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 don’t know that. There are some similarities between the two but also distinct differences.

Right. Unfortunately eating disorders are extremely common. It’s a horrible disease. More young people are getting diagnosed and receiving help. It’s critical to acknowledge it and seek help asap, then recovery is absolutely possible. We have 2 family members fully recovered and I know of many others too, from our own experience. It sounds like OP has not had any help. Please seek help asap … for your sake and your daughter.

Trust me as the mother of a child who had Anorexia it’s not impossible to do.

She's giving herself a label which I don't think is correct.

I don’t eat anything mon- wed and then on Thursday I just eat a few slices of cheese of maybe some nuts.
Another day I may just have a tin of tuna or something and then most days I will eat nothing until the evening when I’ll sit with my husband and eat cheese and nuts so he thinks I’m greedy and still hungry after the imaginary meals I’ve eaten.
I eat omelettes sometimes but I don’t eat anything else.

@rachelsroses How much do you weigh and what's your BMI?

OP doesn’t not sound equipped to be able to feed her child a balanced diet, telling her to restrict food is only going to end badly for the child in this situation. She needs help with her own mental illness, this isn’t about her daughter.

Christ the dysfunction is evident

Stop over feeding your child - your behaviour is selfish, reckless and could cause her life long issues

In the kindest way you are seriously ill and need to see your gp asap

OP you need to get urgent help, not eating for days at a time is dangerous for you and you’re giving your daughter the very issues I’m sure you don’t want her to have. You must have a basic idea of decent food for a child, stop feeding her junk for your satisfaction. You need to go to the GP and contact BEAT and stop over feeding her, she’s her own person not there to satisfy your urges.

Surely your DH isn’t blind and can see you’re visibly underweight? It’s weird he thinks you’re “greedy” when you sit eating beside him that’s all. I’m imagining you must be underweight anyway based on a weekly diet of a tin of tuna, some cheese and nuts…

Please seek medical help, for your DD’s sake if not your own.

You need to get yourself well. You can't help your daughter until you are healed/cured/in remission. Make an appointment at your GP and take it from there. At this rate you won't be alive to feed your daughter soon enough.

So you think she is feeding her daughter a balanced healthy diet? I can’t see anything suggesting she is and my number one concern would be for a young girl with parents who can’t seem to put her welfare first, not a middle aged woman who is very aware of what she is doing and the example she is setting and has chosen thus far not to engage in outside help for her disorder.

With this ladies age/ history?

she’s not a 16 year old. Im not trying to scare anyone, I am trying to make it clear to posters that this isn’t a poP to the GP and you’ll be fixed situation. Significant progress could take years and that isn’t aligned with the daughter so the daughter needs to be prioritised

I couldn’t agree more with the poster who asked people to stop talking about the daughters weight and for OP to stop trying to control it.

What food does he think you’re eating? Surely he realises that no actual ‘meal’ food is coming into the house via food shops?

You’ve admitted yourself that her Dad doesn’t eat healthily. If he’s overweight, it is not his metabolism. It’s his diet if junk food. The real question is: are you as a family willing to transform your cooking culture and eating habits? To answer that question tou need to discuss it. Are you willing to replace pizza and chips with a pan fried pork chop with carrots and broccoli? Would all three of you sit at a table together and eat it?

No. Do not tell the OP she should be doing anything about daughter’s diet APART from finding methods to stop feeding her the forbidden foods. OP is not able to think about healthy balanced diets the way you are- and this is ok. The daughter’s diet isn’t an emergency.

If you care about your husband and child, it is imperative you tell your husband the truth and you commit to stopping the physical harm of your daughter by obtaining effective professional help. This might take years and there will be lots of false starts etc. You are enjoying biting her food and cooking it because you are literally starving. This is a common enough response of anorexics.

My 10 year old daughter is 4ft 11 and she’s not the tallest in her class.

Maybe read my post again, I said OP is NOT equipped to feed her child a balanced diet whilst she is in the throws of severe anorexia.

The whole family’s relationship with food is an emergency. They all eat separately. The poor girl never experiences a family meal. Eating is a solitary event, not a communal one. The food on offer is ‘forbidden’ foods that make her overweight.

Op bas been careful not to tell us her daughters actual height which I would bet my left arm is no shorter than 4 foot 9. She's JUST overweight while tall and on the brink of puberty

Op is anorexic, her perceptions are based on her own weight as an adult woman being under 7 stone. I highly doubt she's feeding her daughter as much as she thinks she is as she is not a reliable narrator.

Her freak out is about seeing that her child is heavier than her, she obviously didn't think her child looked overweight as she states 'i just thought she had her dad's metabolism' so before seeing the scale she was under impression she was fine

A normal parent might look at that weight, check a calculator and dgo, ooft she's at the upper end of normal or just into overweight, now she had just had a big lunch and was wearing her full school uniform including Dr marten shoes so it's possible her weight is a little lower. I might just take pizza off the weekly rotation for a bit and replace it with a sturdy just for now and I'll encourage her to take fruit instead of crisps at snack at school...

Op did none of this, she made it a bit herself and panicked as it could unsettled this orthorexia label she'd put on herself. Which aho s she is in active eating disorder and denial because nothing about her eating says orthorexia. She has anorexia and she's upset her daughter has reached a weight higher than hers.

My mum was 4 foot 9 and freaked out when I, a girl who as 5 foot 4 at the time was 9 stone at 11. Set me a trajectory of terrible eating for the rest of my life that I still spend time rejigging. That's what OP is about to do to her daughter and already has to an exteng

None of this is kind. Totally unnecessary. OP is ill

She's not saying her dad is overweight, she's saying he's slim despite eating unhealthy food and as her daughter looked slim she assumed he had his metabolism. Which means we are not talking about a massively overweight child here that's why op won't tell us her height

Exactly this. It is telling that the OP has not answered any of the many posts asking what she is giving her daughter to eat or confirming her height. This lack of information means no one can objectively say whether the DD is overweight or eating unhealthily. Please get help OP.

Reading this thread has made me realise that what I had started to suspect about my own mum's relationship with food. Its affect on me is a factor in my own issues around food. I struggle with eating for comfort and eating secretly and need to get help. I am okay when I'm not stressed, but I've a lot going on and am not sleeping well either, which makes things harder for me. I've also had long periods (like ten years at a time) with being fine. I just have never tackled the underlying issues.

This is not in anyway an emergency.

the family are not able to just “reset”

the reality is they could all continue like this for years, as they have for years. The very definition of not an emergency.

what OP needs to prioritise is finding coping methods to reduce or stop feeding her daughter the forbidden foods.

My granddaughter was a similar weight, at 10. She was under the hospital because of allergies and a bowel condition. They didn't consider that weight a issue, especially as she was hitting puberty. She is about to be weighed in year 6. Wait and see what they say. My friend has anorexia and she is now cut out of so many things, because she won't eat. At nearly 60 she spends most of her time ill and exhausted. It's a serious mental health issue and like a lot of MH issues, it gets passed on to the child. If you give a shit about your DD, get help and feed her foods that will nourish her body and not destroy it, along with her teeth.