For the last two weeks my husband and I have not had to go to family dinner. This dinner usually involves myself and my husband, my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law and my niece and nephew who are 3 and 5 respectively. Everyone was sick so nobody felt like doing anything so we all just chilled at home with soup and Netflix.
Yesterday was the first such dinner for the new year. I am seriously considering being permanently sick on Sundays. Truthfully the only thing that makes Sundays bearable is seeing my niece and nephew and snuggling up with them.
My sister in law is perfect. Not in actual reality but in the eyes of my mother in law, her needs are the most important, most horrible, needs the most attention, and needs the most support. My mother in law will agree with anything she says and of course she is never ever wrong. My husband and I are always second fiddle to her and her issues. She could have a hangnail and my mother in law would come rushing over to help her even if our house was on fire.
So we got together and ate one of my least favorite dinners. And my niece and nephew were complaining after dessert that they were still hungry. My sister in law told them they could not have any more dessert and that they weren’t really hungry at which they insisted that they were. This understandably made me a little hot under the collar. But they are her kids so I let it go. For the record I was still very hungry as dinner was not very filling to begin with.
Then my sister in law and my mother in law decided that they and myself and my husband needed to talk about eating healthier and changing our diets because of course that’s the perfect after dinner conversation.
I consider myself a fairly open minded person and usually I can pretty much talk about anything and everything with someone even if I disagree. But my eating habits, my weight, and my health are very sensitive topics for me and I tend to get a little growly and lash out when people try to tell me what to do in this area.
So I hung in there and listened and nodded like a good girl. I agreed to try new ways to add vegetables. But both of them kept pushing. So I decided to push back a little and share my struggles and how this feels impossible. I don’t have a set schedule for work so I never REALLY know when I’m getting home because somehow when I plan to get home at a reasonable hour and cook a decent dinner, there is invariably a crisis that requires me to stay late. And no, I do NOT wish to spend all freaking day Sunday cooking for the whole damn week.
Are these all excuses? Maybe. But I hate this month because everywhere I look I’m told to feel bad about myself because I’m fat. I don’t have money for a Peleton bike or the monthly subscription to go with it and let’s face it, Peleton bikes and other equipment were made for skinny people because I haven’t seen one overweight person in all their commercials. Weight Watcher I’ve tried a million times and it didn’t work. I can’t afford a monthly food thing like NutriSystem and besides when you stop buying their food, you gain everything back anyway. Can someone hook me up to a machine that works out my body for me while I sleep because that seems to be the only free time I have available.
So in response to the attack on my eating, I made my husband drive me to McDonald’s and buy me a cheeseburger as revenge against my in-laws. Except the only person it hurt was in fact me. Stomach cramps, feeling really shitty today, etc. And now I am depressed because I feel very judged at dinner and don’t want to go and I also feel really shitty about my body.
Has anyone ever made you feel bad about your body or your weight? Have people offered you unsolicited advice about your diet or nutrition? How did you respond or cope?
stumblingfaith 