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?

Is the issue not that the countless medical professionals have failed to provide a solution to her obesity that controllable diet and exercise seems to only account for half a stone of?

Talk about a pile on by your family OP and I would have felt bullied in that situation. They love you but it was still a bit full on even so.
I've told my adult kids I'm not going to be around to old age if my health gets that difficult .
They don't like it but respect the fact that the insulin is ready and I won't be talked out of it.

three people jumping on you for 90 minutes when you clearly looked and felt uncomfortable is not okay or acceptable. They’ve been arseholes. If they’re concerned, there are ways to bring it up and this isn’t one of them - it doesn’t sound like they offered any support either.

As PP have said, this kind of approach could actually push someone further into secretive, bad eating.

I agree with PP. It’s hard to comment when we don’t know if you’re ten pounds overweight or four stone overweight.

They obviously care about you and are worried.

I lost five stone this year taking Mounjaro. My health has improved in so many ways. That might not be the right choice for you, but do you want to lose weight? Do they have a point?

Pious saintly mumsnet will tell you they were right. You should just eat healthily. It’s a choice. It’s a moral failing etc etc.

But no, you’re not being unreasonable. That’s humiliating and also patronising. You know you’re overweight, you know pizza isn’t healthy. They might be coming from a place of love but I would remind them how important kindness is too.

OP hasn't given a weight and peeps seem to think she is overtly obese, perhaps she is but for some even being a stone over weight can be worrying.
I'm 10st with type 2 diabetes fwiw, losing 6st of weight quickly as a result of developing it hasn't reversed my situation with it, just slowed the related problems with it down.
I hope whatever your situation OP that you can make a difference because YOU want to. Hard truths are painful but over an hour pile on from 3 people even coming from a place of love would reduce most people to an emotional wreck.
It wasn't the best way to deal with it in any shape or form.

The people who suffer are the ones left behind. They don't want to be left behind op, they want a long and happy life with you. Healthy at that too. My grandmother has had diabetes for a long time and has some leg issues and can barely walk. She's so frustrated. High BP, diabetes, cholesterol stuff. She's grumpy and fed up because she's pretty much house bound. Everything is effort, pains and aches, she's a bit obese so carrying extra weight.
I feel a bit bad for her because in her days smoking was normal, eating fatty was normal, she ate home cooked but not healthy healthy I guess. Now we have so much knowledge it's really shame on us in society.
What doesn't change is the fact of how grumpy she is due to lifestyle in her younger years.
You're doing future you a disservice.

I have issues with some food - namely cakes and desserts! My family were poor so we rarely had either of these and when we did it was finish your dinner and you can have dessert. So, as an adult, I over compensated; baked and ate. My poor DH put on an enormous amount of weight whereas I, although overweight, was not obese. I realised I was killing my DH so I stopped baking. Desserts are now a small yoghurt and we have both lost weight. We are both slightly overweight but we’re both happy we’re healthier.
Your DC want their DM to live long enough to see their DC grow up!

Sounds like they are worried about you.

At least stop talking about what you want to do/need to do if you aren't going to actually do it.

So stop talking about treating yourself, about eating healthily and losing weight. If you keep on saying this stuff and they see you doing the opposite, you're putting that at the front of their minds.

You either want to lose weight and eat well or you don't, it really is as simple as that.

I am fat. I am very very fat. I want to lose weight but I want the food more. I want to be able to eat what I like and yet magically become slim with no effort and no sacrifices.

I want someone to wave a magic wand over me to make me thin while I eat a bucket full of cheese. This, obviously, is impossible and so I stay fat because I am not willing to do what needs to be done. I will not lose weight until I want that more than I want toast and bagels and big plates of food.

The same is true for you. Start by accepting that this is the truth. You eat things that don't help you and you don't want to lose weight as much as you want to eat pizza in your car and hide the evidence.

Your family love you. They aren't attacking you. You feel defensive because you know they are right and you dont like it. You want to tell yourself its not your fault, you can't help it, its not easy. Well, it is, you can and you're right on the last one, its not easy.

OP has to live her life for herself and happiness. Family obviously want her to be healthy and happy but cornering someone and 'lovingly' piling on for over an hour isn't helping her.

This is hilarious! When someone comes on here saying that they're worried about their daughter who's really overweight, everyone tells OP to mind her own business and stop judging young women by their appearance. When it's mum who's fat - everyone can have a go as it's "out of love"!

I'm not sure their approach was quite right, but maybe they just didn't know how else to proceed and care very much about you? How overweight are you? A little? A lot? Also, you don't even have to be overweight to be suffering from the effects of a poor diet.
The red flags for me are:
Eating a whole pizza alone in the car
Leaving the evidence in the car
Contradictory statements about healthy/unhealthy eating
Thinking you can exercise away a bad diet.
I do wish you well, maybe this is the incentive you need to make changes?

PS I also wish some of us had been a bit more proactive towards a very overweight friend (who is know more of an acquitantance for various reasons not related to weight) when she was able to do something about it. She's now in so much joint pain that every day is agony, she needs to lose weight but finds it impposible to exercise. I'm not saying you're that extreme, but it is hard for friends and family who are worried to not say anything.

If you're eating, take out pizza in your car as a snack.I'd say there's an issue there. It's not something i've ever done and I also admit to being slightly overweight.

Your family know you better than I do. I m sure they wouldn't say it if they didn't feel it was an issue.

My friend from uni has had an appalling diet pretty much since i've known her. Completely bereft of any fruit vegetables or anything of nutritional value. She's always been overweight. She's never even drunk fruit juice, right from childhood it was squash. I know fruit juice isn't good for you.But it's got more nutritional values than squash.

She's now had a cancer diagnosis, and only now is she suddenly realising oh, perhaps I should have been healthier
She's now started eating vegetables and oily fish because the doctor said she should be. I'm not saying her cancer was caused by poor diet, but it didn't help.I'm sure, and now it's a wake up call for her to suddenly start eating healthily to try and aid her recovery.

!00% usual double standards on MN.

Agree with this. 3 adults lecturing you on such a sensitive subject must have been really hard OP.

i disagree with other posters saying it depends on how overweight you are. You know you struggle with weight. You’ve admitted you find it really difficult and this kind of intervention just makes you feel shit and most likely won’t work and have the opposite effect.

I think given these are people who love you and are worried about you, and want you to be around for a long time, you should really take what they have said to heart and use it as your motivation going forward.

It is awful watching someone you love make decisions that could take them from you early.

I've not seen any threads like that, but I would also support somebody saying to their daughter about their weight. If it was significantly bad.

As per the first poster, it’s coming only from a place of love and you are blessed to have such a loving family. Whether you listen to them or not is up to you.

They are massively out of order. This sort of thing never helps, just makes the victim feel under attack, because they are. You know you’ve got a weight problem. You now know that they are all unsympathetic and judgemental. They may claim it’s coming from a place of love, but making you feel like utter shit as they did is absolutely the opposite of helpful. I’d be absolutely furious with the lot of them.

One of my closest friends is dangerously overweight and has multiple health problems as a result. I love her dearly and am genuinely terrified this is going to kill her. I would never breathe a word to her about it. She knows she’s got a problem. If she wants to talk about it, I will listen. If she wants to eat too much take away, I will sit down and enjoy takeaway too and never ever say anything to suggest she shouldn’t be doing it. I know she shouldn’t be doing it. She knows she shouldn’t be doing it. In that moment she needs a friend not a fucking executioner. She does talk to me about it quite a lot because she knows she will never hear a word of judgment from me. I don’t imagine you feel you can talk to your family about it after this. They have massively fucked up.

Sorry OP that must have been very hard to hear and they have definitely not gone about this in the right way.

It does sound like you need some help with your eating habits though and they are obviously very worried about you. Having said that, without knowing how much you weigh it is hard to know the scale of the problem or if they have a point or not. A few lbs overweight- they are being ridiculous (although secret car eating sounds disordered). If you're several stone overweight then its probably time to figure out how to tackle that. I say that as someone who lost 50lbs and maintained it and am SO much healthier and happier now

When you are sitting eating whole pizzas on your own in the car and hiding the box under the seat, it may be time to admit that your overeating is out of control.

They are concerned about you. Perhaps you should listen?

Were the four of you on a long car trip? If they "hectored" you for 90 minutes in a situation where you were not free (or physically able) to leave or take a break, that's not a constructive intervention. It crosses the line into bullying and it's also ineffective as it's too much for the "target" (you) to absorb and process. When they realised you were responding by shutting down and resisting rather than responding and engaging, they should have stopped. Their intentions may have been good but mishandled interventions typically do more harm than good. And, of course, telling you "it's easy" is colossally naive at best.

However, given that this HAS come up now and three people who presumably love and care about you have expressed concern, can you take this opportunity - maybe after giving yourself a day or two to recover if needed - to assess honestly just for yourself whether you may indeed have a problem with food/weight? If you do need professional help, and/or to change your eating habits, don't harden yourself against it because of what your family have done.

My dad had cholesterol through the roof and a dodgy heart. He didn't exercise.

He kept eating crap, whole sharing bags and multipacks of crisps in secret at work (we'd also find the wrappers in the car). In addition to eating poorly at home. He'd ignore the home cooked vegetables and get a ready-made pudding and eat it with half a pint of cream.

It drove us to tears, he just wouldn't listen.

He's no longer with us. Won't see me get married, my children will never meet their grandad.

Listen to your family and stop eating secret pizza. Take it seriously.

This.

Also, eating a pizza in secret in your car as a treat, doesn't scream normal behaviour. Which is probably why they have an issue.

I’m sorry OP, that’s awful and ultimately very unhelpful to you. I’ve been there myself - I’m now in remission from T2D after loosing 8.5 stone.

The only way I could get eating under control was a glp1. What they have now realised is that overweight people naturally produce less of the glp1 hormone, the injections level the playing field. (It’s a bit like someone having to take insulin or antidepressants). Truly it’s not your fault and those who have never struggled won’t get it.

Being attacked like that would have lead me into a vicious cycle of overeating and depression. Be kind to yourself ❤️