AAAHHHHHHHH! Must rant about Xmas

OK, so I went to Christmas in my old home town with my husband and my girls.  I haven't mentioned word one to my parents or siblings that I have been losing weight.  (Last time I saw them was in May, I started losing in July.)  So I am so excited to have my mom be proud of me for the first time in 49 years about the way I look right?  (She is super tiny and has never ever had any type of a weight prob, in fact my sister and I now have to beg her to eat more, at 5:3 she is down to 80 lbs.)  Well we walk into my sister's house and I am trying to just be normal and the first thing,  my mom does is starts crying.  I am like Hey she must be really happy, I finally have lost the weight monster from my back!  But NO,,,  she asks me oh honey are you sick?  WTF.  Then she proceeds the rest of time to watch what I am eating, tries to feed me candy, and also keeps telling me I need to stay healthy.  OMG, how eye opening!  There was never ever a time when I was going to please this woman.  Don't get me wrong.  I absoluetlly LOVE my mom.  But she is dealing with the best tools she was given (her Mom was a cold fish)  I feel SO free.  I kept saying to mysellf that I did this for me, but when it came down to it I was really doing it for her. Well, now I have gotten to this really great place and I don't have to care about pleaseing  anybody but me.    BTW... my dad( who is 92, spent the last 3 days telling me how great I look and how proud he is of me.  What irony.  He has never, ever said a word about my weight and now he is one of my greatest supporters!  Life is funny.  Sorry for the rant on the Holiday.  Hope everyone enjoyed, and I hope 2009 proves to be the healthiest happiest year for us all.

Thanks for listening.

Perhaps the reason she is so skinny is because she has an eating disorder. Seeing you lose weight may have scared her.

You have hit the nail on the head, we think my mom has had an eating disorder fof years, boy how much does tha suck,  Since she is 89, I guess it is not a product of the media, or Magazines etc.  Thanks for responding hon.

You look fantastic, and you know you are being healthy, so be proud of yourself  Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I can sure understand that you shocked the living daylights out of her and that all she could do is cry. When she nagged at you for being overweight maybe she was telling you in a (okay, very very) hidden way that your health was important to her. People act strange when they are shocked. Especially when they see when other people do what they secretly want to do as well.

I never knew how worried my mom was about my health until I started to lose it. Even yesterday she called me to tell me how wonderful I look while before she would never even say that. My weight was a nono to talk about. Not so long ago she told me that she worried that I might die of an obesity related illness and I never knew that she worried about it. I don't think by the way that it would have helped if she would have expressed her worries to me. I would have probably been eating more and faster... ;-)

But, I'm glad that you now know that losing weight is something you have to do for you. Not for someone else. And yes of course we want to hear from our mom that we are good but some are just not capable of it. I hope that your mom grows into it.

Jo

betz,  I understand how you must feel. Sometimes the validation we need the most is the one we will never get. You are very lucky though to still have both of your parents at that age. Got some good longevity in you gene pool. ;)

You should be very proud of your accomplishments and try to remember as you said, your mom is "working with the tools she was given"... She may also be worried about you because she realizes that her progressive weight loss is related to an unhealthy health pattern.

Try not to let her negativity drag you down. Rise above as you obviously always have.

I have a similar parent "trauma" story- When I was in college, I gained about 15 pounds in relation to stress and what not. i remember coming home for christmas one year and going to my sisters house for a get together. My father was there and I hadn't seen him in quite a while (he was never around when i was a kid). I walked up to him and said "hi Dad, merry christmas" and he looked at me and in front of a room full of people said, loudly I might add, "damn, your really chunkin up aren't ya!" You can imagine my response...

How terrific that you have figured out what is going on with your mother, and that your father does have a clue.  Yes, you're free, and that's the best gift ever for you and your girls.