watching my families suicide

It sucks.

Do you just let them live out their choice or do you try to turn them around?

Unfortunately I've never heard of anyone turning their life around through the efforts of someone else. It's always because they want to change.

Usually it's a non-fatal heart attack that makes them choose to get on the wagon. The pain it causes is enough of a jolt to the mind.

If I were you I'd prepare myself for the inevitable and try to spend as much time with them as possible. My father died of a heart attack. He'd had a mild heart attack years earlier but the fatal one still came suddenly and unexpectedly. Sometimes I wish it'd been a terminal illness where we knew he was dying just so we could say goodbye and say the things that were never said.

I hate it that I'm basically saying their path is set. You may be able to turn them around. It's within the realm of possibility. I don't know your parents and maybe they might try to better their health if their daughter wants them to.

Love them. That's all you can do, darling. They're old enough to be set in their ways- they are not going to change, no matter how much you want them to. All you can do is accept that and love them with all that you can for as long as you can.

This. I mean, let them know how much their decision hurts you, but accept that it is their decision to make. Let them know that if they ever decide to change, you'll be there to support them 100%, but otherwise, love them and make the best of whatever time you have left with them. None of us knows how much time we will have with the people we love; the best we can do is to appreciate them rather than trying to change them.

You can't do anything except love them. If someone has the want to change, they will. If they don't have the want or will to change, they're not going to no matter how much you try.

Had a neighbor with DM, heart failure, and COPD. He always said that "our days are numbered and only God knows how many we have left. I can live healthy for a while and eat salad or live like I want eating burgers and fries-I hate salad!" Point is he lived his life how he wanted and enjoyed what days he had left. Just love them and be there for them honey. Sounds like food is not the only problem tho...

So sad to think about all this. Love them for the parents that they are and have been to you, you won't change what they don't want to change. Set a healthy example and maybe they will start thinking somewhere down the road that maybe they need to get healthy too. Just love them for who they are!...HUG!!!

i can sort of empathise. my mother has refused dialysis and refused to see a doctor for a couple of years now. she has no intention of living what life she has left doing some regimented lifestyle just to buy extra time.

and i don't argue with her, because she has made a conscious choice and she is an adult. she has no small kids depending on her, she isn't burying her head in the sand, she knows her own mind and has made a free choice.

i might not agree with it but, frankly, that's my problem! i'm not going to guilt trip her.

Im in the same boat my whole entire family is this way. Last month I took my 69 year old mother to the doctor and never realized how many health problems she had that were directly related to her weight. I talked to her about my concerns she is trying, thats more then she was doing 6 months ago.

My husbands family refuses to even "talk" about my weight loss because it makes them feel so uncomfortable. Ive had to just come to terms with the fact that some people dont want to change at this moment in time. In some cases its just easier to wish/pray the weight away instead of putting in the daily effort to actually try.

The only thing I can suggest is how I deal with it and thats by just accepting them for how they are today and lead by example. Even small changes in a diet can have awesome results. My mom just increased her veg intake and her blood work came back last week improved. I dont think she will be out running anytime soon but its a move in the right direction.

Ouch, that is one sad situation there, both for you, and your family.

Love them, keep up the good example and yeah, make it clear you do not want to lose them, especially when 10 years could become 15 through just looking after oneself a bit more. Every moment is precious...do they want to eat a lot now, or be around a lot longer to eat more in the long run x

Peace & Blessings You should 1) Pray for them 2)Talk to them 3) Pray for them 4) take care of yourself
The only life you have control over is your own, we can't control the actions or inactions of others. Be good to yourself and know that you tried your best. their future does not lay on your shoulders, but their own. Peace & Blessings

I go through the same thing with my mom. She's had diabetes for 7 years, has rheumatoid arthritis, needs a CPAP machine, and is about 50 pounds overweight. She always talks about wanting to lose weight, but her eating habits are horrible and she doesn't do the minimal exercise (15 minutes per day of walking and moving up from there) that her doctors instruct her to do.

It's very frustrating. She'll ask me what she needs to do as far as diet and I'll spend all of this time explaining it to her, but she makes no changes because "it's hard to know what's healthy to eat". And then she cops an attitude when I point out to her that her behavior is contradictory. I've tried anger, I've tried pleading, I've tried being honest and telling her that I'm sometimes afraid she's going to lapse into a diabetic coma or I'm going to come home and find her passed out, I've tried scare tactics, and I've tried tough love. Nothing has worked.

She finds excuse after excuse for not getting healthier. She "needs" to drink Coke or have sweets because she says they are the only things that get her blood sugar up when she crashes. Yet she won't eat cherries or pineapple because "they make my blood sugar spike too high". She can't do the 15 minute walk because her joints hurt from the RA, but she goes to the mall or Target and stays on her feet 3-4 times longer. She told me that because she can't do hard workouts like I do, that she doesn't see the point of doing the walking because it feels useless. It's always something.

A few weeks ago, she asked for my help for the 1,000,000th time and I spent almost an hour talking to her about nutrition and she insisted that her new leaf was well and truly turned over. The very next day, she baked a pie and ate the whole thing. When I confronted her about it, she got very insulted and said the pie was her breakfast, lunch, and snack, so it's not like she ate it all at one sitting. I told her to not ask for my help anymore until she is serious about changing. I told her that if she's happy being so overweight on her painful joints and doesn't care about dropping dead from diabetes, then she should just admit it and stop wasting both of our time giving lip service to wanting to get healthy. I know that's harsh, but I've been doing the song and dance for almost a decade and I've had enough. She has to do it. I can't do it for her.

I think that because outside of her diabetes and slightly elevated blood pressure that her phyusical numbers come back good, she doesn't see the urgency. Pills keep her blood pressure and cholesterol down, so she doesn't see the big deal. The doctors telling her that she has the heart of a 30 year old doesn't help matters. She always quotes that to me when I bring up the danger of heart disease due to her 43 inch waist. Sigh.