Your story about your mother reminds me of my own. Five siblings, one of my brothers was fat and my Dad was too. I was thin until puberty, gained weight but lost it and then was thin until I had my a baby at 28 years old. I’ve struggled all of my adult life taking it off and putting it back on.

When I was in my late thirties I got thin. My mother didn’t say a word until about three years after I lost over 100 pounds. Her comment was that she saw a picture of me before I lost weight and in seeing that picture she could now tell I was thinner.

Thanks Mom.

She loved my Dad with all of her being but she was ashamed of how fat he was. My Dad was the camera man for our family photos so there are really very few photos of him. He died young. When my Mom died I found a cache of photos of my Dad I’d never seen. She hid them because he looked fat in the pictures. I’m very thankful she didn’t tear them up and throw them away.

Since her death I’ve figured out this issue with fatness was her problem. She wasted a lot of time with her aversion to other people’s fatness. She also missed out on a lot of good people- rejected from her circle because they were too fat.

I given this all a lot of thought. When I was a kid my mother starved me. Of the five kids in the family I was the only girl. My Mom was a tiny little woman and she gave me smaller portions when I was growing up. Much smaller than what my brothers were allowed to eat and similar in size to what she herself ate. She ate like a bird and I was always hungry. The weight gain at puberty was due to a change in our family circumstances and she left me unsupervised with boxed cereal. I would binge on cereal and gained weight. She finally figured it out and restricted me from cereal and I lost weight but I obsessed over food from that point on. The weight gain at puberty wasn’t major- I was 5'2 and weighed about 104 pounds- more than my peers but I was also taller than my peers by a few inches.

Thus your story is familiar to me. I’m sorry that your Mother couldn’t just chill out and love you for the person you are.