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.

My Nan was like that after she had a major operation to remove a brain tumor. She kept saying she couldn't eat, never ate, but remained plump. Truth was, she couldn't eat a full meal in one go, but would pick all day, but wouldn't connect that with still eating a fair amount because she was used to eating three hearty meals a day. Her pattern of eating totally changed. She no longer wanted big meals but ate little and often.

After the habit of a lifetime, it's easy to see how her perception of her change in appetite was that she barely ate.

🤣🤣

Used to work with a competitive under eater. She’d run a 40min 10km before work, no breakfast. IF she had lunch, which was rare, it would be an apple and a spoonful of cottage cheese, then gym classes all evening before a pizza about 9pm. She’d comment on the salad I brought for lunch, and the amount of sugar in any fruit she saw me eating.

A current colleague proudly only has children’s portions when we go out for meals. She tried to join Slimming World recently to shed half a stone and was annoyed they refused her, because she was considered on the edge of being underweight.

I do much better with meat, if I eat two many pulses my ferritin plummets, and I'll be far from the only woman who finds this to be the case.

On that basis, I'd take a dim view being given a small portion, but you've clarified that you serve people based on their individual preferences so that's fine and not the same as penis portions where the woman isn't given a choice.

I can’t eat 3 courses either , unless I leave some food on my plate at each course .
If we go out for a meal we tend to split a starter and then have a main meal each And when we are out for lunch and we know the place serves really large well filled sandwiches we share a sandwich and a portion of chips plus each have a coffee ( with milk which does tend to make anyone feel more full )
However by later on in the afternoon I like a cup of tea and a biscuit .
Dinner is usually a decent sized portion each , husband then sometimes has a couple of crackers and cheese and I might have fruit or a small dessert if I have anything in the fridge.

Exactly. I have the same sort of mother. She’s been doing it ALL MY LIFE. This isn’t a ‘little old ladies don’t eat much’ thing. It’s a lifelong eating disorder. She has to put everyone else’s eating down in order to feel good about herself. It’s so fucking tedious.

That is interesting, I never thought of it like that. I remember my Mom living on something called PLJ (?) a kind of lemon juice in the 1960s to lose weight. I also had an aunt who was overweight and everyone called her 'weighty Katy' to her face, it was meant as an affectionate joke at the time, but really it was awful body shaming.

When you serve a meal, at a family get together for Christmas, Easter, whatever, are you genuinely concerned about your guests macros? Be honest now. Because it's weird.

Are you obsessed with their iron intake as you are with my guests? Why? They're adults capable of managing their own diet. Your only job is to serve tasty food and make sure they're full when they leave. That's it. For men, that will require.more food to achieve than women. It's not rocket science.

Why are you obsessed with iron intake? You're literally the only person banging on about it.

That sounds really frustrating. My mum is similar, complains that she’s ‘full’ after a lunch, and only needs a small snack in the evening, but then eats whole bars of chocolate after dinner.

Get competitive. Quarter your peas. Make triumphant gloating eye contact as you do it.

And if they eat anything with more than 3 calories in they have to keep going on about how " naughty " they are . " I'm so naughty eating this" ," Shall I have a dessert ? o no I'm too fat already but I'd love one , should i be really naughty " . "Oo look at me being naughty stuffing my face ill have to eat nothing all day tomorrow ". 🙄

My family are like this too. None of us tolerate this not eating lark.

Ignore her.

The thing is, performative undereaters are also often the same people who, if you go out to eat, will moan about how expensive everything is. Even if they are not paying.

Someone who doesn’t mind spoiling everyone else’s lunch by going on about how much they eat won’t mind spoiling it by chuntering on about how they could get XYZ at the place down the road for half the price. It gets to the point where everything tastes like cardboard because they won’t shut up about what a rip off it is.

Reminds me of my previously fat sister who discovered amphetamines for weightloss. This was before the weightloss jabs. Asked to borrow my dress she'd borrowed before but this time it hung off her. She had to do several laps of the living room where my friends and their partners were showing off how big my dress was. No one was really paying attention to her (hence the repeat laps) so I had to say" come on everyone you're not looking at xxxxxxxx" She then went on about how she'd got no appetite, barely ate and had loads of energy without mentioning the whizz she was taking.
She also used to imply she had bulimia and anorexia to gullible friends who were easy to manipulate. They'd come to family members and say they were worried about her eating disorders and we weren't doing anything. She told one friend she was covered in fur because of anorexia but she'd shaved it off. She never mentioned the drugs though. She was never an addict by the way she just used it to lose weight. Her husband made her stop taking it because she was such a pain in the backside. She still tells everyone how she was anorexic for years ( she was on the amphetamines for 6 months and gained the weight back within weeks) She will still try to manipulate the gullible by implying she's going back to her imaginary eating disorder that she never had. It's an insult to genuine people with eating disorders. Ps she was a carer in a care home but told everyone she was the Head qualified nurse there and an a A&E trauma nurse at the local hospital. Pps I forgot about when she lost weight she told some she was thirsty all the time and tired thus implying she had undiagnosed diabetes but resisted all offers of taking her to the drs or hospital for tests because " she was too scared to go on her own and she didn't want to bea burden ".

You've just called your overweight relative 'fatties'. You are the obnoxious one but you seem to think that because you are slim you are automatically virtuous.

How nice of you to call her a fat lump..

My mother is the same. I knew people wouldn’t believe this is true but i know it is because it’s exactly what my mother does!

Another tactic of hers is to jump up from the table CONSTANTLY to adjust things ever so slightly. My husband had drank about 3/4 of his water glass. The water jug had slightly less than a full glass in it, it was an immediate need for my mother to leave the table to fill the jug. Literally any excuse to leave the table. She’s worse than a toddler. It’s just so flipping rude! And it’s all so she can be a tiny fairy taking oh so long to eat her “huge plateful” or complain it has gone cold and doesn’t know how the rest of us can eat tepid food we must be filthy animals with disgusting appetites. I hate eating with her. Her sisters are normal and have table manners. Her parents were also normal. No idea where she got it from.

Do give over

It’s because she makes me cross - She’s a wally pretending she has always had/naturally has a tiny weeny appetite feigning horror at the amount perfectly healthy young impressionable young women are eating.
She was huge before and very greedy at mealtimes we all remember her massive pre jab appetite so her competitive undereating while on £300 a month appetite suppressants is rather galling in truth !

I totally refuse go through the posts when you may or may not tell her age. Why do you not report her for Mental Health Assessment.

A mental health assessment? Because she doesn’t eat much at family dinners? To be assessed, she would need to cooperate - unless she is a danger to herself or others.

Actually she would not need to cooperate. Check it out legally. It is quite simple on Google now you asked.

How do you even cut a pea in half 🤣 I can just about keep them on a fork.

Some people really don't understand the issue - or perhaps they have never really had the misfortune to meet a truly competitive under eater. It actually has nothing to do with how much the person eats/doesn't eat. Most people are happy that their dining companions are having the size of meal they want.

However for the competitive under eater the whole issue is the performance ... they are unable to just enjoy what they want to eat as they have an innate need for everyone to know just how little they eat (publicly anyway) and to obtain acknowledgement of just how virtuous they are for eating so little and denying themselves with implicit or often explicit judgement of others eating more.

Many older women have very disordered eating which they passed to their children (especially daughters). My late mother was like this with terribly disordered eating. When I gained weight as a result of taking steroids for a serious illness she had me on Slimfast and "Slim-a-soup" - aged 6.

I remember vividly staying in a hotel to attend a sporting event where we were competitors (I was about 18) - yet every morning at breakfast we were treated to her running commentary "I couldn't ever manage a whole egg" or "It's hard to watch you guzzling a whole piece of toast - I'm so stuffed!". Yet on the final day I came down about 30 minutes earlier because I'd forgotten my competition number in the car. As I walked past the dining room she was in the dining room literally speed eating slices of toast with butter and jam but then asked for a new setting so it looked like she hadn't eaten... I never told her I'd seen her but we were still got the "I don't know where you put it all - I couldn't possibly eat like that"...