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?

apologies for not being clear I was referring to OP

But basically people do have to take responsibility for their lives and not be shocked or hurt or anything other than accepting of a truth when people get hurt and upset and angry at the self sabotage

if your daughter was cutting herself would you let it ride ? Or would you have them at the doctors that instant looking for help ? being stupidly fat is no better than that - a form of self harm

if it was easy to help someone fix it we wouldn’t have fat people but the current approach of “don’t mention it “ doesn’t work either and if anything enables people to hide from the truth , to gloss over it and put it at the back of their minds

@childofthe607080s I agree with you. We’re living in a time when people just don’t take responsibility for themselves. Weight is a complex issue and not an easy fix BUT it is not insurmountable whether someone is dangerously over or under weight. It is a hard job and people need support but they ultimately have to do the work themselves and be resilient when they face set backs.

As I mentioned upthread, I come at this as someone who has really been through it in terms of an ED and still suffers with my mental health badly to this day. But I understand that I am responsible for myself and I have to face hard things and do hard things if I really want to see change. Nobody can do it for me. In a depressed state this is VERY hard - but still doable. And what this looks like for each person is different.

I think challenging someone is way more caring than pretending an issue doesn’t exist.
And for those saying 2 stone isn’t much (I disagree btw), are people supposed to wait until the person is SO overweight that they’re in even more of a dangerous health place and in a place where it is way harder to make the changes and there’s more work to do? Surely it’s better to stop something before it goes too far? As an example, I’ve recently become more controlling around macros and upped my gym sessions. My DH has spotted this and pointed out that this is how it all starts again and I slip back into full blown eating disorder. He challenged me and it was uncomfortable and I got defensive. Then I saw it for what it was and did a check-in with myself and saw that actually, he was right and I was slipping and so I needed to be careful I didn’t go too far. I’m glad he didn’t wait until I was 2 stone underweight and restricting to the point of starvation again.

Edited typo

Some people just don't give a shit if they are 'overweight' and actually that is ok. All this shitty fat shaming going on. Get over yourself.

Bloody hell, cutting compared to being overweight? That's a mad false equivalence. But let's run with it. Suppose my daughter was cutting herself, do you think it would help her stop if a group of family members accosted her unawares, spent 90 minutes telling her all the horrible things that could happen to her and then said, "It's easy, just make different choices"?

And if that episode left her feeling so terrible that she went on to cut herself again as a result, because we hadn't actually done anything to address the reasons why she's cutting and find her alternative coping mechanisms and had in fact just set her off while congratulating ourselves... that would be her failing, would it? Because she needs to take responsibility?

You know that would be mad because you don't actually give it as a solution. You talk instead about her getting help from a professional. Which is wise. But that's not a family ambush in which you hector the person, tell them stuff they already know and then tell them it's easy, just stop doing it!

If the family really wants to help OP, they'll see this as a failure because it hasn't helped. It's made things worse. If they think it's all fine because She Should Take Responsibility, well they should also take responsibility because they took actions that worsened things for her... and they clearly don't actually want to help her, they just want to vent their frustration and then feel good because they think they've done something.

Remember the first rule of assistance: first, do no harm.

The OP said quite clearly that a) she didnt "sneak" it, she bought it when she was alone and b) that it was her lunch, so not a between meals snack.

Unless there is a new law that states food can only be consumed in the company of others because then its not "secret eating" that I am not aware of? I would starve to death if it were because I eat alone virtually every meal these days. And you know what? Sometimes I have takeaways!

ETA as I said above, if she really was sneaking takeaways (which by the way, is a ridiculous idea. As an adult she can eat whatever the hell she wants) she would have disposed of the evidence before getting back home. She didnt which shows me that she felt she had nothing to hide.

Didn't say everybody, I believe I said "some" and "much". You are the one acting like all cases of overeating and fatness are easily solvable with a little willpower, which actually goes against the evidence. Over-eating is a diagnosable eating disorder, much more common than you think, and is not characterised by being massively overweight either. Of course not everyone who is overweight is mentally ill but the key here is you don't know who is and who isn't. Most people don't know my DH has major depressive disorder, including our kids, and anyone he tells is usually pretty surprised. No one would know to look at me that I have struggled pretty seriously with food issues. Mental health struggles are often hidden, so you should always always tread carefully where behaviors are unusual or concerning, and not think of yourself as an expert or the arbiter of moral truth for that person. Or assume their behaviours are "easily correctable". You do offer proper, best-practice support and care, not a hoity-toity nose sniff and finger wagging.

Food addiction is also a very real thing, why on earth would companies spend so much money finding the literal sweet spot otherwise? Addiction makes them very very rich. But of course, that's not at all the reason why we're seeing such a huge gain (ha) in weight in modern society. Couldn't possibly be.

And actually, the easiest thing in the world to do is say "I don't understand..." and refuse to even try, holding tight to your non-understanding while sitting on your high horse saying tsk tsk. Congrats to you, I guess.

You swim everyday
You cook everything from scratch - do your h or kids help with that?
You are 2 stone overweight.

Tell them to f off.

Reading this thread, about 10kg overweight (I’m not tall), and feeling conflicted.

On the defensive side: OP doesn’t say her age, or her chikdren’s age. If, like me, she’s middle-aged with young adult children, there’s possibly a generational issue here.

Lots of young people are very health-conscious and lifestyle-focused, and with the benefit of a youthful metabolism, subscribe to a particular lifestyle of working out, carbs only in the morning, protein only after the gym, and - dare I say - can be sanctimonious (you only have to watch one TikTok on ‘this is my day as a 20yo student’ video to be fed content that is very prescriptive about how you should eat and exercise.)

Meanwhile (some of) the middle-aged amongst us are battling thickening waists, we are time poor, we are catering meals for busy households, holding down jobs, and trying to squeeze in exercise.

The husband joining in - sweeping generalisation warning - but if he’s doing triathlons, playing two rounds of golf a week, or going on long cycles, he’s chipping in too that she could do better.

I’d absolutely feel attacked and cornered if my family took me to task over eating in the car, given that I eat in the car because I’m constantly on the go in the service of the family unit. I’d feel a lot less defensive if someone said ‘right, I’m taking over dinner for the next week, Mum.’ In fact, I’d feel grateful and enthusiastic.

Nobody wants to be barracked for 15 minutes let alone 90 minutes. Helpful? Nope.

I used to weigh 10 kgs less than what I do now and was a healthy weight. When I recently saw my GP about slightly high BP he looked at me and said "You're fine" (meaning weight wise), so no, I don't think that 12kg is a huge amount - unless that extra 12kg is on a cocker spaniel!

2 stone is not a serious weight problem. The vast majority of people put on a bit of weight at some point in their lives. Mental illness, comparing to alcoholism is Mumsnet craziness. Most people who are slim watch what they eat to some extent, not to an extreme but that doesn’t mean they don’t.

Do they usually treat you normally and with respect and kindness? Is this abnormal behaviour from them?
I was 7 stone overweight, my adult children did not utter one word to me regardless what I was eating. Occasionally my husband would talk about being healthy as he didn’t want me to die and I admit I took it personally as an attack on how I looked but now that I have lost the weight and maintained it I actually do the same to him and look at what he’s eating and try to get him to eat better for his health. But at no time did they get together and start lecturing me like I was a child.
Had I been ‘only’ 2 stone overweight this would have been a bonkers thing to do.

Maybe I'm just jaded from having to deal with obese family members in serious denial about how much they weigh and how much they eat but I don't believe her narrative. I was once as overweight as she claims she is, and never had a single person common it.

Well 2 stone overweight is within ‘average’.

For me I look awful if I’m overweight and really can’t carry it off like other women but probably from a health pov it doesn’t make much difference.

it depends on your body shape some people who are curvier can look great a bit overweight.

Two stone overweight isn't ideal but it's not emergency intervention territory unless there's some additional background or the person is three feet tall. It's certainly not comparable to cutting. And if the person is active and "heart healthy", then actually the health risks are highly mitigated even with the excess body fat, especially in women who carry it on hips, thighs and bum.

But why is it not ok to go on at anyone else about their weight but the family here are considered perfectly fine for all ganging up on the OP to nag her about weight

It was a meal not in between meals