I (55F) and my husband (58M) have a daughter (F30) who has struggled with her weight her whole life.
Porky
She’s always been a bit porkier than other kids and always loved food. I tried to raise her on healthier alternatives, but she just always mindlessly ate. I tried providing her everything- keeping healthier alternates in the house, mother-daughter days to weight watchers when she turned 13, I even sent her to an expensive fitness camp. She just never took to it, and always got picked on in school for her weight.
This year, my daughter lost her job. She put on even more weight. She has to weigh nearly 120kg, now. I’ve offered her stomach stapling, diet coaches, and anything she could want. But she tells me every time, there’s no morality in fat. She wants to lose weight, but she wants to do it a healthy way. I tell her fat itself is unhealthy, but she doesn’t listen.
This last week was it, and she picked some little local restaurant to go to that keeps all their dishes under 500 calories. Her therapist said it’s an easier way to manage binging, so I tentatively agreed.
When we got together, she dressed up nicely but hadn’t lost nearly as much weight as she seemed to be bragging about. She was going on about ADHD being linked to binging, and that she understands her eating disorder a lot better now (she doesn’t have one, she’s never been one of those girls to starve herself or go throw up), so I just smiled politely and moved the conversation along.
During the dinner, she kept raving about the food. She loved a good risotto, she loved eating like this. I finally asked, trying to be as polite as I could, wasn’t her therapy supposed to help her be neutral about food? It was all, “food has no morals, food is food, you need it to live and it’s okay to enjoy things, it isn’t bad to enjoy food and you’re not bad,” but she just kept going on and on. She put down her fork and told me not to do this here, then went on to order two pie tarts.
Two!
I must’ve made a face because she rolled her eyes and told me with an attitude she’d already lost 5kg in three months. I politely informed her, at her size, that wasn’t very much and she could very easily be losing more if she made better decisions for herself.
At that point, she stood up, pulled cash out of her purse, and slammed it on the table. She said some rather choice words, essentially thanking us for proving her right, and left. While I’m glad she had the politeness to pay for dinner, she made a whole scene about it, and now we can never go back to that restaurant. I’ve been calling her for the last week, but she’s sending me straight to voicemail every time.
I just want what’s best for her and was trying to be honest. I know she’s had a hard time for being fat, and even if people pretend to be nice about it, they’re not. They’re all judging her and her husband, too.
Was I wrong for telling my daughter the honest truth about her ineffective new therapy weight loss?