Overeating and Boundaries with Your Family

Putting up boundaries with your family about their suggestions, advice, or "help" with your weight and eating is vital for healing your relationship with food.

Your family is not entitled to make comments, give advice and suggestions, and "help" you with your weight loss and your overeating.

If your parents or other people who were adults in your childhood insist on giving unsolicited advice, or comment on your eating or weight, this could be very harmful for your recovery process.

It doesn't matter if they're your parents, it doesn't matter if they're your family, they are not entitled to comment or "help" you with eating or weight -- ever.

Their comments and "help" could actually contribute to your self-punishment, shame, and self-blame, and exacerbate your eating issues.

Be wary of ways you might minimize to yourself the damage of these dynamics. Following are common rationalizations:

"Well, it's just their opinion, and I know they're just concerned about my health."

"I mean, they are right; I do need to eat less sugar and I do need to exercise more."

It doesn't matter if they're technically "right" about what might benefit your health. It doesn't matter if your health is objectively a concern.

The issue here is the power dynamic and what is happening emotionally between you and your parents.

After a comment or piece of advice, do you feel like a failure, bad about yourself, ashamed or self-punishing? Do you feel compelled to either overeat or restrict food afterwards?

Do their comments come along with any air of criticism, superiority, or judgment? Is there a power dynamic at play where they have power over you through these conversations?

Are your parents heavily focused on dealing with and remedying how they've treated you, which continues to contribute to your tendencies to use food as a coping mechanism?

You are absolutely entitled to say to your mother, your father, your grandparents,

"The topics of my weight, eating and health are off limits in conversations now.

I will focus on what I want and need to do for myself, and I do not want you to comment on any of it, nor do I want any help or advice on it anymore."

You are also allowed to say,

"I'm not ok anymore with you talking about your own or other people's weight, bodies and eating with me. I am trying to heal and those comments bother me. I understand you have your opinions but please do not talk about them with me."

You are not being rude, or unreasonable, or sensitive by setting these boundaries, despite what they may say in response.

Your healing process must be protected, and boundaries with your parents are very healthy and important in that healing process.

At some point, you'll also need to emotionally feel about how the advice and comments have made you feel about yourself, which will be the most healing thing. But in that process, it is also healthy to put up boundaries.

Photo by Evie S via Unsplash