My mom constantly talked about how fat she was and watched our eating like a hawk, frequently refusing to give us snacks when we complained of hunger because the snack we wanted would make us fat.
My weight was policed and commented on by both parents starting in middle school, especially my stomach. There is a photo of my on the last day of 8th grade and i look like a rail but i was already convinced i was fat.
I am 5'8" and never weighed above 150 until age 40, i went up over 150 at age 40 during weight restoration, after i had been diagnosed with anorexia at a weight of 113. I relapsed in 2013 and now my weight is usually unknown but hovers at 5-10 pounds above the relapse zone.
During the period that i looked my most skeletal my sister, my grandmaw, and two of my aunts took me aside and expressed concern, but neither of my parents ever said a word.
The comment that really sticks with me these days was not about me, though, but about my niece, at age TWO.
It was our first day even
meeting my niece, who had been brought home the day before from a Russian orphanage, where she slept sideways with two other babies in her crib, and ate every meal sitting in a semicircle of six highchairs with one caregiver shoveling one bite of cereal into each mouth, over and over in rotation.
She was more than a little bit feral at this point, and my sister was keeping her calm-- for her first introduction to three tall strangers-- by feeding her Teddy Grahams. She would have one in her mouth and one in her hand and hold out her other hand so she could keep a steady supply. My sister remarked on this and my mom said "Be careful. You don't want her to end up obese."
My sister explained that she was prioritizing keeping the baby calm for the moment and promised that she would not let her get fat.
I just-- after what that baby had been through? After eating every meal on an assembly line, having to wait in line for each single bite? The ability to hoard an extra cookie in each hand all to herself would have been
amazing. And my mom was policing that, and on such a special day
