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 am pretty sure that, if I were told that someone had arranged for a mental health assessment for me, I would have the right to refuse. I could be sectioned but there would need to be something in my behaviour to justify it. Irritating my family by cutting peas in half wouldn’t be enough.

I wasn’t going to come back to the thread after being quoted 20 times. 🫣
Just to clarify that they’re not even fat. They’re slightly overweight but always on a diet, talking about their diet, obsessing about their diet, breaking their diet, starting again, commenting on my body.
They are on the jabs so they’ll be skinny soon.
I told one today that I called her fatty in a thread after she jeered me about an Easter egg. She laughed.
btw smarty pants. I don’t feel virtuous, I’m on the other end of the spectrum that has its on set of problems not feeling hunger.

Why take the high road when you can take the psycho path?

The next time she does this-
Look disapprovingly at her plate, sigh and say "what a waste" 😂

My mother had a family friend who everyone called Fat Annie'. To her face.

Looking back she wasn't in any way morbidly obese. I'm about a stone and a half overweight and I think I'm probably larger than she was.

Has no one ever told you when you're in hole, stop digging?

Yes, that would have been a good plan!

Well, yes, I can see that extreme might be a problem. 😳

But, just eating together, best to just deal with your own plate, and ignore what everyone else is doing.

Does anyone else have relatives of a certain age who, when receiving their plate of food, will constantly state "it's very rich" in tones of annoyed disapproval?

Ha! Touched a nerve have I duckie !

Well of course. But do you think the kind of person who is prepared to risk house fires in order to draw attention to how much they don't eat is going to do that?

(She ate in secret anyway.)

No. You're just not very nice.

Ah god my mother is like this & she’s coming to visit soon for a week. Drives me mental. She’ll only eat lunch all day and then say she doesn’t need dinner as she’s still “full” from lunch or “you have such big dinners spicegirls I am just happy with beans on toast” and it’ll be something like a small bowl of pasta. Drives me nuts, puts me off visiting her as well as I usually spend the week starving away. One time she fed my kids, and said to me “oh well we had that small slice of cake at lunch (7 hours ago) you don’t need dinner either do you?” Neither of us need to be on diets!

Same generation as my mum and MIL. Same attitude towards food. If you finish your meal, you’re greedy, but only if you’re a woman. Men can eat as much as they want. Women on the other hand “how can you possibly eat all of that?” To a a sandwich made with two slices of bread. “I’ve made dessert, but I couldn’t possibly eat anything else” and “do you want to have half this biscuit with me? I couldn’t possibly eat a full one”

They want praise for leaving the table hungry. Then pass judgement on those who eat a full, normal sized meal. The only time I’ve evaded the mock shock and horror of eating like a normal person was when I was pregnant. I got a pass then! It’s always been open season on my body since childhood. Pre two kids in under two years, I was in very good shape. My mum then switched to telling me how I was too skinny and I looked unwell. Now I’m losing the weight from baby number 2, she’s competing with me. Even dropped into a plank the other day to try and prove she’s in better shape than me and I wouldn’t be able hold it as long as her as I’m a bit chubby at the moment 😂

Society always talks about how millennial women had it rough with body image and dieting growing up, but the Boomer generation were targeted just as heavily and aggressively. My generation when we reached adulthood at least had the body positivity movement to soften it out, they had a lifetime of “a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips” and that bloody Rosemary Connolly! My mum has spent an entire lifetime on a diet. My MIL bakes amazing cakes, but never eats them as she doesn’t want to gain weight.

I know it’s hard, but just ignore her. Let her fester in her weird negative relationship with food. She’s not going to change now.

I’d have called her fatty as well. And I’m fat.

It is relevant because a lot of people who insist on feeding men more (and more pertinently, giving them the best and most expensive part of the meal) also insist they do it for health reasons - but if that were true, they would give women more of the iron rich protein.

I don't agree that women prefer carbs and veg as you stated up thread - some do, sure! It's individual preference. But the reason women collectively might seem to, or that they may be more likely to be vegetarian or vegan, is the impact of diet culture which is extremely insidious and rooted in misogyny. You will also find this has changed and that women as a whole are now far more likely to refuse the carbs because they have been the food group demonised more latterly by diet culture. Women are not innately programmed to prefer potatoes to meat and there is no biological reason for it - it's social conditioning and it does come from patriarchy. Maybe women are more likely to change their eating patterns for ethical reasons and go vegan, but plenty of those who do actually do it in order to have a reason to restrict their food intake. Because women are always taught to restrict their food intake. Because of misogynistic diet culture.

It doesn't mean you shouldn't feed your guests what makes them comfortable, but you also don't have to deny that some of the things that make us comfortable come from our conditioning to fit nicely into the spaces that the patriarchy makes for us.

Personally, I much prefer meat to potatoes and I always buy steak and spinach when I'm on my period - my body needs it! And I won't be handing over half my fillet steak to my husband or sons.

My mother in law does this - it's really important to her to tell everyone she simply can't eat breakfast, but she has been 'caught' in similar circumstances eating it. When we've been on holiday with her, she has had to give us a speech every morning about how she could never manage to eat breakfast before immediately tucking into...breakfast. I am sorry for her that she feels then need to justify and explain eating a normal meal. We just try to be really straightforward and matter of fact about having an appetite and not tying ourselves up in knots at every meal and she has got a little better.

My mum meanwhile was always extremely judgemental about other people snacking and then got diagnosed with a digestive disorder that explained her small appetite and she has talked since about how she understands now that she was unfair to people because she really couldn't understand that they could genuinely be hungry between meals. It was very difficult to grow up with, but she has really come around and become a lot more compassionate in later life.

I’m a younger Boomer and my mum used to buy slimming magazines, drink PLJ ( surprised she didn’t get awful digestion issues / reflux drinking that !! ) bang on about how I should never let myself get above 7 and a half stone ..yada yada .
I remember her on slimming pills once when I was very young , you could barely finish your dinner and drink because she would be standing there waiting for you to eat so she’d rush off to wash up the dishes.
i have 3 children ( all adults now of course ) and she told one that she was too chubby and that she best watch herself..my lovely little girl who was still to grow and was due a growth spurt height wise .
Also another one of my children put weight on as an adult and the first bloody thing she said to her after not seeing her for ages was “ oh you’re a big girl “
bloody lucky I don’t have an ED , but I am a grazer who tends to need little and often .
i can eat a reasonable main meal as a fairly early dinner then much later I fancy a piece of cheese and a few grapes or a little something

You’re my kind of person. 😈🤣

I’m that generation and I haven’t got that attitude to food. Neither had my mum. We aren’t one homogeneous group.

Obsessing about your guests macros is indeed weird, which is why it was such a poor idea of yours in the first place to start whining about calories and obesity in a discussion about penis portions. Nobody should actually be doing that when they're plating up. That of course includes penis portion givers.

Interesting that you're trying to make this specifically about our own guests now, but no dice. You made lots of comments about wider society and obesity problems, which means you don't get to make this only about what we all serve our guests. And iron intake is really, really important. It's a major women's health issue. You can either understand how important it is or be wrong.

There are two choices here: either you can try and make the discussion about wider diet and nutrition issues, in which case iron deficiency is part of that just like obesity and we will be addressing the question of why some people when serving food only care about that one aspect. Or you can leave both out of it. But you're not having a secret third option where we only talk about the aspects of nutrition and health that you like.

No, she sounds positively unhinged - not sure what the answer is with her.

But, to be fair, most people don’t behave like this (I hope!).

I can’t eat much at all now, I never comment on the plates of others, and I’m certainly not an arsonist. 😳

I must admit I did not think this thread was going to turn into one about firestarting! That's a horrifying story.

Haven't RTFT yet but this is an interesting subject for me as I had anorexia in my late teens. This was in late 80s/early 90s and my mum blamed herself as she was always on some diet or other throughout my childhood. I don't actually think that was the reason I became anorexic, it was more complicated than that.

One thing I do wonder about with competitive undereating is whether some of these people haven't really achieved much else in life so have become fixated with their eating habits and weight.

Gosh... That's all shades of fucked up. Pretending you have an eating disorder is wild... I feel like your sister might be my mother. Everyone who has ever met her agrees she has a narcissistic personality disorder - even those that hate throwing around labels and diagnosing people based off cod-science social media listicles. Combined with crushing insecurity and wild over-sensitivity, and it is a lot to deal with.

My mum is losing weight at the moment through a GLP-1, but used to manage diabetes, not for weight loss per se. She has always been morbidly obese, for as long as I can remember, and HATED her appearance, so you'd think the weight loss would be welcome to her. She's doing well and I'd say she's about a size 20 now.

Except she is framing it as a medical emergency - the weight is just falling off her, she doesn't know what's wrong, she has no appetite, look at her, she's just becoming so THIN... Yes mum. It's because you are effectively on mounjaro. This is what happens. This is the side effect. She's being monitored closely by the GP for an inflammatory arthritis condition at the moment and has regular blood tests. There's nothing in her blood to suggest that she is dying of something that causes unexplained weight loss. The weight loss can, however, be explained by the diabetes meds.

And yet. She will not consider this as the explanation. Correlation does not equal causation - the fact that she started taking an appetite suppressing, insulin balancing drug at the same time as her appetite got suppressed is a wild coincidence. Will no one be concerned about her weight loss? How about if she mentions it all the time? Then will we give a shit?

The combination of endless humble bragging ("Guess what size this cardigan is? You won't guess. It's a SMALL. Try it on. I bet it won't fit you - but try it on!") and performative lack of appetite is exhausting.

I am taking mounjaro for weight loss and I am, objectively, much slimmer than her now, and it is driving her MAD. Especially as I haven't told her, just because I cannot be arsed with the conversation it will trigger. My sister knows, my dad knows - we're just keeping it among ourselves, because any conversations about weight and my mother have always been a fucking nightmare. She's still trying to palm off clothes of hers that don't fit any more, and she still makes me try them on in front of her in the hope that she can humiliate me by evidencing I'm bigger than her/make herself feel better by evidencing she's smaller than me. I can't work out what drives her - but she is always trying to get me to try her fucking clothes on.

My husband spends a lot of his time trying to change the subject when we are all together. Same with his mum, actually - she is obsessed with my weight loss. I explained to my husband how her constant questions and wanging on about it made me feel a few months ago and he was initially defensive - like, his mum's just being nice, it's compliments - but now he's seen how rabidly both his mum and mine go on about weight and link it to appearance/moral strength, he can see that their generation is fully fucked up and is a superhero trying to deflect both of them when they go off on one about my weight/their appetite/food in general.