My sister is obese
Replies
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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.30 -
Thanks for all of your comments. It is so very hard to watch. I am always asking if she wants to go for a walk, if fact, we started a weekly walking time but she bagged after the first week. She and I both are hypothyroid and are followed by endocrinology. It is just sad to me. Her daughter is obese too and her LDL is off the charts. I want to help them both.
Maybe just leave her alone for a while? Knowing you're overweight and being hassled for it (even if it comes from a loving place) just makes you feel worse. I wouldn't be surprised if she was eating in private to avoid judgement.
Just say nothing and stop asking her if she wants a walk - she's not a pet. Wait until she asks.6 -
This is great! I hope it clicks for her; WW is where I initially had any weight loss success.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,
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.3 -
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.1 -
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.1 -
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
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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
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!!!!! 😹2 -
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 .1 -
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.0
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virginiajharris wrote: »
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 .
I know in my own experience (and I'm still obese after losing 100 lbs), I absolutely knew I was obese, was definitely ashamed of it, and was very introverted and shy. Looking back I can see how I came to that - my parents had grown up on farms and they were used to farm cooking but also the exercise that came with farm living that needed those calories; living in a small town with a much more sedentary lifestyle was worlds different, but my mom continued to cook that way. I grew up with a completely skewed concept of portion sizes and all those hidden calories that get added to dishes when one is not paying attention to measurements or such. My grandmother was a lifelong member of WW then Tops and you'd think she'd have learned something about cooking lighter, but she would extremely fix calorie laden dinners too. Ironically, she was the one who was constantly harping on our weight in a very judgmental way; it got to the point that my siblings and I dreaded seeing her because we knew the conversation would turn to weight and she'd make a comment. And she's still like that today!
I did resent being told by my grandmother, by my doctor, by anyone. I knew I needed to lose weight, and nagging at me about it just built up shame and guilt and hopelessness. I hated seeing the doctor as a teen because she'd bring it up every time. I tried all sorts of things over the years, and I can't tell you why this time around, my attempt at calorie counting worked, but I had to come to the place where I wanted it bad enough to start gaining traction in that war of willpower with gratification now or delayed and how to quit letting myself sweet-talk myself into making wrong choices when it came to food.
I now have a doctor who has never once preached at me to lose weight and treated me seriously and with respect even when I was very obese, and she has been a wonderful cheerleader and supporter in what I have lost - its amazing how much of a difference her support and understanding makes!
That all said, I can greatly sympathize with the OP. Even when I was obese, I didn't have any health problems - my blood pressure and sugar levels were normal, my cholesterol was fine, I didn't have breathing problems and did pretty much what I wanted when I wanted when it came to activity. But I was level 3 obese and knowing that heart disease and diabetes runs in the family was always in the back of my mind and may well have been a factor in me finally gaining some success in getting my weight down. My brother wast he same way, though he chose to have WLS as his means of getting the excess weight off. He and I were built to be big, I suppose, as we are both tall, wide-set, and heavy-boned (though of course not meant to be as big as we were!) We carry our weight mostly on our thighs and hips, which also helped us on the health front - no one would believe us when we told them we were as heavy as we were.
My sister, however, takes after the other side of the family, unfortunately. She is very short and carries every bit of her excess weight around her middle. She's got a BMI over 50 and she had most of the factors to qualify her for metabolic syndrome - she's diabetic, on 2 different blood pressure medications, has cholesterol problems, is constantly in pain in her feet and knees, and gets winded just crossing the parking lot - and she's only 38! But she has no intentions of losing weight. She knows she needs to, but she's not willing to put in the work and make the sacrifices that have to happen to succeed. She wants an easy fix and will try any fad that doesn't require her to moderate her food or exercise. Even after recently having a scare with her heart, she is still not willing to change her lifestyle or way of eating. She's happy popping medication to control her blood pressure and diabetes, and thinks that being on medication gives her the license to eat whatever she wants in whatever portions she wants. She refuses to believe that her body weight is a major factor in all her health problems and wants to blame genetics or anything else.
Its saddening for me, but I can't control her and I know nagging at her won't help. All I can do is continue to work at losing it myself and hope that she will come to her Aha moment one day before she completely wrecks her health or dies young.9 -
When I was at my heaviest I did most of my eating at night, alone. My husband worked long night shifts and I was lonely after the kids went to bed so I filled the hole with food. I ate whole bags of mini Butterfingers. I would buy pints of Ben & Jerry's and hide them in the back of the refrigerator, and look forward all day to eating the whole pint. I would then have to hide the pints in the trash--and the Butterfinger wrappers.
Looking back I was probably suffering from depression as well. I felt like a married but single mom with little support. Not to bash my husband. He's a great guy but he was the sole income and needed to work to support us all (and, apparently, my Ben & Jerry habit).
It took a medical scare to set me straight.
I hope your sister finds that one thing that motivates her to change 4 -
If she's like me, she needs a cheerleader. Help her break the cycle of celebrating and socializing with food. I think it's one of my biggest hurdles. When I get with my friends, we sit around and eat, or go out and eat. I need someone to help me shift my focus toward doing healthy things instead of eating all the wrong things.
Ideas? Join a gym where one pays and can take a friend for free (and split the cost). Go window shopping (mall walking, antiquing, etc.). Instead of going out for lunch, bring a pre-packed picnic - with good food choices - and go to a park or river walk, etc. Then, save the money that would have been spent on lunches to spend on something special (a pedicure, a movie, clothes -- whatever motivates her) but NOT food.
Go grocery shopping together and go home and make some premade meals for the week. If you're a healthy eater, it will help her make better grocery choices.
My husband and I have a thing where any week that we lose any amount of weight, (not lost previously), we get $15 set aside for new clothes. We are both savers, so we are accumulating our winnings. If she can't afford to do that for herself, you can come up with some other creative reward. I just can't say enough that it can't be food. My first husband would buy me m&ms as rewards. Yes, they were my favorite. Yes it was given and received with love. But, it's just like giving a beer to an alcoholic to celebrate his sobriety. It totally defeats the purpose. We have to rewire our brains and it's a very hard thing to do. Best of luck. Let us know how it goes with her WW.
Encourage her to join MFP and friend all of us!!! We're all in it together.0 -
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,
I am glad she is trying a path to a better life. This may or may not be her path but if not hopefully she will learn what she does need.
I am a little surprise that you were unsure she was aware of her problem. I am not even sure how she could be unaware.0
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