Eating through my daughter

[rachelsroses]

I was desperate for my daughter not to have my disordered eating that I’ve made her overweight by buying her all the things I don’t eat.
I have orthorexia and I buy all my forbidden foods for my daughter and now she is overweight.
I eat a healthy meal while she is at school and make a plate of my forbidden food for her for when she gets home.
I know it sounds ridiculous but I’ve only just realised what I’ve been doing and now I don’t know what to do because I don’t want her to have my restrictive diet but I also don’t know what is normal eating.

You are damaging your daughter. This needs to stop. Get help.

And there's your problem, you weigh under 7 stone as an adult woman. How tall are you?

I think OP is probably overestimating how much food she gives her daughter and how overweight her daughter is, given the fact OP eats nothing at all for three days a week and her daughter is only seven stone

I dont think your freak out is about what you feed her.
.she looks fine. Doesn't appear overweight and then you saw she was 7stone 3 which for an underweight anorexic sounds like a lot and you panicked. You don't want to see that you're panicking about her weight like your mum did about hers so you start thinking about this whole orthorexia facade.

A facade tat is there to protect you from seeing your body dysmorphia and anorexia. You need to tell your husband and you GP and seek. Proper mental health help and proper support for your daughter

Only seven stone at age 10? And 4’ something?

I suspect this is a tall child, close to 5 foot weighing just into the overweight category as she prepares for puberty.

Yes it’s no different to injecting her with window cleaner, deliberately infecting cuts or scratches or forcing ingestion of harmful substances, or plain old lying about symptoms that will lead to hospital admissions and interventions to satisfy a parents desire for attention from medical professionals.
All of which I have seen as well along with under and over feeding as an extension of mothers own mental illness

Of course I feel for you, OP, as a fellow female with ED, but your poor little girl.
What you are doing to her IS abusive.
You've intentionally allowed your ED to affect your child and I wonder whether part of you is secretly pleased that your child weighs more than you?
It's wrong on SO many levels, if true.

If she's 4ft 11 she's in a healthy BMI range still. If her daughter is shorter, she's only just at the edge of overweight

At 10 your daughter is on the brink of starting menstruation and her weight sounds perfectly healthy given the rapid period of growth and development she’s about to experience .

Its hard to say from your posts whether you are abusing her in terms of her particular diet or not but the family dynamic around food is certainly abusive.

Again, why is your husband not concerned that he never sees his wife eat more than a few nuts once in a while and is under seven stone? There’s something very wrong with that.

Do not pass it on to your daughter.

Go on the NHS recipes website. Pick breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Make a menu plan for your daughter. Make the food. Give to her.

Since you don't know what normal eating is, then I think this would be a way to be able to give her normal meals without you having to think about it too much. Just stick to the meal plan.

OP - can you tell us what a typical meal you make for your daughter is like?

Kindly OP, you do not have the ability to take care of yourself or your child nutritionally. Please contact your GP to seek urgent support for your eating disorder and to request a referral to a nutritionist who can help you with a meal plan for your DD. It’s unreasonable for you to hold responsibility for your daughter’s nutritional wellbeing when you cannot manage this for yourself either. You are both unsafe and this situation cannot continue.

You could also access private services if you are able to pay for these to get support in place quickly.

I don't see anyone treating this like it isn't a big deal.

I see people acknowledging that the OP has taken the first step in recognising there is a problem. A serious problem.

I also see people realising that the very last thing required here is a pile on which might scare the OP away instead of listening to kindly meant advice and getting RL help.

Op you need Togo to the GP for both of you asap. Don’t take her first time but go alone and share your posts from here if you can’t say it. Don’t talk ‘weight’ or size in front of her yet until you know how you will approach it with professional help. In the meantime slowly reduce her portion sizes and let her snack and fill up on fruit or salad. If you just stop giving her what she’s used to you’ll cause more of a problem.

This is a mental health issue you have and it’s not uncommon. I know a lady from my Ds school who has done virtually the same thing with her Ds- at my Ds 6th birthday party the Ds didn’t have a happy meal like all the others but had a Big Mac meal and nuggets. He was much bigger than the other kids back then and has just got bigger while mum is like a stick. They are in their 20’s now and this young man is lovely but he has several health issues due to how overweight he is, he cannot work and he is depressed more often than not as he has never been able to physically keep up with the rest of the group or his low confidence has meant he doesn’t want to join in (sports activities/ theme parks/ nights out) it’s really sad especially because his mum loves I’m so much and still does but she has done this to him quite literally.

Please feel proud of yourself for recognising this and wanting to make a change. It’s never too late, well done- genuinely x

Agree with you both.

OP has ruined her daughter's relationship with food and her own body for the rest of her life through this abuse. All the eating struggles OP has suffered through, so will her daughter, and it will probably be worse.

Break the cycle, OP. Get an intervention, get help. If you don't want it for yourself then please do it for your daughter. She deserves better. She deserves to be healthy. She is her own person, not an extension of you to use to satisfy your own disordered desires. Do you want her to suffer like you have?

Equally - Case n point how warped and disordered this is
the little girl needs oversight in her life around her diet to protect her from ongoing abuse and risk of serious harm

I was your daughter. It damaged me for a long time. Well into my thirties i had an very difficult relationaship with food. My mother has never recognised what she did and we haven't spoken for four years due to various mental health issues she has as a result of anorexia. Don't be us.

Hi OP. I'm really sorry you are in the grips of an ED. It's a very painful place to be. My grandma was anorexic, my mum was and is anorexic, and I battle it too.

You might feel other posters are being harsh, but I'd urge you to take their comments as a wake up call and tough love.

You can't easily resolve this on your own. Firstly, you need help with your ED. If you weigh so much less as a grown woman than your 10 year old child, that is a concern about your weight.

Secondly, did the doctor she saw at the surgery say she was clinically obese, or did you do the calculation yourself online after she was weighed? If the former, ask your GP for advice in her weight. If the second one, you must be mindful that your view of food and body size is warped by your ED. Some good ideas to challenge this would be to find recipes that are easy to cook for kids, and start cooking with her. A simple plan could be beans or eggs of toast for breakfast, a packed lunch with at least two fruit and veg in it, and a dinner with at least two veg. Having her picl the dinner recipe and cook with you could be a nice way to start to repair her relationship with food.

With respect, @CarolinaLeah, OP’s daughter sounds fine for her age weight wise, and advising OP to reduce DD’s portion sizes and impose rules on what she can eat when she’s obviously so very unwell with her own eating disorder might not be the best advice.

OP needs to see her GP and get real help for her own anorexia and family dynamic.

She says she weighs less than a normal ten year old, eats nothing for many days at a time and then just a few nuts and a bit of cheese on the nights she has to see her husband, and she says this is ‘greedy’.

Framing the problem as being about her daughter’s weight and how she feels about giving her ‘bad’ foods is a sign that she needs to be relieved of that responsibility as soon as possible. I hope that help is forthcoming and that this family can turn this around for all their sakes.

Well the OP has not clarified how tall the DD is. She says 4 ft something. People are assuming she’s almost 5ft and saying she’s fine. The only way she’d be in the healthy range is if she’s 4’11”. Otherwise she would be overweight and the OP says she clinically is. She also hasn’t said how much of this forbidden food she gives her daughter.

Either way this girl is growing up with a deeply fucked relationship to food. Anyone who lets their eating disorder affect their children should be ashamed. There are so many resources out there. Even if I was deep in the grips, I’d at least try.

Hi OP, it's good you came here for some help and maybe some compassion for yourself and your daughter.

Is there a way you can reach out to a professional to help you manage this issue?

You could request to see a dietician and they can help build a meal plan for your daughter. You could explain that you're not sure what healthy eating looks like for a growing girl, who is probably (if not already), nearing puberty. Nothing would seem strange about that request from a mother.

In the meantime, if you can't resist the compulsion to buy the foods you've forbidden yourself, have you thought about putting them in the bin or down the sink so you don't give this stuff to your daughter?

Can you nourish your daughter with good foods and habits instead of trying to treat her with things you've forbidden for yourself?

With compassion 💞

Disordered eating is so bloody hard. I grew up with a mum with such a focus on food and yoyo dieting, the constant comments about weight and looks at her children. My sister starved herself, I binged for years. It took having a child and seeing I could give myself an increased cancer risk from the acid throwing up that made me come to, stop and get therapy. It was weirdly one of the charity bake off cancer episodes which somehow got through to me, watching someone dying who wasn’t bad to their body. The noise never completely goes away, it’s a mental issue and to me feels like an addiction. You know you need help, you’re hopefully at an infection point. Please get therapy, what you’re doing is hurting you, and unintentionally now your daughter. You’ve realised that, know you’re a good mum and you care, but take the actions. Also tell your husband so he can help both of you,

Op you are abusing your child. Get help immediately.

I would start by being honest with your husband and asking for his help making changes. My mother-in-law used to do this to my husband and he was clinically obese for many years before managing to lose it. He is now a healthy weight and when his Mum comes to visit he doesn't let her do this- he gets angry when she brings junk food, hides it, or says we can share it if she has some too.
I also had an eating disorder many years ago but eventually overcame it. It's not a case of "Either I control food or it controls me". Once you gradually dissociate food from fear, your body starts to self-regulate and you learn to eat healthy food when you're hungry, automatically and without it being an issue. But you will need help breaking the fear/control cycle.