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.

@SatinPajamas

It was and has always been a huge factor. It’s pretty grim tbh. Men liking women “teeny tiny” 🤢. Need I say more. If you don’t think it’s a factor then fine. We will have to agree to disagree.

What do you think her point is!? I don’t get it. I would just enjoy mine and say how nice it is!

🤣🤣🤣

I love them. But I couldn’t eat a whole one😆

Hard disagree. When I serve up I plate up a normal portion for eveithen chuck a big handful of extra meat on my dad's and husbands plate, because I know they will complain there wasn't enough food if I don't. The women really aren't missing out by not having this extra food because they never finish what I give them anyway. I'm not going to waste a load of food to make a feminist point, that's ridiculous.

It's far more common to have a healthy weight man married to an overweight woman than the other way round, precisely because everyone gets the same amount of food on the plate at dinner but women don't need all that food. Men and women literally can't eat the same amount all the time without one ending up too thin or the other ending up too fat. Wanging on about penis portions is just a fast track road to obesity, which women are welcome to if course if that's what they want, but they do need to acknowledge that they actually need less food.

If that was my mum, I'd have stabbed her leftover spud and scoffed it, while staring at her. Or next meal give her a plate with 5 peas cut in half, if I even possessed the skill to cut peas in half!

I don't give a monkeys what anyone eats or doesn't eat - just stop talking about it. Had enough to eat? Put your knife and fork down and shut up.

It's as bad when somebody is on yet another diet and talks all through the meal about portion sizes and what is working well for her and what we should try for ourselves.
The following week then, she's backing to eating asmuch as the rest of us......till the next diet

I’d try and remember why she’s like that. Women for generations have been conditioned to be ashamed of hunger and eating. It’s sad.

It wasn’t 2 pieces of salmon though.

I get it - it’s the comments and the implied message that you’re all greedy. TBH I’d stop inviting her to meals “as I know you don’t enjoy sit down family meals because you eat like a bird”: leave her out .

Disagree all you want. It's rude to assume how hungry someone is because they have a vagina.

But it wasn’t two pieces of salmon.. 🙄

I noticed when my DD was born some Mothers were almost bragging about how small their DD’s were in comparison to mine. It was really very odd. They were all babies, all healthy but mine was 9 lbs 6 at birth and theirs were 2-3 lbs smaller so they’d make a massive deal out of it, go on about their tiny clothing compared to mine etc. My DD is 14 now and 5 ft 9, perfectly normal weight but very tall! It is a bizarre thing with some females from birth seemingly.

She's 75?
It's really quite common to have to eat like a bird at that age, but rather than accepting that or showing an interest in it, it makes you "enraged". Seriously?

Poor woman!

Considering 70% of men are overweight or obese vs 62% of women I’d argue you’re wrong about this. More men are fat they just carry it all on a big beer belly rather than all over so people don’t realise how enormous they are.

Or, all eat beforehand and eat as little as possible of the fake meal as possible.

So many people on this thread are missing the point. Lots of old (and young) people have small appetites and that’s totally ok - what isn’t ok is the comments about how full they are and how they possibly can’t eat all the food on the plate (when it’s a normal portion and they’re saying it to make others feel bad) and how can everyone else possibly eat that much and judging people for their food intake.

For the "sniffers" @Bettercallsalli 🙂

James Martin & Mary Berry

I had a new neighbour move in downstairs, French lady with a DD same age as mine. Invited her and the DD for tea and cookies - I made choc chip cookies, prob about 2.5/3” diameter. She broke one in half, held it to her mouth with both hands, and nibbled a crescent moon out of it while looking down. She was fine with her DD having two of them, with milk. Definitely some sort of issue with consuming food and being seen to consume food.

I aka have a friend who I’ve known for years who can’t eat without and entire internal conversation first. She has a super high metabolism and eats all day while remaining slim. She eats a balanced and healthy diet, cooks decently too. But any time there’s something around that none of us should eat too much of - cake, pastries, cookies etc - she will look at the plate and you can actually see her lips moving as she runs through whether she should or shouldn’t have one, how much of one she should have. She always, ALWAYS, goes on to eat a decent portion but really really quickly. Shoveling it in, crumbs flying, as though it won’t have happened if she flies through it.

Both are disordered forms of eating, and truthfully I feel sorry for both of them to not be able to just eat sensibly but freely.

Quite. If the default is a "normal" portion then the men get extra why do they need food over and above "normal"? Sexist bullshit.

Why does it make a different what someone else does or doesn't eat? Enjoy your own meal

If you gave me 2 roasties we would have an issue. It's the best part. The main part. The yummiest part. It would royally piss me off if I saw 4 roasties on my partners plate because he's a man.

You can't judge your guests needs by sex. Some women are very active and need more. Some men are very inactive and need less. In my case, I don't eat more than one meal a day often, so my one meal is a good portion. There is more at play here over calorie needs than if someone has a penis.

Of course misogyny alone wasn’t the reason. Life was tougher, food wasn’t readily available, fast food didn’t exist or microwave meals, nothing was convenient.
Only well off families ate in restaurants.
My DGM loved baking, she had a lot of children, no washing machine and a busy market job.
Nowadays we have robotic vacuum cleaners, dryers, air fryer, food home delivery services. A midweek scone and a Sunday slice apple pie with fresh cream was the height of the treats available in the 50’s.

Just say fine, take the plate away and let her sit and watch the rest of you eat.

My mum and my sister are like this. I really don't care how much they eat, we are all healthy weights. But it's so tedious and annoying to have to listen to at every single meal with them.

Agree to disagree indeed.

I've only ever heard teeny tiny on MN used by women to mock other women.

I think the main things that kept my grandmother's generation thin was war and poverty. Being thin has always been fashionable in my life time but very few in my mum's generation or mine actually achieve or maintain in because they grew up actually having enough food to eat and enough money to buy it and just like eating too much.

Shame and desire of thinness doesn't actually produce tiny appetites and fear of taking too much. Diets can't be sustained long term. What creates permanent tiny appetites and fear of over eating is the scarcity mindset created by poverty and war rations where you know if you take too much there will be nothing for tomorrow or your children does. That's why they can't cope with cooking too much in case it is wasted and reheat the same thing 4 times until it's gone and thing all us plump young women who eat uninhibited because there will always be more are greedy. Will power runs out, the fear of scarcity from poverty trauma never runs out. There's decades of science proving that.

If you don't agree, fine, but no need to talk to me like I'm stupid because I don't agree with the simple "it's all mens fault" that MN loves.