My SIL is a competitive undereater and it's wearing me down

[OptimismvsRealism]

I don't have weight issues and I don't really care what other people do but it really sucks the fun out of every family social event.

It's part and parcel of her being "the beautiful one" in her youth and now just a pretty ordinary lady in her 40s. Like ok not ugly but who cares. She needs to be the thinnest and it annoys her if other people don't care who is thinnest. She is the only person I know who cares who is the thinnest!

Anyway I know a person should have compassion for eating disorders and I would except she tries to drag me down too.

I’d be unable to refrain from saying “Yeah, yeah… the 90’s rang and want you back. Ahem…. (Pretend cough voice) Peaked in school.”

The answer is to ignore and know it comes from a place of insecurity, I know, it's just so arggg

A very wise psychotherapist once told me (over coffee, not during therapy) "Once you realise that the way people behave towards others is the way they behave towards themselves, you stop worrying too much about what they think/say about you".

I can imagine this is irritating.

I have found with my SIL over the years that we have definitely felt competitive with one another. It usually stems down to me feeling like she doesn't really make an effort to be my friend, it's like her little brother is just her little brother and therefore I'm not someone with friend potential, so because of this I guess I have tried to impress her over the years by dressing nice etc, I wanted to appear like someone she'd want to know etc, but it has backfired on me because I think she'd prefer it if I looked like shit so I wasn't a threat to her or whatever is going on in her head.

Let's face it, SIL relationships are or can be difficult!

My sister is like this - she has decided to be gluten free and vegan and eating with her is a nightmare. She also doesn't drink alcohol and will freely comment on how everyone else is eating too much, one glass of wine is way too much etc. It's boring and I just ignore it, but it really upsets one of my other sisters. And it's given my nieces a very odd attitude towards weight

I know this is different but my MIL will always say very loudly when we are ordering that she couldn't possibly eat a whole portion, she will share with FIL, along with comments about everyone else should do the same etc. Then she ends up eating more than everyone else because she eats everyone's leftovers.

When she next does it look her in the eye and say “I’ll tell you what, how about you concentrate on what you’re eating and stop commenting on what I’m having. Food police are so boring.”

You're not being unreasonable. This was my mum and I ended up with an eating disorder in my teens/twenties. This means I should be empathetic but I'm really not. My twisted view of food ruined some of the best years of my life and I just can't be around this kind of behaviour now. My MIL is like this. Tiny frail woman who survives on dried toast, coffee and 2 cigs a day. Riddled with health issues because she won't eat. And I just ignore it and treat her like the child she is trying to emulate with her eating habits.
The best you can do is ignore and carry on eating.

God my MIL is exactly the same!
I lost my shit over Xmas a couple of years back as she kept up the running commentary on our appetites for 3 long-ass days til she went home and DD12(at the time) asked me to start making her meals a lot smaller as she was worried about putting on ‘Xmas weight’. DH ended up having a word with her as it’s unacceptable.

@SocoBateVira 👏. I might even add how glad I am that I’m secure about my body image and health

Bad manners.

Gosh, I have an aunt who was like this when we were younger. We’d go over for dinner and she’d say things like, “Oh you’ll want big dinners won’t you? I’ll just have a piece of toast, I had a salad at lunchtime so that’ll do me.”

Part of me wonders if her issue was more being a feeder though - her own children are obese (now adults in their 40s and 50s but they’ve been like this since they were teens). As much as she would make comments about how little she ate and how much we’d eat, she would still always find more food to give us (while refusing to eat any of it herself).

Well done for saying something! Did she stop after you said that?

This reminds me of my MIL.

She isn't a competitive under eater but she assumes skinny women are.

She'll always make a point, when she's plating up- or even when someone else is plating up- to give skinnier women a tiny portion saying ' this is probably too much for you' .. say if I plate up for skinny cousin - she'll say to skinny cousin ' this will be too much for you '. If she plates up and accidentally gives a normal sized portion- she'll be like - ' no that's too much for you '.

The men always get big portions of course and no comments.

Oh Christmas is amazing for this bullshit.

' oh didn't we all eat a lot ' ' all we do is eat '...

Just fucking eat as much as you like and shut the fuck up about it. It's all over the media as well.

Yes, Christmas is a time for celebration - why do we need to make a massive deal out of our ' over ' indulgence at Christmas. It's everywhere. And then of course January starts and it's all about ' working off that Christmas over indulgence '.

It's so fucking boring. How about everyone just eats what they like and doesn't need to comment on it constantly ? It makes me dread Christmas.

I saw a phrase on here a while back; Performative Daintiness.

Absolutely sums up a lot of the family members mentioned here!

Really who cares if she has an ED or not. Why does she get to make everyone else feel bad and hide behind her 'issues'. I wouldn't have patience for this and would call her out on it.

Sorry my sympathy for sufferers of EDs diminishes when adult women try to drag teens into it.

Mil does this sometimes comments on how much our teen girls are eating! Just awful when everyone normal is so careful with this age group. Not one off comments but in and in. Both ours slim and healthy eaters. Dd2 actually said “are you trying fat shame me granny?”. I’m normally hot on manners to older people but mil asked for that. She was left spluttering.

I'm getting the impression anybody thinking you're being nasty has never experienced this. My mum and dad will barely eat, both were quite underweight when they were younger, my dad being skinny and my mum being so underweight she couldn't fall pregnant until she gained a stone. We never ate breakfast and had shitty dinners at whatever time they felt like it, dwindling to barely ever as teens and we fended for ourselves. They fed me and my brother with their own eating habits, which were sparse and picky, barely any veg as my dad would cook and he doesn't eat them. Imagine their surprise when they had two underweight teenagers, who had no self regulation of if and when we should eat because we just didn't take hunger pains as the cue to then eat. I've always loved food but didn't eat enough, and I've always got "your so greedy!" "You'll eat anything" "that portion is HUGE, I couldn't eat that!!!" From my mum particularly but my dad too. I'm talking when I was 7.5 stone and 5,3,still getting those comments. My mum will literally have like 6 pieces of pasta and a leaf of lettuce and then eat half, then plow her way through a cheesecake, and ask me how I can put away sooo much food, like a piece of salmon with new potatoes and garlic mushrooms etc. a healthy plate.

Ever since I gave birth I've got the portion talk, whenever I've lost weight from barely eating in an unhealthy weight, I without fail ALWAYS get ",you look great, have you lost weight?" I've told them I don't care and don't speak to me about my weight but it continues. My mum's sister is the same way. You'd think having one kid (my brother) who is an extremely underweight likely anorexic (grown man not child anymore) and the other who has gained weight pretty much only due to having a baby but previously being underweight would point you towards your own parenting techniques, but no...they completely deny our terrible eating habits have anything to do with them.

Basically, I get it. Some people are obsessed with skinny and thin and not eating and it's fucking annoying. It's worth occasionally piping up and putting them in their place with firm and strong true words they can't deny, shock them into silence, and sometimes you'll get a little while of peace and quiet. Otherwise it's barely worth the energy to bring it up to be honest. I think when you've got by being the "skinny" one and getting it as a compliment in your younger days it sticks as some kind of ideology where it's the "thing" you can't shut up about as if they're the master of thin. So annoying but we musteth go on

I love this! You’re raising strong women that won’t take any crap and you should be very proud!

She doesn't have an eating disorder; she's a bitch. People suffering from ED tend to fade into the background so no one twigs that they're starving themsrlves. This is pure aggression.

When she pipes up next, return fire. Find her underbelly and pepperspray it. Learn the language of therapy and use it. Compassionately.

This is not about the food, it's about putting herself above everyone else. Time to knock her off her high horse. If you use ridicule, make sure it's implied. And if she can't possibly eat them more for the rest of you.

You'll feel much happier when you fight back.

She sounds like a crashing bore. Don't give her the attention she obviously craves and knows no other way of getting.

My aunt is a performative undereater and if we visited her as a family we used to take snacks and water with us to have on the way home in the car afterwards. She'd prepare 1 small chicken for 4 adults and 4 children - so 1 small slice each with one roast potato, a couple of carrot rings and a teaspoon of peas all covered in WATERY GRAVY! 🤮 Then my uncle would complain there was no chicken left for their lunch the next day! If they came to us all their family (except her) would eat everything in sight and just about lick the plates clean! Never brought so much as a bottle of wine with them. She used to sit at our table muttering under her breath about how it was too much. Years of performative undereating have affected her teeth and heart and she's very frail nowadays.

To be fair I haven’t. Not really anyway, my parents have commented when I was heavier which felt horrible and was out of order. But I said so, got an apology and it’s not been repeated…

that being said, I wasn’t aware the OPs SIL was also making snide comments. I just responded to the OP.

I think it’s awful to comment on anyone’s appetite whilst eating (or at all) but I couldn’t see what the SIL had done apart from watch her own food consumption.

@Gingernaut it must be awful to be on the receiving end of those behaviours, agreed. Agreed

Write down in a notebook all the phrases she comes out with.

Then when she says one get the notebook out and give it a tick, then look her in the eye and ask if it's worth putting her score card away?

After a comment 'SIL, you sound so insecure!!'. Then change topic