1970's/80's kids... how much did your parent/s talk about weight?

[Auberg]

I've lost some weight and my family back home (US) will see me at Christmas for the first time since losing around 3 stone. I'm going to message ahead and ask them NOT to bang on about it in front of my kids.

The fact that I'm doing this has made me ponder my childhood and the obsession with weight that my mom had, and still has. Literally every day there would be some mention of weight - usually that my mom felt fat/looked fat/needed to lose weight (she has never been above a size 10 UK). The fridge was stuffed with fat free everything and the bookcase was jammed with diet, low calorie cookbooks and exercise books.

I have three siblings - one has had disordered eating, one was obese, then dieted back to a healthy weight, and I've also been almost obese and anorexic at different points in my life.

Whenever I see my mom, she ALWAYS talks about weight. Always refusing food because she's got fat (right now, she's tiny, no more than a size 6/8 UK), 'letting' herself have a single bite of a cookie etc. I don't think I've ever had an adult conversation with her that didn't at some point go to her being fat/needing to lose weight. I was a little cross with her for telling my son that he looked wonderful after losing some weight (he wasn't particularly big before), and then she gets ratty because she was 'complimenting him' on being slim.

She's never called me fat - at my largest, she was always telling me how I had a beautiful 'voluptuous' figure: at my thinnest, she would make sarcastic comments about how I was 'being funny' about eating anything sweet and trying to goad me into eating more.

At home, we never talk about weight in relation to appearance to our kids, but if it comes up, we talk about the relationship between healthy weight and overall health. It always feels stressful seeing my mom and brothers because of how much they'll all be talking about weight and being slim etc around the kids.

I've started dreading seeing my family because of all this. Writing it down, it sounds fairly extreme, and I know my mom has probably had an eating disorder of some kind for decades, but was some of this just how things were for loads of people?

We're not particularly close btw - we're civilised and sort of socially affectionate - but we're not each other's best friend, so to speak.

Lord, that was long! Sorry!

Similar experience here; DM always has crackers or similar for dinner and cooked for us all. She’s def had some sort of eating disorder for years/ decades - admitted many years ago that this is the case but now still barely eats anything and is frankly wasting away.
It’s always quite difficult now eating around her as comments are made about how full she is after a couple of forkfuls / there’s enough to feed an army type stuff even if it’s just simple food. It’s v tiring tbh!!

ALL THE TIME.

Mum was obsessed with weight (died a couple of years ago). Very disordered eating. She was tiny but always thought she was fat. "I'm enormous" or "my stomach is disgusting" were often muttered self criticisms. Considering she was underweight and v skinny, and I am a little overweight/upper end healthy weight range, she must have seen me as infinitely bigger than 'enormous' and far more disgusting.

I had eating disorder (bulimia) for over 10 years as a teen/early twenties. I'm ok now but have never ever been happy with my weight. It's a daily preoccupation and I blame my mum (bless her) 100% ! It's not really her fault though. She had her own demons.

But yes, I was born 70s. Mum idolised twiggy. Thin was feminine and pretty in her eyes. 'normal weight' was fat, and anything over that was "disgusting".

It’s always quite difficult now eating around her as comments are made about how full she is after a couple of forkfuls / there’s enough to feed an army type stuff even if it’s just simple food.

I absolutely relate. My mum did exactly this.

All the time.

80s/90s kid, born 82.

Dad to Mum: you stupid fat bitch!

Mum to us: I know I'm too fat and blobby

Dad to me once I got chubby in my teens: you probably don't realise this but you're getting ugly...nice face, pity about the bit from waist down...stupid fat bitch. You're a disgusting fat slut

Never. We were odd though. Ate quite healthily, even down to wholemeal pizza and treacle tart. We're all healthy weights.

My gran was always on a diet though. Weightwatchers and Hermeseters in her tea.

60s kid here. Never. It wasn't a thing. No one I knew or anyone at school was overweight, it was just so rare.
My parents were slim, as were grandparents, siblings. Never heard of anyone dieting.

We also ate healthily. Wholemeal everything and all home baked etc.

Mum still obsessed with weight 😂

I still remember when I was about 12, swimming at the beach and she praised me for having lost my puppy fat. On the face of it a positive comment but of course it just made me insecure. I didn't realise how toxic it was until my husband pointed it out.

I will never let her speak that way in front of my daughter.

Born in the 80s. Honestly, no one really ever mentioned it. We did have scales in the house though, which I don’t now, but that’s the only difference.

My mum and her sister were constantly on a diet. I remember mum had a diary and wrote down the calorific value of everything she ate. She also at one point came in from work and started exercising. She had these band things ( early resistant bands I suppose.) To this day she will refuse food saying she doesn't want to put weight on. She is tiny, maybe a size 6-8.
I think there was a lot more pressure on people to be thin in the past. I could count on one hand the number of peers I had who were overweight. Even then you hardly saw any young people who were obese, now I see many obese people.
I dieted too as a teenager. I did the diet with mum where you ate cottage cheese and a few crisp breads. Rivitas were a thing as was eating special K. Their advert specifically showed a tape measure around a woman’s waist. I still remember eating half a grapefruit as a meal specifically because it was supposed to burn up fat and speed up your metabolism. I was still at school I think. Yet I always thought of myself as big, never skinny enough. I went through puberty and wasn’t as skinny as some of my peers who were still like beanpoles. I didn’t have any fat on me, but I had grown hips and breasts and was tall and absolutely hated it.
Im sure some clothes shops didn’t even sell size 16 clothes, and a size 16 then was much smaller than it is now.
Even now mum won’t hesitate to call someone big or even fat. It was common language at the time.

Oh my God so much. My dad was obese, my mum was a gym bunny and everything around food was so tense.

The last night before I left to go to university, we got a celebratory Indian takeaway and I ate a reasonable amount of food. My mum looked me up and down and went "you know, if you lost a couple of stone you could be really beautiful, like a Topshop model".

I was a size 10/12 at the time.

Same here. Weight wasn't discussed. The first I remember was the grapefruit diet in the late 1970s/early 80s, which I went on because I put on weight after going on the Pill.

Born 1970. They didn’t at all. Literally no-one was fat. The only fat people I knew of was Big Daddy off the wrestling and Buster Bloodvessel from Bad Manners - both of who were sort of “comedy fat”. Oh and the Roly Polys. In real life I didn’t know anyone who was fat. You were more likely to be pestered by adults for not eating enough than too much.

You are not alone - puppy fat anyone? I remember once being sick off school with a severe kidney infection and mother asking the doctor on his housecall to speak to me about my weight. I was 14. Mother was on a permanent diet. There was a lot of shredded raw cabbage involved.

Went on to be bulimic, then anorexic, then just disordered eating with binge eating in there too.

My mother was a ballerina. She has never been more than 8st 7lb. Under 8st now. Very dainty though. I do not share her build and have to keep on top of it to keep the weight under overweight.

Mother always ate a reasonable dinner and had good portions and a good selection. However, she never ate at breakfast or lunch. She was shocking for picking over my feed "eat somehow thus, somehow that". I recall not eating as a child because it was something I could control. I lived on the edge of an eating disorder in my 20s. Loved food from my 30s on.

Born 1960.

A lot! Even to this day my mother will comment on weight within a few minutes of seeing me (we see each other once a year if that). Or define others if they are beautiful based on their weight🤦🏻‍♀️

Oh gosh yes I can relate. The F Plan diet, the Scarsdale diet, being served ryvita and cottage cheese for lunch every day else god forbid I'd end up looking my dad's mum (who was sturdy but not obese). Being promised a pair of leather trousers (it was the 80s, don't judge!) if I lost weight. My mum would sit there with a single potato and the thinnest slice of pie telling me, "Your eyes are bigger than your belly" (never fully understood this one) or that I ate "two taters more than a pig". Having to applaud the fact that she could still get into a pair of hotpants from 1972. Watching her joy at losing 5lbs in a week to fit into a designer dress she'd rented for a fancy ball. The list is endless, and needless to say, 40 years on I am still working hard to heal my relationship with food. Even now, we are invited to praise her for having one small square of chocolate a day, 'as a treat', because it's all she could possibly manage. Utter madness.

Mum worried continually when I was a kid that I was underweight...I was but I was extremely active and was a picky eater. I ate enough but burnt it off.
Good food always available and treats constantly there...cakes, biscuits etc. So when I stopped running around like a nutter when I got older I put on weight. When i.was 18 and discovered beer (plus mum died when I was 17 and was unwell so I was cooking for myself..fry it or chip shop)

I finally lost it after 36 years 2 years ago after going on holiday in January and returning to a wardrobe full of clothes that didn't fit.

Also everything was cooked from scratch. My gran made everything. Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, even pickled our own onions! If you wanted to eat nuts they came in thick, unbreakable shells. We had nutcrackers but they could not get through a walnut shell. No wonder we were thin, it was too much trouble to eat, nothing like it is now.

Hardly ever.

There were 7 of us and we are all slim, so maybe that had something to do with it, I don't know?

But I don't really remember my parents even talking about weight in general.

That is absolutely dreadful. Hope you’ve recovered from that toxicity 💐

Hermeseters! Loved those little clicky tins, that's a blast from the past.
My mum, was tiny, I was not. My whole family was, I spent years thinking I was adopted until I discovered in my 20s I had PCOS. I was on the grapefruit diet, the F Plan diet, calorie controlled, all before my teens. But it was the time of "If you can pinch more than an inch" and the desirable statistics being 34-24-34. I was an old money 14/16, which made me enormous in comparison to pretty much everyone. I don't blame my mum in the slightest, we had a wonderful relationship and she only ever had my best interests at heart.

Never, thank goodness, but I think my mum was a bit unusual. She's never worn make up either. A good example to us I think.

80s child here,

my mum has been slim her whole life size 6-8 uk

she is often talking about being too slim and wanting to put weight on.

throughout my childhood and to this day, she would make little passive aggressive comments around my eating. Eg eating some toast at 9am, “oh I don’t know how you can eat so early”

have a normal amount of lunch like a sandwich or something, then feel hungry for dinner later, “oh I can’t eat dinner I’m still full from lunch”

this would be during my childhood but also when I go to visit as an adult!

She doesn’t eat breakfast or lunch, and would eat a small dinner. But drinks lots of tea and smokes a lot of cigarettes!

I was slim throughout my childhood (as i barely ate!) and then rapidly put on weight when I moved out at 17. Consequently I have battled my weight my entire adult life and catch myself constantly thinking things that sounds like my mothers voice.

I'm working hard to not pass this onto DS age 4

edited to add - this thread is interesting that there are others with similar childhood experiences of various sorts of disorder around eating

All the bloody time.

70s kid. Weight weight was never mentioned but we were all slim....no snacking, smaller portions, not much fuss made around food and we were pretty active.