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?

They didn't just bring it up tho. They shared their concerns 3 on 1 for 90 minutes.

Describe a "whole pizza"

Are you think a Saturday night special, where you have the leftovers for breakfast the next day? 14 inches or so is a large domino's

But domino's and the like do those little pizzas for one that are about 7 inches in diameter, which is only a tiny bit wider than the average hand span of a woman's hand (6.8 inches). A cheese and tomato has 640 ish calories and will keep a person full all afternoon. One Greggs steak bake has 430 ish and will have you biting the balls off a low flying duck by 3pm.

Well there are takeaway boxes and then there are takeaway boxes. Picked up DS once from town, he ate his fuck knows what on the way home (may have been chicken wings or a KFC esque thing) and for days I could smell something in the car. Turned out to be his fuck knows what box.

I mean I cant say for sure that a pizza box wouldnt smell the car out to the point of offensiveness with nothing in it, but frankly I doubt it.

If its difficult for you to make different food choices so that you can eat more healthily and lose weight, then I'd suggest you have a problem with food

If you're overweight, eating pizza isn't a good idea

If your family actually talked to you for an hour and a half about your weight they must be very worried indeed.

Two stone overweight doesn't appear to warrant a 90 minute talk. However, they care about you

Perhaps you could take their advice and then talk to them for 90 minutes about the dangers of alcohol

Without knowing your actual weight (2 stone overweight doesn’t tell us anything) or size it’s hard to tell. That said:

• I swim every single day if I can, for an hour, which is very good exercise. Doesn’t mean you’re not overweight or healthy. One of my friends swims a lot and is morbidly obese, she is going to have massive problems. FIL has developed type 2 from a similar position.
• I eat healthily (cooked from scratch meals, very healthy) most of the time. Means nothing if you have no control over portions. Home cooked meals can still have a lot of calories in them.
• my 'vices' are: lack of portion control, tending to finish off leftovers, and too many takeaways/meals out. As above, plus this contradicts your very healthy point above. Nothing wrong with the odd takeaway but it should be the exception.

Overall…they’ve done the right thing.

What are you talking about?! '2 stone overweight is a HUGE amount?' Get a grip, no it's not. And it is not obese !!! The OP's family are weirdos if they are 'staging an intervention' for someone who is only 2 stone overweight. They sound batshit. I'd have told them to fuck off @SoniaSwanners

🙄 Mumsnet Bingo anyone?

If that is what it takes so be it. OP needs to get a handle on this.
By her own admission she says that this is some eats too much and not as healthy as she should. If she is unable to do fix on her own, then having your family monitoring your eating habits, will help.
Nobody said it was easy.

Having her family, who harangued her for all of 90 minutes, monitoring her eating habits and putting themselves in charge really doesn't sound like it will help in the slightest.

OP needs some fact-based support and positive encouragement and to look at her whole health and fitness, find strategies which can improve her health suitable for her age which I'm guessing is approaching or perhaps just over 50s. It's not just her diet. Maybe also to talk to someone qualified who can help her form new health habits.

They were unreasonable for the duration of the ‘intervention’ and suggesting that changing things could be simple.

YABU for your stance about your problem with food. You sound similar to me, although I have a binge eating problem.

do they eat healthy and exercise a lot? Maybe you could do some with them?

OP says she swims for an HOUR most days and cooks from scratch. FGS, all the automatic responses to anyone who says they're overweight are coming out here.

I think what they did to you was atrocious, @SoniaSwanners. It sounds as if they spend quite some time demonising you behind your back, making you out to be some wheezing heffalump who needs a damn good talking to. I'd be really angry. I wonder how their bonding sessions over "Mum's such a lardarse" got started?

I'm sorry your own family turned on you like this.

No one has ever shamed anyone else into eating less. The drive to lose weight should you wish to do so must come from you. From that aspect you are not being unreasonable about being affronted by 3 people piling into you about your weight, shaming someone never achieves anything. I wasn't taught portion control either 'you must eat everything on your plate' parents, it has screwed a lot, something I am pleased to say my kids don't have. I am probably about 4 stone overweight, size 16 top 18 bottom, at 5.8" bit heavyset anyway but do in excess of 4 hours cardio and 2.5 hours weight lifting each week. I have barely have any viseral fat (plenty on my butt and thighs though) and am trying to work up my muscle content versus fat content rather than just be 'lighter'. Get a proper MOT to see what you are working with. By which I mean bloods, a proper body content breakdown and you dictate what you want to do from there. You have my best wishes and full support.

That is all quite extreme. Bunch of cunts? Really?? This is her husband and children.

I’ve had the same experience as you having suffered with anorexia for 30 years on and off. And my family have spoken to me about it and lectured me about it at times when they have been pulling their hair out with worry.

No, it hasn’t really helped me eat more but it has prompted me to try and get help for myself at times as I realised how much I was indirectly hurting them.

At no point I have ever thought they were cunts for caring and not knowing what to do except try and talk to me and make me see sense.

I stand by it.

Someone doesnt stop being a cunt just by being married or born to you.

Especially when you are trapped in a situation where you can be bullied for 90 minutes with absolutely no escape and anything you try to say is slapped down as "defelection". Yeah, I stand by it.

But they're not telling her to "eat less". They are concerned about her predilection for (secretly) consuming junk food.

The OP made it very clear that it wasnt done in secret, it was simply done when she was alone! She didnt lie, she didnt hide anything. If she was determined to hide her "secret", she would have made sure that the box was binned well away from her house.

It was not done at home in front of or with the family. I call that secretive eating. She was going to get rid of the box later, blahblahblah.

Regardless, it's junk food.

You don't call an intervention on someone's behaviour unless it is concerning. Caring for someone's health and hoping to shock them into awareness and better action is not being a "bunch of cunts".

You seem overtly focussed on that adverb. Fixed it for you:

But they're not telling her to "eat less". They are concerned about her predilection for consuming junk food.

Seriously?! That is hilarious!

So any lunch that anyone has alone is "in secret"?! Was your Tesco Meal Deal that included a brownie and high calorie latte "secret"? Was your husband grabbing a QP with cheese from maccies on his way to a meeting a "secret"? No it wasnt, it was just fucking lunch.

And it wasnt an intervention. An intervention is (yes, just googled it)

" A planned, structured meeting where family and friends, sometimes with a professional, confront someone with a problematic behavior like addiction to encourage them to seek help"

Nothing that the OP describes suggests that this was what happened. What she got was a total pile on for an hour and a half from her family about her having some fucking pizza. If they were genuinely concerned then they could have spoken to her in a different way but they behaved like a pack of hounds.

So yeah. Bunch of cunts.

Overly.....

Fixed that for you 😉

Oh, good on you.

I would say both overly and overtly.

Overtly. Adverb.
without concealment or secrecy; openly

By overtly, I meant you are clearly obsessed and clutching at straws. By all means, do police every word of this post also.

Yanbu, you were verbally assaulted by the 3 of them.
Nobody ever decided to make changes with this approach.
I'd be angry with them, even if they are concerned.
I'm not overweight but enjoy a Mc Donald's breakfast without advertising it.
Who cares, next time dump the evidence.

Oh bless your heart!

Sweet of you to admit you were entirely wrong.

Do people not realise we only have the OPs version of how the people reacted and acted towards her?

I wonder what there version is?