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!

I’m also a 1972 baby

let’s face it - in the 80s the only diet good was Ryvita and cottage cheese was it not 🤣

They never spoke directly to me as a child but my mother ate sparrow sized portions and was always on a diet so it was just an assumption that women were supposed to be thin. Her magazines were always full of articles about slimming. I had very disordered eating as a teen and my parents didn't notice.

let’s face it - in the 80s the only diet good was Ryvita and cottage cheese was it not

Can remember my gran eating that and she's been gone for 40 years.

She didn't have cottage cheese, just a bucket tonne of butter!! 😁

Both parents. I was born in the late 70s so mid to late 90s I had a lot of criticism over my weight.

Mum ate Ryvitas and drank coffee with sweetener in it. She would go to slimming clubs. She went veggie in the 90s saying she didn't like modern farming methods but I think it was because she'd hoped to save calories. There was a lot of vegetarian convenience foods (Mum never could be bothered to cook from scratch) and beans on a jacket potato. She would comment constantly on my bottom and thighs from the age of 13.

My Dad comes from a family of larger women which is probably where I get my "sturdiness" from. He would also criticise his sister, my cousin, even his mum, my Nan, when she was alive.

I used to go to aerobics and swimming classes and dancing classes to try and keep the weight off but I never got the results they desired so would give up. Even now, when I go "home", my parents eat crap food and never have treats in the cupboard.

My mum comments on my 18 year old now. I stop her. I say we find value more in our achievements and our kindness to others than we do in our physical appearance. I do have bathroom scales at home but they are hidden from view. I have never based my daughter's worth on her weight. My mum still shoots barbs at me but I tell her not to. I say I'm not going to listen to that . She gets huffy but I don't care.

I was born in 71 - most of us were slim when younger except one sister - who was frequently called all sorts of horrible names by my siblings - and the name calling was never really discouraged - like you could shame someone into being slim.
Being slim was incredibly important to my mother and she was never afraid to make comments about your size when you came home after being away for some time - even to say glad to see you haven't got fat - even at 88 lying in bed in a hospital weighing 6 stone - she was conscious of her weight. Anytime someone lost weight it was a source of joy and being size 12 was fat - you needed to be an 8 to have hit the jackpot. The worst thing in the world was to be overweight.

Both featured heavily in my mother's diet.

And "low fat spread" which was made with goodness knows what. Everything was low fat, irrespective of taste. Mum has very odd ideas about eating and diet and now as she has got older it's a constant commentary of "so much food" and "I could never eat ALL THAT" and portion size and so on.

DH's mother is a similar age and has had an eating disorder as long as I've known here, nobody comes right out and says she does but she so has - she regularly "forgets" to eat, nibbles on carrot sticks because she's "not hungry". When I knew her first 30 years ago she was working as a nurse and doing shifts and it was easy for her to say she'd eaten already at work.

I hear you - like your mum I don’t cook enough from scratch and plan to change that.

However you say your parents eat crap good with no treats in the cupboard - but aren’t treats especially crap food ?

Also a 60s kid. Mum put sweetex in my tea from 8yo. Mum always on a diet having been called Fatty Patty in the 1930s.
When my brother had psychotic moments I was locked in a room with food for company.
Result is that I have had terribly disordered eating all my life.
Your lived experience is not everyone's lived experience. I'm glad yours was good.

You're correct. Size 16 was only available in "Outsize" stores.

Weight was never mentioned and no-one in our family ever dieted. We were all slim, though.

Ditto. My Dad was overweight but not obese. He loved his food and my Mum was a good cook. My brother and I were normal weight, I think - not skinny, but healthy and active. Mum was probably slightly overweight in her middle years but if that bothered her she never mentioned it. I feel very fortunate, reading others' experiences. (Born 1961.)

I don't think this is a thing of the times at all - I still have friends who mention calories and their weight all the time in front of their children. I don't think it's a 70s/80s thing at all, it still goes on.
Most of our mums were thinner as people were generally much thinner then - this isn't a bad thing! Most people are way too fat now - it's a fact, whether you like if or not!
My mum never mentioned her weight at all - as a consequence my siblings and I are all slim and healthy, no problems at all with food / eating and we're all on the leaner side of normal. Our children are all the same too so we have carried this on to the next generation. I have never understood diets / weight (don't own scales, never have) - just eat healthy food, so some exercise, stop when you're full, use your brain and don't eat massive muffins / Frappuccino's. If you grow up in a household like this, you tend to be the same imo.

I also remember larger sizes costing a little more than regular, although of course petite sizes weren't cheaper.

70s child. I don't remember weight being mentioned though my dad was overweight before I was born but lost weight & maintained his fitness & a balanced, sensible diet right up until he died aged 81. My mum had a great figure, curvy but slim. No food was off limits as a child, I'd frequently scoff packet after packet of crisps & I wasn't much of a lover of anything colourful. But I've luckily always been slim & now eat a very balanced diet & exercise every day. My brother on the other hand is nearly 30 st has a food addiction

Born in the 70s, got put on a diet by a nutritionist at 7 (was just puppy fat, as far as i can see from photos)

Totally disordered eating now, binge eating, hiding food and wrappers and disposing of them in a street bin and so on...

As a child I was made to clear my plate at every meal, which has lead to a life of eating beyond the point that I’m full. As a teen my mum would tell me I was getting fat (I wasn’t) and then accuse me of having an eating disorder, despite me eating 3 meals a day and staying the same size/weight, I think it was wishful thinking on her part.

Constantly.mum has been on a diet for my entire life, she's now 70. She's obsessed with 'being good', she'll go out for a meal and have the most miserable meal, no dressing or sauce in a salad for example, she eats low fat everything. But then will have almighty binges and have whole weeks where she just eats rubbish. My dad is the same. They are obsessed. They are both overweight, not hugely. They also both wear terrible ill fitting clothes, scrimp on everything, mum never gets her hair done, her feet are so dry they crack and bleed and she won't see a chiropodist. It's as if the only thing that matters is being thinner. To hell with any kind of self care.

She's also very bitter and nasty about people who are 'lucky' enough to be slim. She'll comment on people who are fat. She'll be horrible about larger women who wear bikinis on holiday or clothing that emphasises their shape. I do believe she has spent her entire life miserable about her looks and her size. I remember as a child my sister was always bigger than me and at 14/15 she went to slimming world with her. My aunt said if she lost a stone she wound buy her an outfit and shoes as a reward- sister didn't lose the weight and did not get the outfit.

Both my sister and I have food and body image issues. I have a terrible relationship with food. I have spent 25 years unhappily dieting and have no idea now what to eat or when what I look like. I am convinced this is largely down to mum and her warped relationship with food.

'72 baby. It wasn't mentioned much. It was mentioned enough that I knew Mum had an idea that any dieting teen would end up anorexic, so did not encourage it with us.

There was a focus on healthy balanced meals with sufficient vitamins and minerals, as if we were all about to succumb to scurvy or beri-beri. We were on a farm,most cooking was from fresh - lots of fresh, unpasteurised milk, lots of different fresh veg, often home-grown. Also some emphasis on exercise, making sure we went to swimming club etc.

There was definitely a sense that diet was important, but in terms of nutrition rather than fat.

@Jumell My point about the snacks is, my mum will only spend about £30 a week on food, mostly salad and cheese, and not have anything that invokes pleasure in food, like the odd biscuit or anything. She doesn't even buy grapes because she says they are full of sugar. (They are, but it's not the refined sort). So she puts in the minimum effort and bans herself and dad from anything "bad". It's disordered eating, in my opinion.

I'm 50 and my mum talked about her weight all the time. I remembered her dieting because of fear of gaining weight. She's small but flabby which I alwauys thought was due to lack of exercise. My mum never mentioned my weight though but I was (and still am) naturally very skinny.

Born 79. My mum was always on a diet of some sort, grapefruit, egg, cabbage, weight watchers, rosemary Conley.

My eating habits are awful.

I think its a bit of a modern myth that only recently is weight a topic. People have discussed weight for centuries, how to lose it, how not to be corpulent, cutting out bread and potatoes was a big thing in the 1700s.

I grew up with a parent always on a diet, I was a fat child so was put on a diet. This was on the 70s, no snacks or treats or junk food because thats not how we ate, bar the odd bit of Beejam Mousse or vesta ready meals, everything wholemeal and home cooked.

And all my aunts and nan etc talked about cabbage water in the 20s when they were young, thats how you kept slim etc etc.

Its nothing new. Its not that illogical either because humans shouldnt be overweight and unfortunately the way that is manifest is looking at someones intake.

I mean the 1920s

70s kid here and my mother was constantly on a diet. But then she has always been very large and struggled with her weight. Although I never saw her eat junk food or drink much alcohol (everything was home cooked and usually home grown and hunted or fished).
I just think maybe she wasnt quite active enough and eating few enough calories for her small height....and now she is older she doesnt really care!😄

I was lucky though. My family was always brutally honest with each other but nobody was ever judged for their appearance or choices.