My Family and Food

I think it's important to identify harmful though patterns and unpick where they come from in order to change them.  It's hard to change things when you spend no time considering exactly what needs changing.  I think we are all familiar with those little unhelpful habits and thoughts, but it's easy to not consider them and to leave them unchallenged.

My parents were in their late 20s when I came a long.  My Mum had a more modern upbringing I think.  Her Dad was a journalist and her mother ran a business.  They divorced when she was in her early teens and both went on to other relationships.  Unfortunately her father died a few years later and her stepfather was a difficult man.  Her stepfather was not a bad man but he was grumpy and best liked spending time gardening by himself.  My Mum was left with weaker family ties and moved to London to train and work as a nurse and made her own way in life.  She was a very caring lady and was liberal in her beliefs.

My Dad's parents were both much older when they had him and he was their only child.  He also had his Grandmother living with them when he was younger.  There was a family business and the family was comfortably middle class and conservative.  On the one hand, my Dad was utterly spoilt by the ladies of the family and on the other, he had to work hard and support them.  His Dad died when he was heading towards leaving school and he had to take over the business and support his Mum.  

My Dad had very definite ideas on how things should be and his views were more old fashioned and reflected that his parents were older.  Like many men of his generation, he didn't cook or clean but he did gardening and DIY.  He worked very hard and often did long hours.  There was an expectation that his food would be prepared and ready, that he got to dictate how things were.  For instance, we had one TV and once he was home, it was absolutely his choice as to what was on the TV.  He would expect to be waited upon and that was OK, because he was tired and had worked hard...  but it also led to a certain entitlement and self-centred attitude, where his needs were often more important than those of others.  It was not an attitude that shifted when he stopped working.

There was a huge size discrepancy in my family too.  My Dad was around six and a half foot while my Mum was not much over five foot.  My Dad was broad with it.  My sister and I ended up inbetween height wise.  My Dad was doing physical work and being a man too and with his size, his calorie requirement was undoubtedly considerably higher.  My Dad had been utterly spoilt growing up and it's clear that he was overweight from the photos.  My Gran cooked mince without removing any of the fat and always had cake and sweets.  Yes she ate fruit and veg but there undoubtedly aspects of her diet that were incredibly unhealthy.  She was not a small lady and wore shapeless clothing.

My Mum being a nurse, understood healthy eating very well and she had a lot of progressive views on food and health.  She studied as a herbalist and we grew up on herbal teas and wholefoods.  While many children of the 70s grew up on processed foods, we did not.  I wished for white bread instead of brown and cupboards with crisps and sweets in them lol.  My Mum did make cakes and flapcakes, but there was always a focus on not too much sugar.  They were nice but not hugely self-indulgent.

I am sure you can see a bit of a clash here in terms of ethos...  My Dad didn't interfere with my Mum's cooking as far as I know, that was a wife's side of things after all.  I am sure though that behind the scenes, maybe even before I was born, there was negotiations.

My Dad was self-indulgent when it came to food and remains a bit of a glutton.  He can, when given the opportunity, eat as much as a family of four.  He goes to a cake morning at the local church and the number of slices he packs away, is astounding.  Eating out, he would order more dishes than any of the rest of us and finish up whatever we didn't eat as well.  Growing up, he always had the best pieces of meat and the largest portions.  He always had first choice of seconds and a lot of the time, he would have all the seconds.  Not that I ever went hungry, not at all.  I think what I am trying to say is that food went with position in the family.  My Dad was not showing good behaviours around food.

When he retired, I had long left home but on my visits home, there was more cake and chocolate in the house.  My Dad would be eating indulgent cake every day, not my Mum's measured cakes.  I have thought long and hard about this and come to the conclusion that although it appeared he had a healthy home diet, he must have been eating more indulgent foods while at work.  His Mum was very much a part of his work life and I think she must have been taking him cakes and sweets there.  Its hard to believe that all the years between childhood and retirement that he was not being self-indulgent.

Its easy to believe that my Dad would have no issue being indulgent and keeping it to himself.  When we stayed with him he would actively hide cakes.  He would go in to kitchen and cut himself a huge slice and eat it in private.  He would have boxes of chocolates hidden away.  There would be huge slabs of cheese and I have seen him put a whole slab of cheese on is plate and eat it.  He tells himself he is eating healthily by having salad but in reality his view of salad is not healthy.  Its pork pie and fatty meats with creamy sauces and dressings and very little in the way of raw healthy veg.  And in large quantities.  

My Mum had been tiny and slim when she met my Dad but she was also a smoker. She gave up before we were born but it crept in as we grew up.  My Dad hated it and she would hide her cigarettes from him, but not us.  She also would buy chocolate bars and eat them in secret and hide the evidence.  My Dad was not kind if he found out.  My Mum was gaining weight and my Dad was not kind about that either.  I remember him calling her his little fattie for instance.  His attitudes just made her eating more secret.  He would make comments on what she was eating.  So he would have a plate stacked high and be eating seconds and being a little snide at my Mum for her much smaller amount of food.

My Mum was eventually diagnosed with underactive thyroid and then later with type 2 diabetes.  My Dad blamed her weight for her health issues and he blamed her for her weight.  Having similar health issues to my Mum, I think her weight was just another symptom of underlying imbalances.  I also think that my Dad probably drove her to her sneaky chocolate habit as a comfort eating tactic.  Life was not easy for my Mum.  My Gran never liked her and was not very nice to her and my Dad was not overly supportive as he was very close to his Mum and she was a huge part of his life.  

So hugely unhealthy food habits and attitudes in my family, hidden behind what was on the surface a very healthy well-balanced diet.  I grew up wanting to eat gluttonously and self-indulgently like my Dad and comfort eating sneakily like my Mum.  I also was a target for my Dad's snide comments about weight and food.  Of course, when I left home I over indulged in sugar for so many reasons.

My Dad, with his build, was easily able to gain a stone and not change clothing size.  He would turn a blind eye to bit of a belly, because it would be over his waist band and not that huge in proportion.  I suspect that even when I was a child, he was probably overweight by a similar weight to my Mum, it's just my Mum was tiny.  My Dad also had to eat far more unhealthily to gain that weight.  

My Dad is lucky that there is less predisposition for metabolic issues in his family.  My Mum died of a neurological disease and my Dad was convinced that she wouldn't have got that illness if her health had been better and that her health would have been better if she had not been over-weight.  Ultimately he blames her for her weight and therefore for her own death and he resents her for dieing.  I pointed out he was very wrong in his belief as her neurological condition is absolutely not linked to diabetes, but I don't think I changed his mind.  He absolutely believes my weight will lead to diabetes.  Yes my weight is a risk factor for diabetes, but I will still be at risk if I lost weight and was thin due to my other health issues.

Before I started this process of losing weight, I was very much addicted to sugar and I would feel quite ill if I didn't eat it.  One time we went to stay with him and arrived late on a holiday evening.  I had not thought to take additional food and there were no shops open to buy things.  I asked him for something sweet and he said he had nothing, even though I told him I was feeling pretty rough.  My sister got cross with him and called him out and told him what he did have.  After that, I would always take a supply of snack food and my Dad would expect to have some of this too, even asking for more, while hiding his cake and chocolate away and telling me off for having snacks.

I would buy my family Easter eggs and send them up but no one in my family has brought me an Easter egg since childhood.  They would actively avoid buying me anything sweet or food based as a Christmas or birthday present.  My Dad does not have much interest in most things as a present and chocolate was very much one of the few acceptable things.  

Another thing that was very hard was that at the same time as telling my Mum off for her weight and diabetes, he was too selfish to moderate his own eating.  He would have all these things in the house and eat them in front of her in large quantities.

Once my Mum became unable to cook, my Dad did have to start picking up some of these things and take responsibility.  There is now no one moderating his portion size of fatty or sugary things at home.  He isn't limited to extreme self-indulgence when he is out.  He doesn't really understand the healthiness of different food choices.  His diet has become increasingly bad.  

As he has gained weight, he has tried to control it by reducing the amount he eats.  So he has a late breakfast, skips lunch, has a large piece of cake in the afternoon and then a relatively healthy dinner.  His breakfast is a large bowl of cut apple and other fruit, so there is a lot of sugar in that.  He does not choose less fatty meat and puts sauce on things.   He doesn't eat bread, he eats scones.  Making himself hungry does not help him lose weight and he isn't prepared to be less self-indulgent.  Its OK for a man to be overweight in a way it isn't for a woman in my family.

Its taken me a long time to see things more clearly and objectively.  To understand that the way my Dad talked to us about food, weight and health was no alright and extremely unhelpful.  I also had a bias towards male weight being ok while female weight was not, so I was not considering his habits objectively for a very very long time.  It makes me sad on my Mum's behalf.