My sister is obese

I have a question...my sister is obese but I NEVER see her eating. Since she gained the weight, does that cause her metabolisim to slow a way down? She says she wants to lose weight but she is not at the point where she is ready to do anything about it. I make myself available to her when she is ready. Is there anything I can do? I love her and I don’t want her to get sick or have heart problems because of this.
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  • julebrus2020
    julebrus2020 Posts: 26 Member
    If she's actually worried she should go see her doctor.

    Other than that look up the UK show Secret Eaters on yutube. Because most likely she is eating way more than the both of you think she is.
  • cherrylou123
    cherrylou123 Posts: 96 Member
    HilTri wrote: »
    I have a question...my sister is obese but I NEVER see her eating. Since she gained the weight, does that cause her metabolisim to slow a way down? She says she wants to lose weight but she is not at the point where she is ready to do anything about it. I make myself available to her when she is ready. Is there anything I can do? I love her and I don’t want her to get sick or have heart problems because of this.

    metabolism will slow down too if you aren't eating enough, if you aren't exercising and if you aren't having enough sleep .. better to eat when you are hungry but make wise food choices.. Eat more on real foods, lessen the unhealthy ones, drink lots of water, have enough sleep and exercise :)

    i was obese before too but now just underweight by 5 kilo. I tried dieting but I didn't lose any until a friend helped me.. he made me realize the importance of a healthy lifestyle :)
  • She ought to also get checked for fibromyalgia by a rheumatologist. There isn't a cure for it, but knowing that that was what was behind my fatigue and exercise intolerance and mental fog helped a lot. Otherwise one just blames it on one's own stupid brain, and of course that sort of self-talk is never helpful.

    If she has exercise intolerance, just a random walk is something that she will have trouble with, because her body views that walk the way your body would view you getting up one day and running a marathon. It's not under her control. It's possible to push back against it, but it's a slow process of making a given amount of movement part of your daily life, and then slowly, slowly, increasing that.
  • bobsburgersfan
    bobsburgersfan Posts: 6,464 Member
    HilTri wrote: »
    Great news! My sister told me out of the blue, that she joined WW! So she knows there is a problem! I promise I didn’t prod her or say a thing. In fact, I hadn’t talked to her for several days and when I finally did, she shared this news with me! Thanks for all your info,
    This is great! I hope it clicks for her; WW is where I initially had any weight loss success.

    I don't know if I have much to add, but as someone in your sister's shoes, I'd agree that she has to find the desire to change within herself. And I absolutely never want anyone to tell me how to eat or how to diet, and I don't need anyone to tell me I'm obese and need to change. But that doesn't mean I won't accept some level of support from people. I joined WW because a friend invited me to join with her. I first joined a gym because a friend found a deal and invited me to join with her. I've had people invite me to go for walks, and I've been very grateful because it gets me moving. Those are all supportive things that I did not find offensive, and as I think about it, it seems like the reason they weren't offensive is because of the motivation behind them. In those cases, it always felt like I was being invited alongside on someone else's health journey. I wasn't their focus.

    I guess what I'd say is to watch what your motivation is. Say you invite your sister to go for a walk. If your motivation is just to get her walking, it may not come across as supportive. But if your motivation is "I want to go walk and I want my sister's company", that's not offensive.

    Of course, all of this is subjective - this is what would work for ME, but everyone will have a different level at which they are okay with things, and people tend to read into things, so your sister might react totally different from me.
  • astridtheviking
    astridtheviking Posts: 113 Member
    Congrats to your sister! WW is a good program to learn the foundations of healthy eating; I started on it about a year ago and despite having tried tracking calories for years and years, I'd never had success but very quickly started seeing changes in my body, mood, appetite, and energy levels after I started WW. I'm still a member although I don't track my points, mainly just calories, because I love the community on the app, I like the accountability of a weekly weigh-in, and I can easily find how to adjust recipes to increase protein.

    As far as never seeing your sister eat, it's possible that that's on purpose. Many people who are overweight hide their eating from others out of fear or shame. I would NEVER binge in front of my parents because of how awful they were about my weight when I was young; that doesn't mean I never did it, but I hid it. For years and years when I wasn't in school or working (I'm a teacher so I have summers off), I would routinely sneak out to buy a bottle of wine, chips, ice cream, whatever I could get my hands on, and then go toss it in the dumpster when I was done so nobody would know. I even did this when my husband and I got our first place before we got married! I'm not saying this is what your sister does, but it's possible.
  • TatdBirdNerd
    TatdBirdNerd Posts: 10 Member
    I've struggled with my weight my whole life and no one could ever figure out why... Turns out, I'm allergic to a lot of foods (all nightshade plants, their relatives called Solanine, & foods containing nickel). My obesity was caused by decades of chronic inflammation, moving less since I was less-able to do so, and bouts of depression because of my weight and it seeming to be an unsolvable mystery.

    Remember too though, weightloss is a personal journey! You can wish the world for someone, but if they don't want it or care, it's never going to happen.
  • pinuplove
    pinuplove Posts: 12,871 Member
    Danp wrote: »
    Based on my own experience and (previous) behaviours the fact that you don't see her eat is probably a really bad sign.

    When I was at my heaviest I would for the most part *NEVER* eat in front of people if I could avoid it. If I was out to dinner with family or friends and couldn't manufacture an excuse to not eat, I'd make an effort to eat as little as possible. All my eating was done away from the eyes of onlookers. I think I was afraid that being seen to be eating at all while severely overweight was something I would be judged for.

    It seems completely messed up now, but I was ashamed to eat at all in front of people I knew but I was also ashamed to let complete strangers know how much I was eating. To the point where I'd put on stupid little charades for people to try to hide the fact that I was eating so much food. I'd do things like pretend I was ordering for 2 or 3 people and have to "try and remember" what each person wanted, or I'd order extra drinks with my food to make it seem like the food was for more than just me.

    At my worst I'd also do things like having local stores on rotation so that I wasn't buying all the food from the same place every time and I could make multiple stops so I wasn't getting my whole food haul from one store. A few times I bought streamers and plastic bowls and other 'party' items to make it seem like the enormous amount of sweets, chips and junk food I was buying was for a party and not just me. Looking back I really don't think anyone noticed or even cared but at the time I was convinced they did.

    Things are very different now. I'll happily eat openly and without the trepidation and guilt I previously felt.

    Thank you for sharing. This is an amazingly insightful post that no doubt many here will relate to :heart:
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,242 Member
    pinuplove wrote: »
    Danp wrote: »
    Based on my own experience and (previous) behaviours the fact that you don't see her eat is probably a really bad sign.

    When I was at my heaviest I would for the most part *NEVER* eat in front of people if I could avoid it. If I was out to dinner with family or friends and couldn't manufacture an excuse to not eat, I'd make an effort to eat as little as possible. All my eating was done away from the eyes of onlookers. I think I was afraid that being seen to be eating at all while severely overweight was something I would be judged for.

    It seems completely messed up now, but I was ashamed to eat at all in front of people I knew but I was also ashamed to let complete strangers know how much I was eating. To the point where I'd put on stupid little charades for people to try to hide the fact that I was eating so much food. I'd do things like pretend I was ordering for 2 or 3 people and have to "try and remember" what each person wanted, or I'd order extra drinks with my food to make it seem like the food was for more than just me.

    At my worst I'd also do things like having local stores on rotation so that I wasn't buying all the food from the same place every time and I could make multiple stops so I wasn't getting my whole food haul from one store. A few times I bought streamers and plastic bowls and other 'party' items to make it seem like the enormous amount of sweets, chips and junk food I was buying was for a party and not just me. Looking back I really don't think anyone noticed or even cared but at the time I was convinced they did.

    Things are very different now. I'll happily eat openly and without the trepidation and guilt I previously felt.

    Thank you for sharing. This is an amazingly insightful post that no doubt many here will relate to :heart:

    I actually wanted to ping @Danp and admit that he brought back memories.

    In fact on reading his post and before thinking further back to my heaviest times and family packs from the pizza store or dinner for two (or four) from the Chinese take out I snorted, because one of the first "I am eating healthy to lose weight" options I went with before discovering MFP was subway salads. And of course there I was ordering two of them for different people!!!!! 😹
  • MercuryForce
    MercuryForce Posts: 103 Member
    apullum wrote: »
    In my experience, the more you try to encourage someone else to lose weight, the less they will want to lose weight. That encouragement, even if it's well intended, often comes across as being pushy or judgmental. You may wind up damaging your relationship with her if you talk about weight loss when she doesn't want to hear it.

    Most likely your sister does eat, and if her weight isn't going down, then she's eating at maintenance or in a surplus. However, talking about her weight might make her uncomfortable with eating around you. She may worry that you're judging her for what she's eating or not eating.

    Like virtually all obese people, I knew I was obese; I did not need to be told that, and I resented being told. Eventually I came to the conclusion to lose weight, not because of someone pushing me to do so, but because I was finally in a mental state to do it: I was scared by the effects of obesity on my relatives and myself, I was no longer coping with depression/anxiety, I was in a good place career-wise that inspired me to make personal changes. That combination of factors is certainly not what everyone needs, but it's what I needed, and no one's comments could have created that situation for me.

    Seeing your success might help inspire your sister to lose weight, or it might not. I think the best thing you can do is not bring up her weight, be a positive person in her life, and hope she makes healthy choices.

    Science backs this up. People that are overweight or obese do know it. Telling them doesn't change anything, except exacerbates the mental load that is likely helping to contribute to it, making things worse, not better.

    Even anecdotally this bears out. How many people that have lost a lot of weight go "well it's because my sister told me I was fat. I can't believe I didn't notice it before! As soon as she said it, I realized I wanted to lose weight"? Instead, the stories involve a lot more personal moments, people getting into therapy, etc .
  • lois1231
    lois1231 Posts: 330 Member
    Some people are closet eaters. My aunt was this way I never saw her eat but she was obese. I used to eat in secret sometimes too.