**sorry, lot of text below! i rambled haha
My mom is about 5’9, maybe 5’10, and very obese. She has been very overweight for as long as I can remember, and was either on a diet or trying to lose weight for about the same amount of time - she’s done the HMR diet a few times and been successful with it, but after she finishes with it she gains the weight back super quickly. She never really exercises and she has a desk job, and I’m not sure if she’s kept up this habit but for a while we would find extra junk food wrappers in her desk or car, hidden away. My dad is also overweight, but he makes a point to exercise - he is fairly fit, I’d say, and muscular, just with a prominent beer belly of sorts.
Her mindset about weight has had a negative impact on me and my other siblings - I can’t speak for my younger brother (he is the typical gangly teenager who eats a lot and never gains weight), but me and my two sisters have all struggled with eating disorders, and although none of us are very overweight (my older sister is overweight and I would say myself and my other sister are average leaning on skinny, more of a muscular/midsize build like Nani from lilo and stitch, lol), none of us are overly skinny. Growing up, I gained weight after I decided to drop sports in favor of academics without adjusting my diet, and both my parents made many disparaging comments about my weight which were very damaging in the long run (I was never over a max of 180 pounds, and I’m around 5’8, so I was always much skinnier than them even when I gained weight). Aside from my mom, I would say we are all definitely healthy - we make jokes that our family is fat but healthy, and for the kids and my dads side of the family (his side is mostly Italian), that’s true, though our diets could include less red meat and sugar.
All this to say, my mom is very overweight, much more so than my dad and also very inactive. She says she is no longer the age to be doing some physical activities, but my dad is older than her and he has little to no problems! I really want to be sympathetic, empathetic? with her, as I also struggled with gaining and losing weight, but I find it very frustrating that she never wants to do anything about it, and makes an effort to be less mobile when she can. Things like having people bring groceries to her car while she’s parked, spending a long time circling the parking lot to get a closer spot, sending in me and my siblings to get groceries because she’s exhausted after a ‘long day’ (my father has no work-life balance and regularly overworks himself, in contrast - not to say this is a good habit but my mom has a very low stress job) - it goes on.
When my mom is out with us, we can’t do any kind of physical activity, and limit the walking as much as we can - when she helped me move in for my sophomore year of college, we literally took a car for what would have been a less than 10 minute walk, although granted I go to school in New Orleans and she is less than used to the weather. We don’t go on vacations or suggest activities much, since we know she won’t be able to do many things and it will frustrate her (my older sister says she is very narcissistic, I don’t know enough about psychology to speak on this but whenever she has a frustration the entire situation is about her and she is very selfish). When she and my dad retire, I know he will want to be able to do things with her, but as it stands that is impossible. I know it frustrates my dad, but he has enabled her for literally over a decade now, and I doubt that will change without some kind of intervention on the part of myself and my siblings. My older sister said she would try to take her aside at some point and bring up the fact that this is something on all of our minds, more so for her health than appearance reasons, but I would really appreciate advice on how to proceed/deal with the situation. We’ve spent my entire life never bringing up her weight except when she makes comments about it, and as much as I think it is important to be nice about it I do think she needs to change her behavior.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/vn9p8f/advice_for_helping_my_mom_lose_weight_talking/
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