Speaking of young girls and food...

[Cass]

I recall my mother constantly dieting.  The food available in the house was all 'low calorie', 'no calorie' diet crap that never filled my growing body.

At some point I internalized the fact that my thighs were too big and spent grade 7 eating only a granola bar and apple a day.  Thankfully that didn't turn into a life long issue, today I eat 'real' food when I'm hungry and keep a fairly consistent weight.

I recall new "ladies" magazines appearing each week, every cover had some new diet to follow.  I might have been about 13 when I commented that if they really worked, there would be no need for a new one every single week.

At about 15 I bumped into my mother at the mall when I was with friends.  I was eating a cookie and she pointed out how 'fattening' that would be (in front of my friends!)

My grandmother had only toast when we took her out for breakfast recently, because she was a "few pounds over".  She's 86

What were the attitudes surrounding food when you were growing up?

[busymom]

I know what you mean, Cass.  When I was growing up, Mom would drink nothing but skim milk (the blue stuff).    I at least allow myself 1% or 2%.


Mom really did struggle with her weight when she was raising us kids, but she did get her weight under control when I was in high school, & got even thinner after I got married & moved out.  But, yes, there was such an emphasis on what was "good" or "bad" food.  Maybe that's why I prefer baking to cooking. 

[giramomma]

When my mom wanted to lose weight, I was expected to support her by losing weight along with her. (We ate the exactly same things and exercised together during the day. I wasn't allowed to eat what I wanted to for breakfast and lunch.)

So, I just assumed I was fat in high school. Because why else would my mom ask me to lose weight along with her?

Eventually I realized that was was never fat in high school. And that our relationship was emotionally unhealthy. Unfortunately, I finally "got it" as a (morbidly) obese adult. For a variety of equally messed up reasons, I don't have much of a desire to lose the weight. 

ETA: My mom would also say that she couldn't wait to lose all the weight she needed to so that could raid my closet and wear my clothes. I don't know how that thought emotionally fulfilled her, but for me, it just made me sad. Because we couldn't even have normal boundaries over clothes.

[Cass]

Jul 18, 2013 20:17:11 GMT -5 giramomma said:

When my mom wanted to lose weight, I was expected to support her by losing weight along with her. (We ate the exactly same things and exercised together during the day. I wasn't allowed to eat what I wanted to for breakfast and lunch.)

So, I just assumed I was fat in high school. Because why else would my mom ask me to lose weight along with her?

Eventually I realized that was was never fat in high school. And that our relationship was emotionally unhealthy. Unfortunately, I finally "got it" as a (morbidly) obese adult. For a variety of equally messed up reasons, I don't have much of a desire to lose the weight. 

Same here!  Dieting became like a 'bonding' thing (yup, weird).
Mom never was big on exercise, she just wanted to believe she was eating 'well'. The 'low calorie' food of the 80's has been replaced by the 'no fat' stuff today. 

[giramomma]

Jul 18, 2013 20:29:05 GMT -5 Cass said:

Jul 18, 2013 20:17:11 GMT -5 giramomma said:

Same here!  Dieting became like a 'bonding' thing (yup, weird).
Mom never was big on exercise, she just wanted to believe she was eating 'well'. The 'low calorie' food of the 80's has been replaced by the 'no fat' stuff today. 

Except that I was really eating low calorie food. I was allowed 200 calories for breakfast and 200 calories for lunch. We already were eating low/no fat for dinners. (Mom did lots of salads, legume soups, etc for dinner. Always a ton of veggies. Fruit was for desert.)

Call me crazy, but I'm not going to try to get my kids on a 1000 calorie diet when they are in high school. Especially with an hour of aerobic exercise in a day.

[Cass]

I'd be the last to call you crazy.  Kids should eat what they need, provided it's food, not chemicals

[goldensam]

I'm lazy, so I will just copy/paste my post from the other thread. 

In my mom's opinion, I was obese at size 4-6 in HS and she let me know it. I still remember her telling me once that if I looked in the mirror, I would never eat again. I am now almost 30 and I still have a completely unhealthy relationship with food. I will starve myself, then binge, then eat in secret, then exercise maniacally, then do it all again. My weight swings wildly in 40 lb ups and downs. (PCOS makes the weight cycles even more fun.)

If you ask my mom now, she was just trying to help, even if then I didn't really need help. I know now she was projecting a lot of her insecurities onto me. She's much better now and I think she would be horrified if I ever told her some of the things she said, but I do know her insecurities are still there. When I visit, I have to hear 100x how fat she is because her size 2 jeans are getting tight and she may have to buy a 4. I'm a size 12.

[teen persuasion]

My mom has made wedding cakes, pastries, etc. since I was a kid.  She loves to experiment w/ all of that stuff; I can remember helping her make croissants by hand (lots of rolling out dough and butter, over and over), homemade ice cream, Easter candy, you name it.  There was always leftover stuff: the domed top of cake layers that she'd cut off, extra frosting, cookies, danish...  Since it was always around, we lost our desire for it.  Yeah, we'd eat some, but not to extremes; we became selective.  I prefer chocolate cake over yellow, and butter cake over regular, and I despise white cake, so I'd only help myself to some of the kind I liked, and only if it was fresh.  Eat what you like, but moderation in all things.

We never did diets in our family, and we are all generally thin.  Mom also likes "real food", so it was always butter, cream, etc.  She went back to college when my brother and I were in college, and got a culinary degree.  She still does all the desserts for family get-togethers, and the kids get to pick what kind of birthday "cake" they want, but they tend to pick interesting things: pumpkin cheesecake, chocolate mousse, baked alaska (Dad's favorite), cannoli cake, grasshopper pie, etc.

[Deleted]

My mom always had us on some kind of diet but it was around health and eliminating toxins and that kind of thing. How much we ate was never limited. I remember the sugar free one. I mean no sugar so any food that contained sugar was gone. I couldn't even have ketchup. I'M CANADIAN!!! You can't take my ketchup! My brother and I would sneak to the store at lunch time and buy pure sugar candy. That one was a complete failure.

[Miss Tequila]

Jul 18, 2013 21:05:27 GMT -5 teen persuasion said:

My mom has made wedding cakes, pastries, etc. since I was a kid.  She loves to experiment w/ all of that stuff; I can remember helping her make croissants by hand (lots of rolling out dough and butter, over and over), homemade ice cream, Easter candy, you name it.  There was always leftover stuff: the domed top of cake layers that she'd cut off, extra frosting, cookies, danish...  Since it was always around, we lost our desire for it.  Yeah, we'd eat some, but not to extremes; we became selective.  I prefer chocolate cake over yellow, and butter cake over regular, and I despise white cake, so I'd only help myself to some of the kind I liked, and only if it was fresh.  Eat what you like, but moderation in all things.

We never did diets in our family, and we are all generally thin.  Mom also likes "real food", so it was always butter, cream, etc.  She went back to college when my brother and I were in college, and got a culinary degree.  She still does all the desserts for family get-togethers, and the kids get to pick what kind of birthday "cake" they want, but they tend to pick interesting things: pumpkin cheesecake, chocolate mousse, baked alaska (Dad's favorite), cannoli cake, grasshopper pie, etc.

Will your mom adopt me?

[zibazinski]

My mom was 6 inches taller than me and weighed the same as I did. We both had ribs showing. She got fat after my dad died. I think she just stopped caring about herself.   I never saw her diet and I sure never did. I could eat two bags of Lays potato chips in one sitting. I'm amazed at that to this day. I could eat a thing of neopolitan ice cream on my own. God, I'd love my old metabolism back.

[raeoflyte]

My mom was/is completely awesome. Even though she was heavy she never made food or weight any kind of issue. I was working full time at a restaurant and women's clothing store before I had any concept of how weird women are about weight.

I wish I could manage to do half as good a job as she did, but already feel like I'm failing.

[whoisjohngalt]

Well, since I didn't grow up in US the ONLY conversations about food were  - if we could get any.  We didn't have any fruits or veggies during winter months - pretty much Oct - April. 

I really don't remember any "weight" conversations in my school among my peers, etc.

My neighbor was a tennis pro and I remember "exercising" with her once or twice - she took me with her on her morning run.  I was  12 ?  I think.  Yeah, I didn't like it and never did any kind of running ever again.

One thing I will say is that we had a much more active life style.  Since there was only  3 TV stations NO ONE ever spend any real time watching TV, we were outside a lot, playing, etc.

I didn't learn about all that dieting and weight issues until I was in my 20's in US and could actually understand English


ETA:  One more thing - we didn't have any processed food AT ALL.  It must have been really funny watching me when I was trying to figure out what were those frozen boxes with pics of "dinners" on them.  It took me a few years to find out about it.

[steph08]

Jul 18, 2013 21:20:42 GMT -5 raeoflyte said:

My mom was/is completely awesome. Even though she was heavy she never made food or weight any kind of issue. I was working full time at a restaurant and women's clothing store before I had any concept of how weird women are about weight.

I wish I could manage to do half as good a job as she did, but already feel like I'm failing.

My mom was the same. She has always been 40 lbs or so overweight (blames my brother, who "caused" her to gain 50 pounds while pregnant ) but she never talked about diets or anything like that when we were kids. We were allowed to eat what we wanted, though besides Oreos and ice cream, we didn't really have snacks in the house. We had pizza two times a month or so and only ever ate out if we had activities that were going to keep us away from home for extended periods. Mostly it was a protein, a starch, and a veggie for dinner.

[thyme4change]

My family always ate a very balanced diet.  We only ate at meal time - rarely ever snacked.  We didn't buy popcorn at the movie theater, or eat when we went to the mall.  We would go to expensive restaurants and enjoy a large variety of cuisine.  We are all thin, and we all grew up with a healthy relationship to eating.  My mother, however, would talk often about her weight, so I would think about it a lot.  

My father would run every day, and I still have guilt and weirdo feelings about not exercising much.   I haven't found anything I like to do - therefore it is an obligation.  It brings me no joy.  I don't think I will ever have a happy feeling around exercise.  I don't know how to pass along a love of activity to my kids, because I don't know what that feels like.

[zibazinski]

Honestly, I hate exercising but I've got some weight I want to lose. Regardless of how thin you are, when kids and middle age and menopause hit, you've got some extra weight. I'm short and my body can't handle it well as in my lower back and knees hurt. By no means am I overweight, I'm in the middle of my BMI but my body says NO to the extra weight and it isn't much to most people. I do a trampoline class and just love it. I call it my bounce class and its fun. I sweat and my heart pounds and I have a ball. Find something fun and just do it.

[Deleted]

My Mom was always really tiny when we were growing up, but she never dieted. I think raising her brood kept her weight in check! 

Food was not an issue in our house; except for the cost of it! That, and standing with the fridge door open -- when we got a Polaroid camera one of the first things Mom did was take a picture of the open fridge and told us to look at that if we wanted to know what was in there! 

We rarely had sugar cereal or pop/soda/coke in the house. We drank a lot of knock-off Kool Aide though! Dinner was always a protein/veggie/starch just like steph08 said. And snacks were fruit or veggies (she always had one of these filled with carrot and celery stick in the fridge)



Plus, she didn't have a big budget for junk food. She'd buy the store-brand knock off of Salerno Butter Cookies (the ones that look like little flowers with a hole in the middle) and if we wanted a sugar fix a couple of them would have to do.  

[happyscooter]

Anybody remember 'Sego'?  Or 'Seego"? 

Diet shakes?  Or the candy 'AIDS'.  Like chocolate caramel squares?

[Cass]

I remember "AIDS"- my mother and aunts used them around the same time HIV was all over the news.  My grandmother had a fit confusing the two

[Deleted]

my mom has been overweight as long as I've known her, but so have almost all of her siblings. She didn't believe in the Clean Plate Club, but I had all kinds of processed crap growing up - Tang, Sunny D, Cheetos, Doritos, Soft Batch cookies, ets. When I was little, my mom only fed me what I liked (grilled cheese, pizza, hot dogs, Kool-Aid/Hi-C) and the only veggies I really got were canned. When I got older she started taking more of an interest in eating healthier (and so did I), so we'd get Skim Plus milk and frozen veggies and I brought my lunch to school more often. Although I included more fruits into my diet, I still basically ate what I wanted - I just stopped when I was full. I was pretty active in HS though. Once after swim practice, I ate an entire bag of Doritos.... but I was HUNGRY!

She lost some weight on WW and she started feeling better about herself, but then the shit hit the fan. She and my SD started the divorce process and she gained it all back and then some. People look at me like I'm crazy for saying it, but food and weight are a constant struggle for me. Yeah, I'm not fat (or chubby) but the fat girl in me is still very alive and well. I do keep less junk and healthier snacks in the house and I do make sure I get my fruits and veggies in each day, but if I could stay thin and eat junk food, I totally would. Last night I had a bowl of cereal and 1.5 bowls of ice cream for dinner. Earlier that day I had 3 caramel candies and I did zero exercise. It's only 9:50 and I've already had a wheat bagel with Temp-Tee and a blueberry muffin. Every day is a battle.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

My mom never dieted.  My parents grew up at the height of the processed food craze in the 50's-60's and ate a lot of stereotypical midwestern foods.  So my mom has a lot of food hang-ups, Cambells cream of anything soup was not allowed to cross our threshold.  Casserole was a forbidden word in our house.  Minimal processed foods.  DH was shocked that I'd never eaten Hamburger Helper (this is a bad thing?).

We had dinner together every night.  My parents didn't make me clean my plate but I wasn't getting anything else either.  I could also be as picky as I wanted as long as I understood my mom wasn't going to become a short order cook.  

They did enforce the "three bite rule" if I was at someone else's house.  I didn't have to like everything put in front of me but I'd at least try it since they went to the trouble of making it.  Helps when going to my MIL's for dinner.

So I think I grew up with a pretty healthy/normal relationship towards food.  DH prefers the food my mom grew up eating so we had a lot of issues when we first moved in together.  I've trained him to appreciate food that's not cooked to death and made him accept food does not have to come out of a box. 

[Sam_2.0]

This is something I really want to be conscious of. My mom always dieted, and still does. She's overweight but not obese. But she's never been happy with herself and she always let us know that, which transferred over to my sister & I as well. Just the other day I made chocolate chip cookies while she was at my house so I could send some with her to grandpa's. I asked if she wanted one and she told me she was not allowed to because she was already over her calories for the day (and it was 11am). MIL obsessively counts calories and drinks crap like crystal light and diet sodas. She's pretty skinny and is always saying she wants to lose 10lbs. My SILs are normal weight but I can tell they get a lot of pressure from their mom indirectly about their sizes.

I saw this a couple months back and it really struck a chord with me. I want to make sure I encourage a healthy body image for my daughter, and that means I need to have one for myself too: www.beautyredefined.net/to-the-mom-who-taught-me-everything-a-body-image-breakthrough/

[sheilaincali]

My parents are good people but they didn't teach us any healthy eating or exercising habits.  My mom has always worked a full time job and my dad was busy building up his companies.  We very rarely had salad growing up.  A typical meal (6 people in my family) was two boxes of hamburger helper and a tube of biscuits (Pillsbury).  We always had ice cream for dessert. 
We had sugary cereals, cookies, chips, pop tarts, ice cream sandwiches, etc. 

As kids/teenagers we were very active so we were normal sized.  As adults when we went to live on our own we only knew how to cook like spaghetti and hamburger helper.  I put on a decent amount of weight and then lost it again.  It has crept back up over the years. 

I've said before that my brother is an asshole.  He also happens to be a very large asshole as my parents keep feeding him.  For a few years there anytime he was being a jerk my dad would say 'I think he's just hungry'.  I'd get mad and say "he is 25 years old! he's not hungry he's just an asshole".  He played football in high school and at the beginning of college- coaches pushed him to bulk up.  When he quit football that bulk all turned to fat.  Every time he is around them it's all about food.  They feed him (and his kids) several times a week.  Either at their house or they take them out to dinner.  The first thing he does when he gets to their house and grab a soda out of the fridge and start rummaging around in the pantry for snacks.  His kids are the same way- they kick their shoes off and go straight for the pantry.  They are going to end up exactly like their father.  I don't know that he has ever encouraged them to eat a vegetable.   

I wish my parents had set a better example by making healthier meals and teaching us how to cook.  It's not until the last few years that I learned how to really cook. 

[Deleted]

Interesting question. 

Mom cooked most things from scratch other than using cake mixes.  There was always dessert and she baked a lot- sticky buns, cookies, even doughnuts once in awhile.  What helped was that, with 5 kids, there wasn't enough that we could eat to excess (although I never left the table hungry).  We were also very active- riding our bikes everywhere and going to the pool every day in the summer.  We weren't heavy on meat; if my parents were going out Mom would cook one T-bone steak for the 5 of us and we'd each get a piece.  A pork chop was about 1/3 the size of the "Iowa-cut" chops DH and I get now.  The Iowa cut is so big that one is enough for both of us.  Food didn't really have an emotional connection.  McDonald's was the only fast food place when I was growing up and visits there were rare.  We never had take-out food such as pizza although Mom made it occasionally.

While Mom never "dieted", she also bragged that she never wore maternity clothes home from the hospital.  DH is scanning decades of old family slides into Photoshop and it's sweet to see how many pictures Dad took of Mom in a bathing suit.

Fast-forwarding to now:  parents alive and well in their early 80s, still lean.  They do yoga and water aerobics.  My siblings and I are also active and lean.  I'm 60 and do sprint triathlons for fun and just signed up for a 38-mile bike ride.  I had one kid and I'm post-menopausal but lost almost 20 lbs. over the last 2 years.  I'm 5'7" and weigh 129.   My middle brother is still a picky eater but he runs every day and doesn't have spare ounce of fat. 

I can see a lot of the current obesity problems being due to inactivity, crap food and huge portion sizes.

[chiver78]

my mom has a thyroid condition that's been untreated my entire lifetime. she's of the opinion that it is easier to just eat less (read: or not at all) and just deal with it, than to treat the condition and eat normally. she's also someone who rarely takes painkillers or cold medicine, and she's never taken an allergy med....even though she should be. what that did to my sis and me, in how we view food, is that we find ourselves slipping into the "oh, it's mid-afternoon and I haven't eaten yet? that's good, let's see how much later I can go!" way of thinking that she has. where sis and I differ is that we fully recognize this is not at all healthy, and we take steps to try to break the habit. neither one of us historically does well with tracking calories, because it turns into a numbers game in seeing how low we can go.

growing up, we had a lot of low cal/low fat things in the house - including 1% milk as long as I can remember. a lot of this was due to my Nana living with us, and she had a heart condition to worry about. there wasn't a whole lot of $ back then, so we all got put on the same heart-healthy diet. there's a lot of things I never had as a kid - McDonald's food, Hamburger Helper, and I still have never eaten tuna noodle or green bean casserole. our veggies were mostly canned, and Mom cooked everything to well-done. (I have to wonder if that's why I won't eat red meat now...?)

as an adult, I try to minimize what processed foods I have in the house. my weakness, which I really can't understand b/c they aren't even that good.... - is Doritos. I don't think I'll ever fully escape playing the numbers game, but if I can minimize it some, I should be okay. just gotta keep eating whole foods (although not necessarily from Whole Foods) and leave the processed crap out.

[973beachbum]

Both my parents grew up druring the depression.  They never talked about what we should eat.  Although my mother dieted from time to time she never changed what she brought into the house for the rest of us to eat.  Because of them growing up during the depression portion sizes were a big deal.  To this day I don't know how to cook a meal for just two people.   My mom was pretty overweight after she had my younger brother, so I do remember her dieting.  She always said if I asked, her problem was she didn't have "the EE factor", like the rest of us.  Her EE factor was the person's ability to know when enough was enough.

Reading all thses threads just proves whatever I do with my kids it is totally going to be wrong no matter what.  If my kid is fat it is because I let them get fat.  If I try and control what they eat or exersize, so they don't get fat or more fat I will be giving them horrible feelings about their body.  If I let them get obese then obviously it's my fault for letting them get that way.  And we all know I did something bad because if i didn't then my kid can't have any problems.  Whatever one person says made them feel horrible about themself  is exactly what someone else says they wish their parents had done.

There really is no fucking winning with being a parent.

[Deleted]

Food didn't really have an emotional connection.

This is it exactly! 

[Deleted]

Jul 19, 2013 9:29:35 GMT -5 @beerwench said:

Food didn't really have an emotional connection.

This is it exactly! 

My mom is 2nd generation 100% Italian.   Food was and still is love.

[midjd]

My mom has always had a pretty healthy relationship with food. I don't remember her ever saying she needed to lose weight, or expressing much of an opinion on anyone else's weight. She was very thin until she had my brother and sister (born 12 mos apart) and was then maybe 5 lbs overweight for the next decade. She's back at a normal weight now.

My dad is another story. He gets his weird habits from my grandmother... she babysat me until she died and the only foods that were ever in her house were OJ, bananas, angel food cake, and Goldfish crackers. She was stick-thin but always on a diet. My dad is at the opposite end of the spectrum - he has a super-high metabolism and works out a lot so can eat whatever he wants without gaining weight. His diet largely consists of peanut butter and fried chicken. He has struggled with cholesterol issues and blood clots since his mid 40s.

My dad is the one who would make comments like "she doesn't need ice cream" or "I don't know why you're letting her eat that" to my mother when I was 6-7. I started restricting my food intake around age 11 and kept it up until after college. The true irony was that I had inherited my dad's metabolism, and probably would've maintained a normal weight while being able to eat just about anything, instead of maintaining a slightly-below-normal weight on 800 calories a day.

I'm not sure how I'll handle this with my daughter. She has the potential to either be very large (DH and his younger sister are both well over 6' and 200 lbs) or very small. I don't want to make her feel that either is bad.

[muttleynfelix]

I think my family instilled pretty healthy ideas about food and exercise.  My mom made everything from scratch. Maybe it wasn't super healthy (we did have quite a few casseroles), but it was always a balanced meal - a main dish with a fruit and veggie.  My dad is a cookie-aholic. So, we always were allowed a cookie (homemade) after supper assuming we ate most of our dinner.  After supper, if our homework was done, we would go outside and play baseball, soccer, or basketball. If it was winter and there was snow on the ground, then we would go sledding.  The town had an indoor pool and Sunday nights, we would often go to the pool. We took walks as a family. 

Growing up, my sister and I were always super skinny. My brother was more husky.  My mom was/is thin, just a generally healthy weight.  She isn't a workout fanatic, but she does work on it - gets on the exercise bike, does weight lifting with small hand weights, goes for regular walks.  My dad was skinny as a young adult, but is now overweight (has quite a belly on him, product of too many cookies in life). He's extremely active - spends most of his time as the outdoor land surveyor, which means hiking all over the countryside. He and I played basketball last weekend and I got winded before him. As adults, my sister is slightly underweight, I seem to be borderline of healthy weight/ slightly overweight and our brother is overweight.