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!!!!!

I didn't say I did know, I said I strongly suspect

You need to face several things @rachelsroses

• You are anorexic not orthorexic
• You don’t currently have the capacity to know what a healthy diet or weight for your daughter is so you need your husband to start taking responsibility as well as professionals if needed if he too is disordered.
• Mumsnet is the worst place to seek advice on weight and diet for anyone but especially young girls. Threads like this will have people who are extremely disordered in their own eating giving you what they assure you is expert advice but is far from it.

I am sorry you have such an extreme eating disorder but your priority has to be ensuring your habits whether it’s starving yourself or eating through her, are not impacting her and that she is introduced to a standardised healthy eating plan and your insecurities about her weighing more than you stop now - chat GPT can help with a diet plan if a dietitian is not available. Have your husband look at it as well so your restrictions tendencies do not dictate the plan.

And it needs to start from today.

@rachelsroses What do you typically feed her, for an average breakfast, lunch and evening meal? When you say "forbidden foods" is she on a permanent diet of pizza and chips, or is it just that she is eating normal food that you cannot bring yourself to eat? Does she have homecooked meals including fresh meat and vegetables?

The most important thing as others have said that you have picked this up now and are aware of the problem, if it is a problem.

This seems very wise.

Your mental illness has abused your child. People with anorexia often feed others as part of the disorder as I’m sure you know. You are now in a cycle of using your child as part of your illness.

What you need to do is tell your DH & your Gp & hopefully another trusted family member or friend that you have anorexia and that it is out of control.

You should not be your child’s primary carer when it comes to food.

I hope that you can get treatment.

You don’t know that and absolutely can’t diagnose people on a forum.

This is horrific and I can't believe how calm people are being about it

Well done for recognising what you're doing OP. Understanding your own unconscious actions is actually the key to fixing disordered eating, so you're on the right track already.

I have had nearly every eating disorder going, but I've been fully recovered for 16 years. CBT for disordered eating was the key. You can buy a self-help book with exercises and worksheets and then find a therapist who will work through it all with you - a PP mentioned Beat, they are a good organisation who can help you.

Your daughter will absolutely have picked up on your eating habits and, consciously or not, will be comparing herself to you and finding herself wanting. It is essential that you model genuinely healthy and non-maladaptive eating behaviours for her if you want her to actually have a healthy relationship with food. The book How to Get Your Kid to Eat (but not too much) by Ellyn Satter might also be helpful here.

Good luck and feel free to message me if you want to talk.

Some of us have supported loved ones through this. Hysteria and diagnosing people over the internet doesn’t help anybody.

equally, this is a bonkers post

I am one such person and I think we are not hysterical enough about the impact of eating disorders on other people inc family members. Much like living with an alcoholic the damage can be irreparable.

Being calm is the only way to deal with it though isn’t it? It’s a mental illness. It’s like suggesting you have a good chat with someone in psychosis and explain they’re not trying to murder them.

its serious, but that doesn’t mean hysteria.

it also, in this case, doesn’t mean immediate action is required. Complex problems take him to stabilise and progress

The child in this case is 10. She is a vulnerable child whose mother is relating to her through a mental illness, so yes I think a level of immediate action is required, such as making her DH aware if it, and talking to a GP.

I wouldn’t try to reason with someone in psychosis but I would not leave them as the primary carer to a child.

There are also practical issues - someone who hasn’t eaten in 3 days probably shouldn’t be driving etc.

That is different to expecting an immediate solution.

@JumpingB3an

According to the DSM-5, diagnostic criteria for anorexia includes:

• Restriction of energy intake relative to requirements, leading to a significantly low body weight in the context of age, sex, developmental trajectory and physical health
• Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even when significantly underweight
• Disturbance about body weight or shape, undue influence of body weight or shape on self-evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of current low body weight

OP is free to do what she wants and you and others are free to ‘Poor you’ her but a 10 year old is now being impacted by her mother’s compulsions around food and will continue to be unless OP faces up to her reality.
If this was gambling or drinking would you be as up in arms about people diagnosing her?

Eating disorders are as prevalent and untreated as they are because very often they allow those with them to fit the slim / skinny idealised beauty standard, and is therefore an acceptable and even glamourised form of addiction or compulsion in a way alcohol or smoking or gambling is not.

If seeing what I and others have written shocks OP into understanding she is not currently capable of feeding her child correctly and needs help, that’s a win. Your outrage on her behalf is your concern.

No we can’t diagnose- however the signs are clearly there that there is a big problem:

3 days a week - she is eating nothing
1 day a week she’s eating a can of tuna (circa 100 calories)

I am also in the position of seeing a loved one go though anorexia and it has been horrific. The illness didn’t quite manage to kill them but it came pretty close. She was fed via a nasal tube under section and with restraint. A lack of food screws with you mentally just as much as physically making the cycle even harder to tackle. Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder but recovery is possible.

It’s not hugely different to alcohol addiction, and in this case it’s arguably worse as the child is being made a part of it.

This is an internet chat forum. What form
do your immediate actions take?

even if you knew this person you couldn’t make any of that happen

So if you were talking to an alcoholic with a 10 year old, so you really believe your posts on an internet forum would shock her into sobriety?

@Backedoffhackedoff I would hope that if enough people said the same thing to an alcoholic in denial it would have impact, that it would challenge their belief that they should continue having full responsibility for the health of a child who is being actively harmed by their actions and will continue to be so until they accept they need support for the child’s sake if not their own.

Are you using alcohol as an example because you think there’s a difference in adult addictions and compulsions having long lasting damage to their children due to the behaviour they are modelling or the care they are giving as a result, because one is driven by food and another by eating habits?

If OP had come on here saying her child was obese because she is too and was sharing her eating habits of having 3 takeaways a day and 4 litres of sugary drinks, everyone who is currently concerned about OP being picked on and misdiagnosed would not be as wooly in their response, would be shouting child abuse from the rooftops and absolutely would demand OP stop eating so much immediately - and would use words like stuff, gorge and pig to describe her because being fat because of an eating disorder is greed and being malnourished due to one is being health consciousness gone a little far. It’s the other side of the same coin.

I’m not so arrogant nor so simplistic to say they would immediately become sober in the same way I wouldn’t expect OP to start eating immediately. But OP needs to understand that due to her issues she cannot be a good judge of what her child’s care needs are right now when it comes to food or weight. Whether she gets help or not for her eating disorder is her concern - the issue is the harm being caused directly by her behaviour; which does need support.

@Backedoffhackedoff because nuts and cheese are protein and fats. Not carbs. Chocolate, crisps, bread, fruit are all carbs - just sugar under a different guise. In terms of insulin response whether calories are coming from carbs or protein and fat makes a difference metabolically. A heavily restricted diet (likely ketosis) with calorie dense protein and fat occasionally will cause less weight gain and perceived hunger than a restricted diet with lower calorie carb based snacks.

What are your posts trying to achieve?

I have no doubt MNs and similar has helped many people, much like many communities both offline and online do.

I missed that.

This is such a sad post.

We have a friend who grew up with a mother living with anorexia. Shes in her 70s but totally crippled by osteoporosis and heart disease as a result of under nutrition all these years.

The over feeding of your child is probably the least of your concerns, op. The emotional impact of having a chronically ill mother - and unfortunately a serious but poorly understood disease - will be far worse.

Op, please do seek care. It's so hard but so important. Youve done nothing wrong, you have a disease and you do need help for it. You have to be brave and get the help you need to fix this - your daughter needs you

Sending you much strength for your journey ahead.

Because you are being unkind to no benefit. Trying to make the OP feel like shit will big make her “pull herself together” or “scare” her into recovery, but it can very easily go the other way

I am using alcohol as the poster above has referred to it as a comparison, suggesting that mumsnetters would be outraged by an alcoholic and bully them into sobriety no problem

Anorexia is different to bulimia and binge eating.

It is genetically driven with environmental interactions - people with anorexia have been shown to have different brain structures which is why they can go without eating for so long and over ride those incredibly compelling hunger signals.

While binge eating is also an eating disorder, it simple is not the flip side of anorexia. It might seem intuitive but misrepresents the absolute suffering, torture and even psychosis that anorexia brings.