I don’t know if I’m looking for advice or commiseration. Feel free to give me what you got!
Now that summer is here and covid lockdowns are easing, I’ll be spending more time with my mom who is old school when it comes to food. She’s a toothpick that runs half marathons and swims every morning and never has to think about her weight. She’s pro carbs, down on fat, eats three small meals a day, breakfast is the most important meal of the day and thinks losing weight is just a matter of will power. She’s not always in your face with these views, but super passive aggressive about it.
I’m post partum from my third baby, always been a little overweight and the most success I’ve ever had losing is IF and low carb (started after baby 2 and now again with 3). I can maintain a calorie deficit without cravings or fighting hunger all day long, and feel fantastic. Better mood, better feeling, weight is coming off, etc. Just amazing and this is how I want to stay forever.
Then I take the kids to visit my mom. She asks me ten times if I’m going to eat breakfast. I say no. I get the side eye and she asks again 5 minutes later. We’re having sandwiches for lunch and I pile the cheese and meat on my sandwich to help fill me up and she shoots me a look that I’m overeating. All of the things that I do that work, she thinks are the reason I’m overweight. If I were to not eat the bun of a burger, she’d be dropping snide comments all meal. She’s never dieted or restricted food and doesn’t think others should. She thinks we should exercise more and just I don’t know, not be overweight but without actually acknowledging how it happens.
Normally my go to is just not even talking to her about weightloss and wellness because I don’t care what she thinks and don’t want her to get involved at all. But I dread her stupid stares and muffled comments. Most of the time I just eat the damn breakfast and whatever else to not have to deal with it. That’s what I did last weekend, which led to going over my calorie limit, feeling sluggish, canceling my week’s loss, and fighting sugar cravings while getting back on track.
Sorry for the novel. I’m just so discouraged and not sure how I want to handle it. Anyone dealing with non believers in their family? Found any tricks to shut down conversation? Just want to complain with me and get it off your chest?
PS. My mom is very much not a monster about everything, just awful with weight. She has mega blind spots on things she hasn’t experienced and this is one of them. I won’t be cutting her out because of this one thing …. but man is it annoying.
The hardest part of consciously following any diet is saying ‘no’. One thing that normal weight people do that overweight people don’t do is say ‘no’. And the thing is that for naturally skinny/normal weight people, they’re not consciously following a diet. Saying ‘no’ and all the eating habits that maintain their weight are most probably very natural to them to the point where they might not even know they’re doing it.
Normal weight people get told all the time that they should eat breakfast, eat this and not that, eat this thing that I made especially for you. But they say ‘no’ or ‘later’ because they are many times not hungry, or know that certain foods don’t exactly agree with them, and so they feel no guilt about refusing food.
You should tell anyone who’s trying to force-feed you about these very valid reasons. ‘I’m not hungry’ ‘I already ate’ ‘I can’t eat that it doesn’t agree with me’ ‘I’ve had too much junk food’.
And like, just taking a coffee for breakfast is very normal in some countries. That’s why Europeans are thinner as opposed to the US’s idea of dessert for breakfast the size of lunch.
first of all I am really sorry you need to go through this, it really sound challenging… I know you want to avoid this, but her talking cannot hold you back and cause that you let go of your goals. I would probably just snap and tell her very ugly to stop those comments, so I really really respect your patience. I think overall listening to those is better than feeling sluggish and cancelling week’s losses so I would probably suggest to learn how to turn of yourself for a while and just ignore.