So true.

PinkBlair99 · 2021-04-17T23:54:06+00:00

Grandmothers? Try mothers.

lapoesia · 2021-04-18T01:59:15+00:00

Millennial here, and I’m not sure about my grandma but my boomer mum has always had a totally messed up relationship with food and her body, though she has always maintained a normal weight. I have never, ever in my entire life seen her in a swimsuit. She grew up near the ocean so has a love for it, and she knows how to swim, but she hated her body so much as an adult that she would never wear a swimsuit/go swimming.

She habitually goes all day without eating anything and then will binge on an entire packet of cookies/crisps/anything along those lines and then feel sick and berate herself. This was a constant pattern while my siblings and I grew up and all of us inherited complicated relationships with food as a result. My sister and brother both refuse to have “treat” food in their homes whatsoever as they simply cannot stop at 1-2 cookies when they start - they will always eat the whole pack.

I have luckily managed to move past that - for the most part (I’m 32) - but in my late teens and early/mid 20s I kept meticulous food diaries tracking everything I ate + exercise output, restricted my calories, and then binged. Definitely tied to my mother’s influence. It’s pretty sad all round

likearealreptile · 2021-04-18T04:04:17+00:00

my eating disorder is a family heirloom

LilithWon · 2021-04-17T23:50:37+00:00

Omg SAME. My grandmother was generally a total badass. Career mom, highly educated, highly accomplished professionally.

However, she also had a lot of unhealthy attitudes towards weight. She is and always has been extremely thin. For breakfast she'll have a tiny bowl of cream of wheat with black coffee, skip lunch (before retirement, she would just work straight through lunch). For dinner she'll have a salad and a single serving of salmon, chicken, or some other protein. Every day she was probably eating less than 1000 calories, I have no idea how she didn't drop dead from malnutrition, given that she was always on her feet for her job. I found out much later that apparently she would randomly snap and "go crazy" like eating an entire box of cookies or an entire cake in one sitting. Which would then make her feel super ashamed, and she would respond by "punishing" herself by going back to that super restrictive diet. She was admittedly very beautiful and had what most people would consider a great physique (but at what cost?? So unhealthy. She ended up getting osteoporosis).

As a kid I was always slightly on the chubby side and she was very critical of me. Anytime I put ANY food in my mouth that wasn't a vegetable, she criticized me. The whole thing kinda fucked up my body image and relationship with food.

queen_beastmode · 2021-04-18T02:29:31+00:00

Millenial here and I'm pretty sure my boomer mom was bulimic. Fucked up teeth, fucked up esophagus, binge eating, puking bulimic. Terrible attitudes about weight, so I was 5 and already knew that being fat was literally the worst thing ever. She'd wander around the house muttering about how fat she was. And she restricted my and my siblings eating so I was underweight most of my childhood and my sister was obese by 10.

oldclam · 2021-04-18T02:59:22+00:00

My grandma had made a comment about Kate Middleton after she left the hospital after having her first baby. She said "Can you believe she's walking around looking like that?" I asked what she meant. She said she couldn't believe she would walk around with a belly like that. My grandma was starting to develop dementia at that time, so I thought it was just nonsense.

I told my mom about it later. Nope, turns out my grandma didn't eat when she was pregnant, to the point that she didn't need maternity clothes.

Throwawayrightaway28 · 2021-04-18T02:21:33+00:00

God, this makes me wonder. My maternal grandmother was extremely thin and elegant. Looked just like Dihann Carol in Dynasty, only prettier. Anyway, I never knew much about her personally as she died when I was two. Her best friend, my surrogate grandmother, was just telling me all about her. Apparently, they both had a weight problem in high school and my grandmother “overcame it” by bringing a single chicken wing for lunch every day. Everyone, including my mom, her daughter, always talk about how little she ate. She died at 54 of something the doctors never identified. I wonder if she was just an undiagnosed anorexic. An older black woman in the 80s, it would’ve been easy to miss.

ninetiesbaby16 · 2021-04-18T03:36:45+00:00

Hmmm I never noticed disordered eating but my mom definitely called herself fat and ugly constantly in front of me. My dad was a porn addict and I don’t remember him saying anything kind to my mom ever.

thegenuinedarkfly · 2021-04-18T01:15:55+00:00

My grandmother had a lusty appetite and didn’t let the notion of being thin bother her, but her daughter (my mother) was very caught up in an unhealthy relationship with food and very critical of my very normal weight. I only gained approval by starving myself also.

Nice_Pass2393 · 2021-04-18T02:09:14+00:00

Im starting to realize my mother probably had an eating disorder when I was a kid and probably still does. She also does the cream of wheat breakfasts, sometimes dinners and substitutes meals with sweets. She often says she just wants dessert and likes it more than did but I have to wonder. As a kid she would only eat Campbell's chicken soup sometimes

spicyspa · 2021-04-18T03:19:57+00:00

My maternal side has eating disorders. One cousin died from anorexia and her sisters suffer from it.

What I want to know is how did this BouffantBecky find out about Gen Xers? We're like Fight Club. You can't talk about us.

slight_sapphire · 2021-04-18T04:20:02+00:00

My grandmother took diet pills while pregnant with my mom. It was very much a thin at whatever cost mentality.

Platipus6 · 2021-04-18T01:01:51+00:00

Depression era people have incredibly unhealthy relationships with food.

My mother was taught to both hoard food but not eat it 🤔 and she was obese, and then praised for it (sign of success) while society shamed her for it (gluttonous and unhealthy).

2021-04-17T23:42:04+00:00

YES! My grandmother lived mainly on lettuce leaves, boiled veggies, cottage cheese, overly dry chicken breasts, and depression. And I think it was due to both her father and her husband hating any weight gain. But what's even more messed up is, all my aunts were told they were fat growing up, but I was told I was too skinny growing up. Like, my grandfather literally gave his daughters food disorders but was constantly pushing me to eat more. That must have been such a slap in the face to my mum and aunts!

thecrazywitch31 · 2021-04-18T02:24:39+00:00

Not only our grandmothers.

I had it too

Suspicious-Leg-1407 · 2021-04-17T23:57:54+00:00

Or how all our friends do. One of the 🚩🚩🚩 of women friendships for me is when she can't stop talking about dieting or if she makes fun of fat people. Fuck that.

FDS-GFY · 2021-04-18T05:55:20+00:00

Not me. My grandmother was a farm wife. Built like a brick shit house as the old expression goes.

Tough as nails.

snejonopka · 2021-04-18T03:35:56+00:00

my mom tried to teach me how to have an eating disorder at 13, i wasn’t even overweight and she pulled me aside and said “when i was your age, i did this thing i called my 5 finger food diet, i ate 5 things per day that i could eat with my fingers like a baggie of baby carrots, apple slices, etc, and that’s all i would eat. i’d lose 10 pounds a week. you should try it!!” go to hell bitch!

WiggleWormDelux · 2021-04-18T03:42:03+00:00

I had a patient in her 90s who would chew food and spit it out in secret all through her adulthood.

bamboozlepup · 2021-04-18T00:32:08+00:00

I watched every woman over 20 on my moms side weights' swing WILDLY as they all experimented with various diets in the early 2000s. Atkins was the worst. They would all suddenly drop weight for a few months then earn it all back 10x later on.

zazaleaz · 2021-04-17T23:55:38+00:00

Grandmother and mother, for me. Gen X doesn't talk about things though. Just sink into the background while the younguns and boomers argue. Not complaining.

localgirlcult · 2021-04-18T10:36:20+00:00

This isn't generation specific and it never went away. Like some of the pro-ana girls on secret forums, later on tumblr, now on whichever social media won't be mothers too. It's not a story of what happened to grandmothers of people who are now in their 40s-50s. It's an ongoing story of our grandmothers, mothers, friends etc.

penelopekitty · 2021-04-18T12:38:15+00:00

My mother eats all of her meals on a salad plate. The portions are literally the size you might feed a toddler. Even then she claims I serve her too much food and doesn't finish it.

She has always been very thin and very vain about it. Although she doesn't say negative things about my weight (I'm normal to slim) she does often comment on any perceived changes. This makes me very self conscious and hyper vigilant about my own eating habits and portions.

She idolized extremely thin women like Audrey Hepburn and Twiggy as the pinnacle of beauty. I grew up thinking being thin was of the utmost importance and since my body is not naturally thin and I have an atrophied thyroid gland I spend a lot of time exercising, dieting, feeling very hungry and still not being as thin as I should for the work I put in.

Yeah, it fucked me up.

cherrypepsilvr · 2021-04-18T14:36:11+00:00

Totally. I know there's an obesity crisis now, but I think when boomer women talk about how we're all so fat now, they neglect to mention that a) everybody used to smoke, and b) women used to do literally anything to be thin. It was the norm for most of the 20th century for a woman's life to revolve around being thin.

A few years ago I was very ill (throwing up every day for months) and a boomer woman told me it was good because "you'll probably lose quite a lot of weight". I eventually was hospitalized with sepsis.

Edit: forgot to add that in the 70s it was totally normal to be prescribed amphetamines to keep you thin.

Pegatul · 2021-04-17T23:50:09+00:00

Gen X here (b.1976) and it wasn't my grandmother, it was my mother. She tried to teach me that whenever I craved something sweet, I should buy a candy bar, take one bite, and throw the rest in the trash.

Aromatic-Owl8808 · 2021-04-18T03:15:23+00:00

I don't think I've ever met any woman or girl who hasn't had an eating disorder.

thowawaywookie · 2021-04-18T05:32:23+00:00

My parents were from the depression era. My mom cooked everything from scratch for years. I don't know how we all didn't end up morbidly obese all the food!

We were all extremely active though with running a farm. We didn't have snacks or lots of sweet drinks, fast food. No internet. Had one black and white TV.

They became overweight later on. It never seemed to be a big deal.

Davina33 · 2021-04-18T09:57:12+00:00

Also what about when your mother or grandmother doesn't have an eating disorder but they purposely starve you, so your bowels pack up and you're on laxatives for life? Even now, I can't get used to eating the standard three meals a day.

xpuddinpopx · 2021-04-18T04:46:43+00:00

Too true! Grandma was always very weight conscious and would typically not eat very much. Respectfully though, she always made plenty of food for her family. And she saved me from near childhood obesity when I struggled with stress binging, with some tough love and helping me make healthy choices.

kayethewitch · 2021-04-18T02:58:19+00:00

[removed]

JippityB · 2021-04-19T19:27:34+00:00

My grandmother was a model, which added another level of disordered thinking.

She lived off lettuce and one glass of milk a day, her entire adult life. She would cook other food for relatives but never, ever, eat it.

She would often pressure me to do the same, insisting that lettuce and milk provided all the nutrients you need to survive.

Lettuce has very little in nutrients to offer. But she couldn't accept it.

Title	So true.
Author	ScrappleSandwiches
Upvotes	766
Comments	87
Date	April 17, 2021 11:02 PM UTC (5 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/FemaleDatingStrategy
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/mt15br/so_true/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/so-true.777796 https://theredarchive.com/post/777796

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