To think my husband, son and daughter shouldn't have 'staged an intervention'?

[SoniaSwanners]

Last night, my husband, adult son and adult daughter and I were all in our car and my son saw a small pizza box under one of the seats. I'd had a pizza the day before, while on my own - as a treat. My son said, 'Mum, you've got to start eating more healthily, we all want you to live as long as possible and it's not good for your health to eat junk food', and there then followed an hour and a half of husband, son and daughter all saying:

• I'm overweight
• I should be worried about becoming Type 2 diabetic
• I should be worried about my blood pressure
• I keep saying I need to lose weight and eat healthily and then I don't do it
• I keep saying I want to treat myself occasionally, but then treat myself whenever I feel like it.
• It's easy to eat healthily - you just make sensible choices; what's so hard about it?
• I shouldn't make excuses or deflect - I should just do it and sort myself out.
• they're only going on at me about it because they care about me.

Now, all of this is maybe true. I have massive willpower in every other area of my life, but not in relation to food. I have always eaten too much and not as healthily as I should have. However...

• I swim every single day if I can, for an hour, which is very good exercise.
• I eat healthily (cooked from scratch meals, very healthy) most of the time
• my 'vices' are: lack of portion control, tending to finish off leftovers, and too many takeaways/meals out.

I felt very attacked and berated and kind of assaulted from all sides when they spent 90 minutes hectoring me about it last night - and felt a bit scared when they said, 'It's easy - just make different choices', because it might be easy for others, but it's decidedly not easy for me, psychologically - which is why I've never done it properly before.

Am I being unreasonable, and are they just trying to help me/ensure I live for as long as possible? Or is there something off/wrong about suddenly laying into someone over their weight/eating habits?

okay apologies i missed that (oops lol)
i mean i guess so, i’m not sure how old they are exactly which makes a difference but it still isn’t really fair for them to all gang up on her!

i hardly think 2 stone overweight is morbidly obese and/or life-threatening!

either way, OP, i would’ve shut this down within the first 5 minutes
if you can go about your day easily and you feel good, then that’s all that matters
it’s just odd they all decided to do it together! unless you’re saying ‘2 stone’ but you actually mean 5-6 stone!

everyone could always do with eating a bit better/help with portion control
i know i do!

No mention of asking for weight loss advice. Op posted about the 90 min laying into her in the car, it’s that which she is asking about. Not about diets, jabs, exercise regimes etc etc.

The rest is repeating what I have already said.

They shouldn't have behaved like this, but it doesn't sound planned, so it was not an intervention.

Two stone overweight is quite big, and they are perhaps worried for you. If you think this is the case explain to them that you felt ridiculed, nagged and bullied. Insist they let you speak and insist they hear YOU this time. Tell them if it was as easy as "making other choices" you would have already done so. Ask them to assist you in eating healthily - and have a list of ways ready they can agree to.

If they regularly nag or undermine you, if there is a "moan at/laugh at" mum dynamic, that's a whole different story.

Are you implying that because I show empathy to a woman being bullied by her family that it must be because I too have a weight problem?

No, no nerves have been hit here.
I am 5 Kg under my ideal weight and no interventions have been aimed at me.

Not everyone has to have the same problem as a person being bullied to feel empathy.

I didn't give her any advice on weightloss. Or diets, jabs, exercise regimes etc etc.

Just pointed out that she has been a little sketchy with the facts.

Totally agree with this.

As someone who has had anorexia (and who's brain always goes to that as a safe place) the absolute WORST thing my family did was tell me to eat more.

That it was easy to not be anorexic, all I had to do was have a few decent dinners.

That I wanted to be anorexic if I couldnt just eat more.

All it did was make me focus on food more and so eat less. And it works the other way. This appalling bullying of the OP means that she is more likely to look for comfort from the only fucking thing in her life that isnt judging her which is food. Personally @SoniaSwanners I would be losing my shit at them. Asking how fucking dare they think that they have the right to bully and hector you like that. Asking if they are so fucking perfect that they think that they can judge me and my choices. Telling them that pointing out their abuse of alcohol is not "deflecting", its actually a valid comparison as both choices have a negative effect on the body and mind and that their refusal to see that is more concerning than your acknowledged struggle with food.

Bunch of cunts. For a start, you dont cook for any of them again, ever. They want to judge your food intake? Fine, then they feed themselves.

YABU. I’m in the same boat as your children. My entire life I have watched my mum try diet after diet. She has never kept off any weight she loses. She is pre diabetic and nearly had a stroke last year. She ALWAYS says how she is going to change especially for the sake of the grandchildren. TBH I’m bloody sick to death of her lack of willpower and selfishness and refuse to humour her delusion that she will ever lose weight. Your family sound worried and exasperated

Wow, some daughter you are. Presumably you would have no sympathy if your child developed anorexia and would be pissed off with her lack of willpower and selfishness by refusing to eat more?

Eating disorders work both ways you know.

ETA a person cannot "nearly have a stroke". A TIA is a different thing and yes it is a warning of potential future issues, but there is no such thing as an nearly stroke.

I don't think this is the end of the world if this was a meal rather than a treat between meals, especially if it was after an hour of strenuous exercise. Obviously it's not the healthiest but not the end of the world.

What I would say though is that swimming always leaves me starving so if this was something you did straight after swimming then i would make sure you always have something available to eat afterwards so you're not tempted to have a pizza again for a good while.

I think it's more important to look at your diet overall though and see what you can swap in to just make it healthier and more filling - swapping all white carbs for wholemeal for example, eating plenty of veg and upping your protein.

Your kids are worried about you and i would hate to be a worry to my kids so that would really encourage me to start making changes.

I don't think two stone overweight, offset by the vigorous exercise is a massive concern.

It's the disordered eating they don't like, not the unhealthy effects.

Tell them to stick their faux concern up their arse.

Yeah I think it’s weird eating a pizza in a car on your own. It’s like secret eating and you hid the box under the seat, but then forgot how it was there. Not sure how you forgot though it must have stunk to high heaven.

It is almost certainly NOT obese category unless the OP is quite short in height. At 5 foot 4lbs it would still only be in the overweight category - which many people are

I'm guessing the OP didn't want her family to find it in their bin. You don't tuck a pizza box under a car seat generally, do you? You put it on the seat then throw it away when you get home.

But the OP clearly didn't want her family to know she'd eaten a pizza on her own in the car. And when they found it, it triggered them because they are very worried about her health.

Do you expect family of drug addicts and alcoholics to keep spending endless time and energy supporting their loved ones to get sober? There comes a point when you give up simply because you can do no more and it’s less painful to just accept their choices than try to stop them killing themselves

Anorexia is a complex psychiatric disorder and not at all the same thing as someone being a couple of stone over weight.

I think you are projecting your rage over your own situation onto the OP's.

But it wasnt hidden. It was left in the car as the OP hadnt got around to binning it. Presumably it slid under the seat. I have found things that arent even made any more in my car because I am a lazy cow when it comes to my car.

My car is like a skip with a lid, every bit of junk gets tossed behind the front seats because I will definitely bin it when I get home. Except I usually have my hands full with other stuff and think "Oh I will definitely sort that in the morning". Except that in the morning I forget in the rush to get to work. An empty pizza box is not going to stink the car out unless you are obsessed with keeping "new car smell". I once had a sobering moment when I found a maccies bag that had ended up under the seat and looked at the receipt. It was almost a year old and was from when DD and I had stopped for food on our way on holiday. There was no degradation in the leftover fries and bits of burger at all, not even mould had attached itself. It wasnt secret, just forgotten. But we dont eat maccies anymore!

The vast majority of people with eating disorders (actually medically recognized and diagnosed psychiatric disorders) are over weight, not underweight.

Oh, and the most controlling people create sneaky people. If they are always banging on about your weight, that's probably why you are hiding what you are eating by doing so in the car.

Shouting at and nagging people about their weight has been proven not to work, and often has the opposite effect of encouraging more disordered eating.

Sorry OP, they sound like a bunch of arseholes. Expressing concern is one thing, berating you for 90 minutes is quite another and totally out of order.

Yabu I say that as someone who is watching my mother die slowly as she's too lazy and in denial to admit her weight has caused all her issues and is ultimately killing her. Suck up the self pity and sort yourself out for your family , sometimes people need a reality check and sounds like thats what your family were trying to do

Do not attempt to patronise me. I know exactly what anorexia is, how fucking dare you try to suggest that I do not understand what it is?! I also know a huge amount about other eating disorders and guess what, genius? They are also complex mental health disorders, they simply present in a different way.

Me not dying from starving myself was because I just about managed to keep myself this side of it. The PP's mother sounds like she is doing the same. She knows she has an issue but her underlying compulsions stop her from beating it.

I have no rage at all about my own situation, and your implication that I do is as ill informed as it is insulting. I am recovered and stay recovered. It has taken an awful lot of education and learning of myself to get to that stage, and it sounds like the PP's mother has not been able to do that, she just feels shame. Has shame ever helped you change a fundamental part of your mental make up? I doubt the shame you should feel right now will change your self righteousness.

Agree, this is not something someone with a healthy relationship with food would be doing.

What a nasty person you are. Your family needs a word with you more than the OP does

That must have been hard to bear. 💐 It doesn’t sound as though they went about it in the right way. Perhaps they have already tried more subtle ways of communicating?

I wonder how old you are. I was like you, active but overweight, and once I hit the menopause, I started to get joint problems, elevated cholesterol, blood pressure and all sorts of other more minor symptoms. I had to lose weight, but I love food.

What helped me was signing up for the Zoe app. It is a individualised programme, but for me I discovered that like many adults, I was eating far too little fibre and too many refined carbs. No, I don’t work for them! The weight loss jabs may be worth considering as well.

Disagree. Takeaway boxes smell. I think you went nose blind. I don’t aspire to new car smell, I aspire to no stinky smells.