Thanks everyone!
You really don’t say why this isn’t a realistic goal or if she needs to lose weight. As long as she needs to lose the weight and is doing it in a healthy manner, I think you should support her efforts. Having a healthy weight and eating better may prolong her life and make her quality of life better as she ages(less chance of diabetes etc.). Ask her what you can do to help her succeed.
Maybe have veggie and fruit trays at family events or let her bring a dish she can eat. That way she will not have to miss spending time with family.
I myself struggle with my weight and so I understand this cross. If possible she can check out sparkpeople online it is a great resource for losing weight in a healthy manner.
She’s been told by two different medically-trained people her goals are completely unrealistic as her age, family history and her lifestyle would likely never see her reach that goal, and it would be a waste of everyone’s time including hers to try and do so.
The problem for me isn’t the diet as such, which would be admirable, it’s the fact that she’s made the diet the sole thing her life revolves around. First she wanted to lose a few pounds. Then she wanted to lose a stone (14lb to you). Then it was 2 stone. Then 3. She doesn’t seem to know where the boundary between healthy weightloss is and obsessiveness.
In addition to discussing these issues with your therapist, perhaps it is time to seriously consider moving out to try to reduce the friction between you and your family members?
You mean the therapist I quit seeing some time ago? Fact is that I got sick and tired of talking to people when in reality it served to do nothing other than make me more miserable.
Also, unless you can somehow magic me up the well-paid job which will allow to move out (I live in a small town with 5000 people out of 90,000 people unemployed) then feel free to do so. I’m hoping to go abroad to work in January, but until I’ve got the job confirmation letter in my hand, I’m stuck here.
Plus moving out in any way, shape or form isn’t going to deal with the fact that my mother is a hypocrite and completely and utterly selfish. Anything which doesn’t agree with her viewpoints is discarded as being wrong without any sort of rational thought. She encourages my Islam whilst simultaneously and openly saying she thinks I’m going to end up a fundamentalist jihadi, and has also openly mocked the Prophet (saw), the Qur’an, hijab and pretty much Islam as a whole. She encouraged me all my life to be open and honest with her, only to then actively mock me when I opened up to her about my gender issues and call me deluded. I don’t drink now, yet she still tried to get me to drink alcohol and called me a spoilsport, boring and even weird for doing so, as well as making a drunken fool of herself at various points in time.
In the meantime I’m somehow supposed to just put up and shut up with her forcing her views on me. Moving out might mean I’m not exposed to those views, but it still remains that those opinions and thoughts are still there.
I’ll give you an example: I recently started looking for work in the Middle East, and before I’ve even received a job offer or considered where I want to go specifically, my mother has made her mouth start about how I’d come back a jihadist nutcase. She’s also banging on about how she thinks it’s ridiculous she couldn’t go out and get drunk if she visited me (Dubai and other ME places allow alcohol but not public drunkeness) or do anything ‘fun’ (her definition of the word). She also seemed fixated that in ME countries she’d likely to have to cover her head too or wear specific types of clothing. In this she has never ONCE talked to me about what I want or even considered the possibility that this is what I MYSELF want and that I’m not doing this for her sake, I’m doing it for mine.
.