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?

This thread is really interesting, the number of posters who clearly hate anyone who is overweight!

YANBU op, your parents weirdness and restriction around food will have impacted you as an adult. I grew up with similar restrictions and often went to bed hungry and got severe stomach aches. I also used to faint quite a lot. Saying I was hungry was met with a lot of anger from my mother, it was something we learnt not to do.

I think it takes a lot of work to remove food issues. Personally I’m aiming to be like those people who don’t really think about it. They eat when they’re hungry and have a healthy diet but don’t feel the guilt for having chocolate or cake. I’m in my 40s and slowly getting there. I hope you manage to find some balance OP.

Erm, I don't think a teenager repeatedly going to bed hungry is remotely healthy.

OP your parents attitude towards food has undoubtedly given you an unhealthy relationship with food. Some hypnotherapy may help?

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

I think your upbringing will have an impact on how you are as an adult.
If it's something you can't resolve yourself, then I would recommend seeking therapy so you can find ways to be more healthy now.

There are separate issues here.

Just eating 3 meals a day and not snacking? Not weird.
Sharing a packet of crisps? Not weird.
Not eating a chocolate bar in one go? Not weird.

Constantly being hungry and feeling scared/unable to ask for a piece of toast? Very weird.

There's a balance. As an adult, you should take responsibility for your over eating and unhealthy choices rather than blaming your parents.

I would say you have a toxic relationship with food (and you're being cruel to OP).

Not allowing kids to snack all the time is fine, if they're getting enough food at meal times. Allowing snacks that are healthy is also fine.

It's completely toxic to serve a child a portion of food and not allow them to listen to their own body about how much they need to eat. Forcing them to finish, or not allowing them more if they're still hungry are equally terrible.

If offered healthy food, children are able to decide how much their bodies need. They have an innate mechanism and will eat the amount of calories they need. We break this natural self-regulation by tightly regulating food, force feeding, or having too many unhealthy options (things our bodies crave even if we're not hungry, like sugar).

@Jasminecandle Your relationship with food was broken by your parents. That's not your fault. You should not have been left to feel hungry all the time. You can fix it though, with therapy. Good luck!

Oh wow OP, I'm sorry you went through this. Your post was an eye opener to me. I just realise that I would never have dared to make myself something to eat outside of meal times. And at meal times the 'men' of the family (i.e. my brother) got the best pieces of meat and the most of whatever was there. Anything that was left over...my brother got, i.e. the last of this or that it was his. Unless he did not want it, then I could have it. I never felt ok to ask for food. I always felt terrible asking for a second helping.

At one point my mother had decided I was only allowed to eat one slice of bread for dinner, because I was at risk of getting fat due to my age!? Looking back at old photo's as a young teen I was NOT getting fat.

I became overweight later because I used food to numb myself and ate in secret.

3 meals a day, no snacks, sweets only as a treat was pretty standard as a child in the 70's.
You definitely did not 'help yourself' to food unless you asked. But in the 70's food prices were high. Stats from that time show people spent nearly 40% of their income on food,
Portions were small and I remember being hungry and being told to wait for dinner in an hour.
Also remember their only being 1 child in my class who was slightly chubby. It was unusual to see a fat child.

OP DID NOT GROW UP IN THE 70s FFS!

Have read the full thread with interest as disordered eating has featured in my life and I'm fascinated by the psychology of it. Knowledge is power and all that, so from my perspective understanding the root causes of an unhealthy relationship with food is the first step to taking charge of it.

Food is often bound up in a whole package of emotional issues often learned in childhood. What the judge posters seem to forget- or are willfully ignoring is that broadly speaking, children have little or no power during their upbringing. Especially in the early years. Even if they want to challenge things as teenagers they may be too fearful to do so.

One PP said that OPs parents may have identified a propensity for over-eating which they sought to control - which to my mind comes close to the archaic concept of original sin and is an appalling mind set.

Research has shown for years that childhood experience and even stress in the womb can have a measurable impact on later life. Why is there so much denigration when someone seeks to understand what has formed and driven them in order to find empowerment and effect change? Those people jumping to tell the OP off for "blaming" her parents are compounding her experience - discounting it entirely and possibly encouraging her to internalise something out of her control.

I read OPs posts as an attempt to work things out and move forward constructively, not an attempt to avoid personal responsibility. It's hard to take adult control of your life in areas where your inner child feels powerless. It takes time to work through.

So FFS step away from the Jordan Peterson or whichever other misunderstood brand of stoicism you've swallowed, and have a little compassion while the OP figures out how to move forward.

Some posters are being ridiculously unhelpful, borderline mean. Three restrictive meals a day physically left you underweight as your photos evidence. This was not normal or healthy. No doubt their controlling and restrictive approach to eating also impacted on your relationship with food. It's good to identify the root cause of an issue but now is the time to break that cycle and make your own healthy patterns.

So sorry to read about your issues.

I had a similar upbringing - not helped by a controlling mother with anorexia. It wasn’t until I got to university that I discovered how much ‘normal’ people ate - 3 meals a day FFS! Obviously I then gained a considerable amount of weight, panicked, felt crap about myself and ended up cycling between anorexia/bulimia myself throughout my twenties.

I’d recommend asking for a referral to a counselling service but there are also programmes (like Noom and others?) that help you lose unwanted weight whilst exploring eating habits. Doing both together might help you battle the parent/control demons and develop a healthier relationship with food.

They 100% caused you to have an unhealthy attitude towards food.
Most won't agree here because Mumsnet is full of defensive boomers of the same generation as your parents!

We have three meals a day, and snacking was considered a very bad habit. I was allowed an after school snack, but it was given to me after school, sitting at the table. We didn't have unrestricted access to food. Dinner portions served up, extra vegetables were always available.

I remember being told that being a bit hungry was normal/a good thing. Never being hungry meant you were over eating. Snacking would 'ruin' my appetite for dinner. I suspect there is something in that!

Similar with my DD. Afterschool snacks were given - the last thing I'd want was a child rummaging through the fridge/cupboards randomly eating.

So it depends on how skinny you were and if it meant you were undernourished.

As an adult you have to sort your relationship with food out. Doesn't matter if your parents gave you sweets and crisps every day, or vegetable sticks. At some point you have to accept responsibility for your eating habits. At the moment we have a massive issue as a society with obesity driven diseases and issues and accept people being much bigger now than historically.

Your food intake was quite tightly controlled. You often went to bed hungry & if you asked for a healthy snack you were told to 'tighten your belt'. Your (male) sibling was treated differently & given milkshakes. Other relatives noticed & tried to 'feed you up' but your Mother intervened here too. Yes, there was something wrong with how food was doled out in your household growing up.

Eating patterns & how they are linked to love / acceptance / place in family are fairly hardwired. But you can become more aware of them & find ways to talk to yourself helpfully so that you feel more in control of what & when you eat.

I have had a similar issue (abusive childhood where food was only safety so I turn to it in times of stress) I am now trying to find other ways to nourish myself.
Good luck to you xx

My initial reaction to your post was of course your parents have contributed to your eating being disordered, I was really shocked when I read the first few posts.

I was born in the 80s too with a sister a few years older. My mum was a single parent and money was scarce but there was always food. I was a picky eater and she made 3 meals a night to accommodate us. We always had supper and I was allowed to help myself to snacks.

My mum and her now partner also have strange views on what is considered diet/good food. They buy low fat versions of food but live on white bread and sugar. When we visit they buy my toddler low fat food as they think it's healthy. I think the diet culture of the 70s has a lot to do with it.

As a parent now I can't let my child go to bed hungry, he's a skinny wee thing as it is and quite picky so often doesn't eat his dinner and no matter how many times I threaten he's getting nothing else if he doesn't eat his dinner he always gets a substantial snack if he's hungry before bed.

Might be worth a read up on transactional analysis. There’s a book called I’m ok, you’re ok or could be others by now I’m sure.

It’s not healthy to underfeed your growing child to the point where they go to bed hungry.

Sorry did you even read her post. Her parents did not stop her eating when she was already full. They didn’t give her enough food so she went to bed hungry. How is that normal? That’s definitely not
”looking after” your child.

Are you letting your kids go to bed hungry like OPs parents? If so, that’s borderline neglect/abuse. That’s not something to be proud of.

NC, just because this feels weird to talk about...

I don't think it's wrong to make kids ask for snacks, as they may not know when tea is, or what has been earmarked for packed lunches/ingredients, or have already had some junk food and parents want them to only snack on fruit for the rest of the day.

But my mum used to use junk food/pop as a passive aggressive weapon, which I know sounds ridiculous but Idk how else to describe it.

Mum would stockpile crisps, chocolate, cans of pop, hide them, and allow herself and one out of four siblings free access. She'd say we had been badly behaved, or were too fat and weren't allowed any, while she and her favoured child would be eating and drinking it in front of us.

We would sometimes track down the stockpile and binge on it while she was out of the house, I guess out of spite? When I started earning my own wage and being able to buy my own food, I could binge a lot more and did become obese at one point, though I am now a healthy weight.

A lot depends on how old you are. If you are 45+ then normal. Look at photos from the 70’s/ 80’s most people were in the skinny side of thin. Even teenagers!

If you are 25 then not normal, as you were brought up in an era where food was cheaper and more affordable. Snacking was common and people were bigger.

If your parents were neglectful, what are you going to do with that information? Reason with yourself next time you over eat that you are doing it to fill an emotional gap? Start to recognise that you use food in that way and change your relationship with food?

Or, will you make no adjustments to your life and blame your parents for your current situation?

It’s not really knowledge that is powerful, it’s what you do with it.

Sounds like you probably needed more food if you were underweight and always hungry - but I think it is normal to have to ask for food and not help yourself, and for parents to limit unhealthy foods (such as only 1 or 2 cakes in a serving which seems reasonable).

As an adult I would not go in to my parent's house and make some food without being offered or asking.

It's possible having a strict diet impacted your habits now your older - also possible it's not the cause but if you need to improve your diet now that is in your control.

3 meals a day sounds fine to me.

But it's a shame you couldn't fill up on a bit of toast or some cereal before bed.

We had 3 meals per day and no snacks too but there simply wasn't the money for any more food. We all grew up thin but healthy and strong as our meals were all healthy.

If you are worried about your weight, you do have a choice to do something about it.

What the OP describes was perfectly normal for me. Breakfast, a snack when I got in from school, dinner around 6pm. When I was a bit older I was allowed to have some toast or cereal as a bedtime snack. I honestly think allowing children to graze on snacks and sweets is more likely to cause eating and weight issues later in life than organised scheduled family meals, surely? So long as the meals themselves are actually sufficiently substantial, healthy and varied, of couse, which it sounds like the OP's meals might not have been.

Snacking, or rather the need to remove snaciking, is the constant factor in weight loss threads.

Totally agree.

I remember that there just wasn't any snack/spare food when I growing up in early 70s. Everything was accounted for, from school packed lunch (like 5 packets of crisps), and tea.

I'd come home from school and my gran would give me a few opal fruits then I had to wait for tea. There was nothing after until breakfast next morning. I don't remember being hungry, it was just the norm.

But absolutely agree that back in the 70s there just weren't any overweight kids in my class.