AIBU to think (some) overweight people feel the need to comment on portion sizes

[Bernadinetta]

AIBU to think that (some) overweight people feel the need to comment on portion sizes to overcompensate for the fact they’re imagining people are looking at their food and thinking “well no wonder she’s fat”, even if they’re doing it subconsciously.

Have just spent a weekend away with my parents, I see them often as they look after my kids after school two days a week, but rarely spend mealtimes etc with them. DM isn’t obese but is on the overweight side. Every single meal out was full of comments such as:
”Oh wow, that’s huge isn’t it!”
”We didn’t really need one each of these, we could’ve just shared couldn’t we?!”
”Its lovely but it’s just soo much bread” (proceeds to eat sandwich open-faced without top slice of bread)
”We’re going to sink like stones in the pool now!” (there was a pool where we were staying)

And so on, multiple comments every meal. I feel like slimmer people probably get their food, if the portion is too big they eat what they want and leave the rest, no need for the whole performance. I feel like bigger people feel the need to make the comments to try and deflect. Or is it a generational thing? Or is it just my DM?

Whether you can manage the portion or not, why the need to constantly comment on it? If you can’t manage the portion, fine just leave it. I wouldn’t even have noticed then, to be honest.

I was on holiday too, sitting there trying to enjoy my meals and the comments of how huge the portion was and how I was going to sink in the pool afterwards and how I should’ve only eaten half etc were making me feel bad about what I was eating and that I should stop eating before I had finished.

This is probably true actually

Yes, I see this now, definitely true.

I have a BMI of 20 and I comment on my food a lot. I also comment on other such mundane topics as the weather, what I'm watching on netflix, my commute, weekend plans, how nice it is to see daffodils, what sort of mood my dog's in, the baftas and football.

I mean, honestly. It's just passing comment. In a time when childhood malnutrition and starvation are rocketing, I count myself lucky that food is so plentifully available to me that I can regard it as a mundanity and leave lefttovers at the end of a meal.

Does she speak like this about food and portion size in front of your children?

It's not a generational thing or a fat people thing. It's an eating disorder thing. (I have had an eating disorder myself many years ago). When you have an eating disorder you're preoccupied with constant food calculations and considerations (is xyz OK? Can I eat abc?).

Side note - this is why I'm personally against lots of complicated rules-based diets, you know the ones I mean "take one protein from healthy list A" etc. It can make some people obsess

I wonder why an overweight person who society generally views as a greedy so-and-so, and who probably feels the judgment of people around them every time they eat in public (even if it’s imagined) might feel the need to do this…

Hmmm, that’s a real head scratcher, op 🤔

My mum is like this too and constantly says 'ooh I couldn't eat all that' the half an hour later snacks on chocolate or pastries.

She told me I was 'well built' when I was 8 and was constantly dieting but making it performative, so everyone knew she was dieting. I ended up with massively disordered eating as a result.

I understand what you mean, op. It's the performative aspect of it that's annoying.

It's like - if you don't want to eat everything, just don't eat everything, but you don't need to make a big thing of it'

But I don't think it's just people who are overweight who do it, it's people with a complicated relationship with food that do it.

Well yeah but that’s what I’m saying- all the comments actually draw more attention to what they’re eating (or not eating).

There is also a culture of celebrating massive plates of food, especially in pubs doing pub grub / Sunday lunches etc. plates come out with huge portions of potatoes, chips, Yorkshire, everyone goes ‘whooooar look at that’ and then makes comments about sinking in pools, bursting out of clothes, this would feed the 50000’ etc , including self deprecating v British comments about their own weight… and then demolish the lot. Or not, depending.

But the culture is celebrating quantity not quality.

Great idea for a thread. Let's bash fat people and older people.

<slow hand clap>

Your problem is your mother.

Now why are the rest of us fatties in it?!

A catchphrase in our house comes from when we took my late mum away to a holiday cottage. We only cooked meals we knew she would like and eat and one day got some very good quality sausages to have with mash and veg (gravy too, obviously).

We eat 'family style' and put the food in dishes for everyone to serve themselves. Mum took a sausage and some veg, etc and when she'd eaten this, I offered her the sausages again. She replied "Oh, I think one is MORE than enough, don't you?"

One feckin' sausage! Growing up, she ALWAYS gave us two bloody sausages each!

So what can I do to help her?

PS I fluctuate between overweight/normal weight all the time, bit of a yo-yo dieter, not happy with my own weight. But I don’t feel the need to constantly comment on how much myself or anyone else at the table is eating.

I think it's a generational thing. My MIL does this, regardless of the portion size - it can be a perfectly normal, even small, portion but she'll still tell everyone how huge it is.

She's mid-70s, constantly on a diet, not overweight.

It’s a defensive thing.

I’m overweight, I’ve got a massive plate of food in front of me that people are no doubt thinking ‘look at that greedy cow with all that food - no wonder they’re so fat’.

So you get in there early to acknowledge how much food is there and that you’re not going to eat it all. It’s a defence against what you perceive people are thinking about you.

That’s what I was thinking, I do think that’s why DM does it. I just want to say to her “look mum it’s fine, eat what you want, leave what you want, just enjoy it”.
I do also wonder whether she really did want to eat both slices of bread on the sandwich, or finish off every plate but denied herself to sort of “prove” the point of what she was saying that it was too much.

I have also noticed lots of my older family members get very funny about food and portion sizes as they got older. So it may just be age?

I'm fat, so if I'm served a huge portion am I not allowed to comment on it

I used to do something similar when I had a problem with alcohol.

Someone would give me a 250ml glass of wine & I’d exclaim, ‘Gosh, that’s a big glass!’
When actually I always ordered large glasses like that.

How? How is it an age thing? What do you think happens to older people that makes them do this?

Clue: nothing. It's nothing to do with age or the woman's generation.

@Bernadinetta I'd call her out on it. I'd ask her why she does this - I might also point out that she's the overweight one - depending on how cruel that would be!

But unless you point out to her how hurtful and unnecessary it is, she's not going to stop.

Are you new here op? You must have seen some of the many many threads posted by skinny (so they say) competitive undereaters on here about massive portions everywhere and how one meal in a pub would feed their whole family?

You can't generalise about this stuff. People of all sizes say this. The only commonality I've noticed is they're normally the more attention-seeking people in the group. Could just be my perception though.

I find more really slim people do this, than fat. It shames the people around them who are enjoying their food. When you’re in a restaurant, you should really button it and let others get on with their dinner.

Sorry, that was meant to be a general post, not a response to the comment by SpudleyLass! 😊