Constant competitive undereating is giving me the rage

[Bettercallsalli]

Family Easter meal and once again ruined by my mother!
After 6 mouthfuls...o im so full. Cutting peas in half...just makes us all that eat nornally on edge.

I second those PP who say that as people get older their appetites can shrink dramatically. I'm also someone who has a naturally small appetite for the most part since hitting my 30s (although I don't shout it to the heavens!) and with a meal as rich as salmon and cauliflower cheese, I might only pick at it and not eat a lot.

It sounds like your mother has disordered eating habits though, not an ordinary 'small appetite'. In which case, while I know it's annoying, I think it's a bit dramatic and immature to let her very sad, self-denying issues around food 'ruin' your Easter. It's terribly sad for her that her eating is has been so disordered all her life, and you should just be glad that you've escaped picking up her attitudes around food.

If she was a diagnosed struggling anorexic would you feel the same way as you do now, or would you have more sympathy for her? Try viewing her through the empathetic lens of a sick person, and perhaps your annoyance might lessen.

Honestly, everyone's parents do annoying things, but sometimes you just have to learn to shrug them off, like water off a duck's back; ignore, or smile and nod, and don't take it so seriously. Don't let her make her problem your problem.

Mine does this but it is a generational thing from my nanna. I try to ignore it. It did deeply impact my own relationship with food which took a lot of years to repair.
I think in your situation i'd try not to let it get it get to me (while i'd be annoyed because of the effort i'd gone to). Maybe not plate as much up for her (reduces pressure) or offer her a take away box so she can enjoy some at a later time?
With my own DM I normally ask if she wants a smaller plate first, make sure she knows I can box up food too. I get less comments and she tends to eat better. (Same with my MIL who is chronically underweight).

Mine does this and it's infuriating. WHY do we all have to know her appetite levels? The rest of us just eat what we want, there's really no need for such loud persistent commenting!?

I’m still waiting for my appetite to reduce as I approach 70!

Why would you let it ruin a meal? Some older people can't eat much anyway. PIL have one meal a day, whereas we had Easter lunch and still managed sausage rolls later.

Cs Lewis calls it the gluttony of delicacy and it is just as much a sin as gluttony is ( in Christianity anyway which I appreciate is not everyone's bag). I like to remember this when I am on holiday with friends and family who do this. They are always under the mistaken assumption it makes them better people than those of us who do practice a bit of the normal variety of gluttony on holiday.

I have a friend who eats very little but she does not discuss it or talk about how she can't eat much or make faces about how much food people eat when presented with a normal amount of food and how she can't face it . She just eats what she wants, leaves what she doesn't and chats. If she is not hungry when I am, she has a drink or picks at a snack while I eat and we talk about what we doing on holidays etc. , I am perfectly happy on holiday with her.

Unfortunately I am currently on holiday with someone who is definitely expressing the "sin" of gluttony of delicacy. Every time someone wants to eat she exclaims at how much we eat and how can we be hungry at 4pm after a massive breakfast etc. and it has almost ruined the holiday for me

It did deeply impact my own relationship with food which took a lot of years to repair.

This is why I can’t easily ignore it. Watching her shaped my own relationship with food - and with my body because I’m the same shape as her. All the ‘flabby’ bits she despised, I developed them as I grew into a teen and learned to hate my own body. But when I look back at pictures from that time we were both super slim!

I thought I was a picky / fussy eater for years until t went away to uni and was able to cook for myself. Years of being told that certain foods were too rich / oily / greasy / gamey / strong / funny texture 🙄. Not true, I eat really healthily these days. I’m not super slim, but I enjoy my food and I’ve learned not to look at anyone’s plates other than mine. But with her, it all comes back - we know each other well. I can see her watching my plate and judging how much I eat. Just like I get a little bit of pleasure when I turn down dessert and watch her trying to justify her own 🤷‍♀️. Mothers and daughters can be complicated.

Some women. Not a single woman in my family behaved like this in the 1960s and 1970s when I was growing up. I count myself lucky.

My parents were born in the 1930s and were not competitive undereaters at all. In fact they thought being slightly plump was a positive thing and overfed slightly, with love. Also extended to pets. Neither of them had a particular weight problem though and neither did I. Looking at some of the above comments, I'm grateful, and their attitude seems relatively healthy.

Just say “that’s shame I hate food waste” next time give her half as much . If it doesn’t bother you she will probably stop.

It was 1 piece of salmon …

A petit poi or a garden pea?

gosh,,,,that was like me..i wernt out for dinner and couldnt eat more than 4 chips..

but ive got a huge mass in my tummy..but no one else in my family know, they just know that o have lost my appetite and cant eat much because i got full quickly

i hope they dont think the same as me. though i am not tiny

Goes really well.

A cousins wife purportedly ate nothing but chocolate according to my Aunt.
She looks fine, although in later life I think she may drink alcohol as much as she eats chocolate as she has a certain look about her, but it may be that I just see her in FB pictures these days, and has clearly had a lot of Botox/ filler work done, giving her an odd look, that I’d put down, probably uncharitably, to too much alcohol.

My own Aunt, was barely ever seen eating, and we always had to take food with us when visiting for the day, sandwiches and cakes, as her fridge was always empty, although she drove and I know visited her local Tesco, as I’d been with her when younger.

Alzheimers or something similar is affecting her now, so encourage people to eat.

My own Mother, eats meat or fish and vegetables every day, which she cooks, and is doing well at 90 years old.

As others have said this behaviour is quite common in women who were young adults around the 70s. My MIL does it. Every mealtime we have to have a huge performance about cutting everything in half because she ‘can’t manage a whole one’. It’s incredibly boring but I just ignore it. Wish she wouldn’t mangle all the food though and leave half cut bits of everything.

On the plus side it’s such widespread behaviour that there’s a lot of excellent comedy about it on Instagram now!

Very much like my aunt. She was in her 20s in the 70s as someone upthread identified. She thinks eating means you are a pig. She calls her own (now adult) daughter 'fat greedy pig' if she wats more than a starter at a restaurant.

The last time we ate at her house she cooked 5 pieces of salmon to be shared between 5 adults, two teens and a toddler. Then after she ate her portion went into the bathroom and threw it up before coming back and saying 'That's better, I felt so FULL I could not stand it'.

You’ve totally missed the point. It’s not the not eating a lot that’s the issue. That’s fine. It’s the shaming of people eating a normal amount of food that is completely and utterly intolerable. Going out for dinner I just want to enjoy food. The:

‘oh the menu seems to all be too rich, we’ll all end up as fatties if we have a main. Pie - with chips! Who needs a pie AND chips!!! No wonder there’s an obesity crisis. Shall we all just have carrot soup and tap water’

This is my life if I ever eat out with my mother. It’s intolerable. She talks like this all the time. ALL the time. We don’t go out to dinner with her anymore which is sad really but why would you? Why?

Not men do not always need more food than women. Eg breastfeeding mothers.

🙄

That’s actually quite a normal portion size for someone of that age.

My MIL, DM and DF have all experienced appetite drops from their 70s onwards.

Oh dear. Maybe appetites just vary. A healthy amount of every food type is to be enjoyed. Too much or too little leads to health issues. More people are unhealthily overweight nowadays. No one should comment on the choices of others, as adults.

What's a penis portion?😁

There’s nothing wrong with having a small appetite (just as there’s nothing wrong with having a big appetite).
We’re all different and have different needs.
What is wrong is commenting on it during a meal, how little you can eat, how you absolutely won’t be able to eat another thing until tomorrow, how you can’t believe that someone else has finished their entire plate of food and is considering a pudding…. on and on it goes.
It’s dull, boring and rude and the world would be a far better place if people kept their eyes on their own plate and minded their business.
It spoils what should be a pleasant occasion and makes other people feel bad.

My mother was the same 🙄 it really backfired in the end as she got older because I couldn’t take her out anywhere. We couldn’t go out for food because she couldn’t eat, we couldn’t go out for a coffee because she couldn’t drink hot drinks, we couldn’t go out for a walk because she couldn’t walk very far ect ect. She’d put up so many obstacles to everything it became impossible to do anything

It's when men are automatically served much larger portions than women due to internalised misogyny about what women are 'supposed' to eat.