I watched the show “My Mom is Obsessed” last Friday evening.
I should have known better. “Toddlers and Tiaras” once gave me nightmares. Amusing nightmares, yes, but nightmares nonetheless.
But this mom? She’s got them all beat.
*shudder*
Watch this if you can, but here’s the gist:
A 14-year-old girl’s mother gained weight after pregnancy and is fixated on controlling her daughter’s weight. She’s terrified her daughter will also gain weight later in life and end up like her – miserable. She makes her daughter step on the scale each morning, at one point ridiculing her over two pounds gained. She’s 14.
The mom finds a couple candy wrappers and a box of Gobstoppers in the girl’s room and FLIPS out. No. That doesn’t capture it. She went demonic. It was crazy. She ambushes her daughter, embarrasses her in front of her friend and grounds her. Yup.
She makes her daughter text her every.single.day before lunch to “go over the options” and constantly s-text-alks her about food. The bucket of crazy really tips when the daughter is “caught” at a pizza joint with friends. She wasn’t with boys or breaking curfew or anything….nope. It was the pizza that got her in trouble.
If what I wrote sounds horrid, believe you me: it’s worse. You have to see the whole episode. This mother is grappling with some deep-seated issues.
Here’s another clip that explains more:
At least they’re getting help. I do not want to say label this woman as “bad mother” or “bad person.” She is clearly under the grip of an obsession and those issues are effecting not only her, but her life and family. It’s sad, really. I believe she can change, though.
It’s remarkable to me that the daughter, though incredibly pained by all this, shows no evident absorption of her mother’s obsession. Home-girl seemed okay, strong. (For now?) She wasn’t buying into it.
I wanted to reach into the TV and fist bump her for being awesome.
How parents raise their children in regards to food/eating is an issue I’m passionate about. I feel it needs to be addressed more and more but with extreme care. I believe a majority of women in the US have or have had food/weight “issues” and body image woes. Couple that with a rising childhood obesity rate which requires intervention. I smell disaster.
For my own experience, I know my Mom had/has no contributing part in how my eating disorder played out. I appreciate the way I was raised in regards to food. Because I wasn’t. I was just …raised. I don’t really recall thinking about food – it was less than a non-issue.
You might say my mom was relaxed about it. 
Relaxed, but smart.
She was adamant we never be made to finish our plates. After spending many nights falling asleep at the table over her untouched liver, that is one thing she would just.not.have. We ate dinner as a family, she cooked “traditional” meals (no liver, thank you Lord), we had some junk food in the house (nowhere near the amounts I see in some grocery carts), but we never ate the “sugary cereals” like Pops or Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I didn’t want them anyway. I wasn’t used to them. I liked my Crispy Wheat & Raisins.
So my mom was cool. Me? Not so much.
I know she will forever continue to try and blame herself for my ED and figure out what she did wrong. She knows better, but I think it is ingrained in every mother’s psyche to constantly wonder “what did I do wrong?”
BY THE WAY MOM, STOP IT! (0;
- Do you think your mom impacted your relationship with food? Would you change anything? Did you see this show?
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WTF Wednesday – How Now Brown?
Posted in WTF Wednesday, tagged blogging everyday, brown town, enter comments about OMG you need to eat MORE...i know!, i wrote about crystal light lettuce and egg whites so sue me, Jess, pshaw - oh yes I did on May 23, 2012 | 33 Comments »
Yesterday I got a letter from my friend Jess.
Though I don’t look thrilled about it in this picture (wtf), I assure you I was SO happy to hear from her.
See what she did here?
How could I not write a WTF Wednesday post today?
So here we go.
Did you ever have a “I hate what I’m wearing” day? One of those days where you get ready for work and as soon as you leave the house you start to feel uncomfortable/itchy/boring/fat/skinny/hot…etc.?
It’s like a “bad hair” day. It’s a “bad outfit” day.
Any-
I feel brown and blah, like a frumpy-dump.
(I have no idea why my face is like that…too funny. I look devastated and disgusted, I wasn’t.)
My waistline is too high, too tight and my my legs feel all suffocated.
But I’m here. I’m stuck. I deal.
Whatever. Totally fine.
As is the fact they’ve discontinued Ruby Red Grapefruit Crystal Light.
It’s fine. I mean, I’ve been drinking it for like 80 years and there is no other sugar free grapefruit flavored beverage on the market (I researched). It’s gone. Whatever.
It’s fine that I drove to 7 different stores searching for any stragglers left behind. That’s not crazy or anything. It’s fine. Totally not obsessing.
OH and I forgot my lunch today – which means foraging in the office fridge for lunch. I usually have all kinds of back-up, but I must have slacked off.
So for lunch I had romaine lettuce, egg whites, Bragg’s liquid aminos and nutritional yeast. What the….should we just go ahead and call that the anorexia salad? I swear I was hiding when I ate it. Too embarrassing.
I also had 1/2 of an Orgain* to “round out” a classic example of an eating-disordered lunch. It would have been that much better if it were an Ensure. LOL. #whatNOTtodo
Totally fine. It happens. Whatever.
*This is why, though they make me…uncomfortable(?), those protein/meal shakes are a REAL good idea for people with EDs. NUTRIENT DENSITY. I just wanted to put that out there, if I can do it…you can do it.
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