have no clue do they? Of course our childhood experiences massively impact our behaviour, though of course we can overcome it, but it’s hard.

I hope OP that your growing realisations help you moving forward.

This!! I read a dm article about how us ladies in our 40s mothers were a generation of dieters so they tried to restrict us and we now struggle.

because I felt restricted and confused I have always re enforced with my dd that she can tell us when full and that’s the time to stop eating. It seems to have worked she’s a healthy weight doesn’t see food any as food or bad and has less focus on food than her peers.
im sorry for some
of the shitty blaming messages you are getting on here OP, they are from peopel
who seem completely. Give to the impact restriction can have. Perhaps they are parents who feel this restriction is needed for their own children. I have one friend with a dd who will severely restrict her dd’s food when we are out like they will all get a doughnut and she will say hers won’t have that. She’s well intentioned but she’s setting her dd up for a ED I think. She’s a skinny girl who is obsessed with her weight and food. Yes a doughnut not a great food but my dd will eat a few bites leave it and not feel restricted therefore she asks for these things less as it’s not something she’s missed out on. Friends dd will go round others houses and gorge on the foods she is not allowed. I feel so sorry for her cos I know how that pans out

A lot of what is snack food now was party food when we were children.

My own mother was totally slim obsessed OP and I was half starved as a child so I didn't get fat. It definitely affected me and I never got enough food. Even as an adult my mother ignores all of my achievements as an adult which are considerable and will only comment on my weight. If I zm fat she considers me to be a big fat nothing. If I M slim she is all over me like I've done something incredible. She's now a scrawny old woman with skin hanging off her because she's so thin. It's not attractive at all. I've stopped going there.

Children are supposed to be skinny though, at least before puberty kicks in. And hunger is a perfectly normal sensation which every healthy person should experience at times. But it is not normal to feel hungry all the time.

I think at this point it’s almost irrelevant where the blame lies. @Jasminecandle you are obviously unhappy with YOUR relationship with food. You need to get some help. Look at getting some professional counselling.

I think it was healthy, just unusual when compared with today.

Snacking between meals is a relatively recent thing, and I agree with a previous poster that today’s snack foods were our rare party foods. I think you’ll find you were not too skinny either, as the weight charts have shifted with a changing population. All grandmothers think kids are skinny. Our parents saw our kids rarely (distance), but when they did stuffed them full of treats and said they were skinny (they were not, they were healthy but skinnier than average in todays larger population, no one would have blinked an eye at them in the 50’s/60’s when food was plentiful but was healthy, non processed and people didn’t stuff themselves non stop, and walked most places).

Yeah. There’s another thread where someone’s complaining that her daughter’s overweight and it is clear that it’s because the daughter is overdoing the snacks. The advice is to make sure that the daughter only eats meals and does not help herself to food.
Three meals a day was not starving you. Snacks are unnecessary. And of course you couldn’t go helping yourself to food without permission — it would have upset your parents’ food planning.
Although all adults can eat whatever they want, when they want to, there are an awful lot who happily choose to eat only two or three meals a day and no snacks. If you overeat it is within your power to stop.

I agree it was not normal to restrict food in the way your parents did, OP. I grew up in the 80s/ 90s, and while there were rules about food (clearing your plate; asking before taking fruit/ biscuits), we did have snacks after school, could fill up on bread and butter after dinner, and usually had something like toast before bed.

And like the previous poster said, good appetites were praised - being a ‘good eater’ was a compliment. I hadn’t made the connection about WW2 & rationing until now, but my grandparents had lived through the war and my parents were born in the years after WW2 when rationing was still in place, so that would have affected their attitude to food.

That was absolutely not normal. Even for me as a child decades earlier. It's not normal to starve your children, and I'm saddened at some of the replies you have got on this thread.
No wonder that when you became an adult and the prison walls keeping you away from food were no longer there that you ate more. It's 'eat it while I can as I don't know when I'll be fed again' mentality.
Your mother does have an eating disorder. Restricting subtype. At some point she could easily slip into binge/purge behaviour as many people with EDs are unable to restrict for ever. (I used to work in an ED unit)
Not at all surprised that you are where you are.
I fear you were starved of love too.
Sending love.

Three meals and no snacks is fine if the meals are adequate. They clearly weren't for the OP. Plus her brother was better fed, this is awful.

Sorry OP, your parents were mean and controlling and no one should grow up being hungry all the time. I say this as a healthy eating obsessive too, all those commenting on the thread to virtue signal how this is normal eating and we are all too fat nowadays are missing the controlling and cruel nature of the parents in this case.

We weren’t allowed to help ourselves to food, either, not that there were ever any snacks to help yourself to.

Until I was much older I always had a small appetite, though, so don’t really remember ever feeling really hungry - except perhaps after swimming lessons at school, when I could almost have killed for a packet of crisps like a lot of the other kids had.

I'm not sure if other people commenting really understand being perpetually underfed. This post really resonates with me. I was kept skinny and hungry as a child when the rest of the family weren't. I was given much smaller meals and my hunger was always invalidated. I was underweight for a great proportion of my childhood. And I now have an eating disorder. Although I don't think the feeding patterns were necessarily the only thing that contributed to that as there was also emotional neglect and generally an awful place to grow up, so I think in combination that affected me deeply.