Hey Tyler I tried to use the discount code for the website didn’t work! I bought $72 worth of stuff and then put in your discount code, the price went down to $54 but after I put in my card they charged me $78!
@@tylerbenderrthank you so much for responding I emailed them and asked to cancel my order but at the bottom of the checkout page it says “once you place your order it cannot be canceled or changed” seems shady I know it’s not your fault, thank you for responding to me!
“I could lose five pounds but I could also lose my humanity” Wow this resonated so heavily. It’s so hard to break the ED mindset but this mantra can help tbh
2 days after giving birth my grandmother told me that i was morbidly obese and nobody would employ me because I was a liability die to my weight. I weighed approximately 180lbs. 2 DAYS AFTER GIVING BIRTH!!!!
100%. Making soup is like jazz music, you just kind of feel it out and throw in whatever and experiment. Baking is science. The numbers MATTER so much.
I take care of a 91 year old woman who says she needs to lose weight... I tell her "you made it you dont need to watch your weight anymore, eat what you want"
😭🥹🖤🖤 i hope she has all the yummy food she wants to. she's got no reason to lose weight, i'd be lucky to reach her age! idk why but this made me think of a story from my life- i worked with a girl around my age (20s) who already had a kid and was pregnant with her second. and our job didn't have many breaks, we had to drive everywhere, so we usually stopped for fast food. and one day she broke down and almost started crying because she was saying she felt 'fat' for eating fast food and i was there in the car like girl you're eating for two, but even if you weren't, you have to eat!! i was out here breaking down how many calories we burn every hour while cleaning houses and everything 😭😭i pray she's doing well
@@mightymeatymech I hope so too. I’ve struggled with my weight and doing stupid things to lose weight including hard drugs. Even now (although I dont have a choice my wedding dress is non refundable and I put on weight since trying it on. They don’t have bigger sizes.) I’m doing a crash diet that ends on my wedding day in a little over a month. I don’t let my daughter know and I don’t allow anyone to comment on her body. I don’t want her to grow up with a messed up relationship with food. I yo-yo from mostly binge eating (that’s why I’m a big girl) to starving myself only to binge more. My dad forced diets on on me and locked the pantry. Like with a padlock. I never got a chance to learn what a healthy food relationship even looks like.
@@sp00kyg1rl I bake her lots of her favorite things it makes me feel good to see her enjoy them and she has like 100 year old cook books it’s fun to make the recipes
I was very lucky to have an aunt who gave me the exact opposite advice. She would always say to have two cookies, one for each hip. "You don't want to get lopsided."
having obese almond parents was crazy. there was no idea about nutrition, just failed fad diets fuelled by self hatred. loving to cook has def healed my relationship with food but I still have to fight not to binge, and my body issues...lets not get into that
Oh my God! That was my mother! And she would insist on cooking all of the desserts! That situation made me afraid of pizza and chips for decades! The whole situation pushed me into bulimia as a teen and bulimia/orthorexia as an adult.
I was once almost grounded for eating 4 Oreos before 12 pm while on my period. My mom said that she was worried about my weight and that I had a serious problem. She told me that I was going to die before 25 from my eating habits.
You might not have this relationship with your mom but if you could send her this video it might help her reflect on that. As a parent you're often scared of everything, all the time. She probably wasn't trying to do anything but help you, but she didn't know how to do that properly. No one teaches us how to be good parents, we learn from watching others and if they do it wrong then what hope do we have?
Yup. This. My mom tried to have a séance (I called it this because we all held hands around a table) with my grandma because of how fat I was. I tried to diet but have issues with impulse control so she would just get so mad at me. Now I’m the biggest I’ve ever been but I like myself so I mostly don’t care.
@@claremiller9979if you are a bad parent you are a bad parent Having good intentions doesn't make your child not traumatized Information is freely available, there are so many psychologists and the like writing wonderful books about childcare, if you can't be arsed with any of this just don't be so selfish and don't have kids My mom always tried her best and always had the best intentions, I am still no where close to being okay after over one and a half decades of therapy.
When I was skinny, it felt like being constantly weak and sick, so I kinda knew that was bs. The truth is positive attention feels good and it is sad that she felt like that was the ultimate source of positive attention for her.
As a skinny person, if nothing tastes as good as skinny feels, then you've never had good good. Food is better than skinny. I'm a bit underweight, and I'm always cold, a little tired, I can't sit on bleachers for more than 5 minutes because my bones have nothing to keep them from touching the seats and it hurts, and I don't have a figure. Food is delicious, and it's nice to be skinny, but not *that* nice.
On the 'How do you control a kid that will binge on sugar? the answer is', you don't create an environment where they feel they need to, and you help them build good relationships with food. When I moved out of home and eventually realised that my Mum's rules no longer applied I gained a lot of weight (I also started a medication that made me ravenously hungry all the time which did not help)
when I went to college I stopped eating (binging) on candy/ sweets because I could get it whenever I wanted and when it wasn't so restricted I realized I liked sweets but it wasn't consuming me
12:17 But if you restrict a child that much, they'll never learn by themselves when enough is enough. In my opinion its a form of food insecurity that does nothing but create a difficult relationship later on with food
Yeah food insecurity was a huge cause of my issues with food as well as my husband’s. We are trying desperately to give our son a healthy relationship with food.
This was me. My parents restricted the heck out of me and forced me to constantly exercise. And now I struggle with self control around food. Any food.
I am fat and have a fat almond mom, so I assumed that everyone else ate even less and it lowkey ruined me as a kid and made me develop so much food fear . The only thing that helped me was nutritionists on tiktok showing their meals and explaining food to me and showing me how restrictive I actually was
I have a very similar experience to you. Even at my most active, I’ve never been skinny. I’ve had to learn since then that over restricting was doing me more harm than good.
I'm aware that I'm not actually fat, but just the way I've heard everyone talk it made me obsessively think I am. Now I know that being fat is ok, not an insult, a description It did make me restrictive of how I eat to this day, but tiktok nutritionists definitely boost my confidence Actually during my sister's wedding my mom was obsessively covering her stomach. Every other word was just a synonym to ugly, my mom is fat, and she's beutiful. I still struggle with wanting a flat stomach, but now I know that every body is beautiful
Same, I’m fat and grew up with medical parents, the only time in my life I’ve been an “average” size was in my 20s when I ended up with anorexia, (+ over exercising), sure I ended up a size 10-12 but I had to live on 500 calories a day plus intense exercise to get there, as and it really messed me up, I’m now in my 30s and I’ve been able to slowly improve my diet (gaining weight as a result), I still eat less than a normal person should, but it’s better than it was, plus now I’m in my 30s, I’ve been finally able to convince my doctors to run some comprehensive tests to figure out what the heck is going on … and turns out the reason I can never lose weight is I have PCOS related Insulin resistance… seriously that would have been good to know like 30 years ago🙄.
My mom is a bit overweight and I was always a tiny underweight child and she used to praise my tininess like it was the best quality I had. I remember she would say that "pinch an inch" thing and pinch the skin on my stomach and praise it. When I went up a pants size for the first time as an adult, I had a complete meltdown thinking I wasn't worth anything anymore.🙃
Start telling them insane lies about what you ate. "An entire block of cheese, a broccoli bush, an almond (just one), and a half a loaf of bread." In my experience, if people ask you annoying questions and you answer something insane, they stop asking. That's how I got my relatives to stop asking if I had a boyfriend.
thats not on them to set the boundary @@korva_puusti its on their parents to not cause their child to feel shame around talking about what they ate/say dumb s like that
You were one of the first seeds that let me know I was becoming an almond mum and I later found out I have an eating disorder. Now sitting here with a treat and my kids have chocolate & lollies in the pantry (and wow, turns out when you restrict kids don’t go & gorge on them all!). So thank you
I didn’t have an almond mom but I also grew up in Utah and was surrounded by almond moms because they basically spawn there so lots of body issues still haunt me. I was always the chubby kid surrounded by the skinniest little Mormon kids and I was already a target since I wasn’t Mormon. Oh Utah…
I’ve lived in Utah and totally agree! I was Mormon but a liberal one so I felt ostracized as well. The mold of what’s acceptable there is so, so small. I now live in a rural East Coast town where everyone is weird and I love it 😂
I struggled super hard with an ED throughout my teenage years, and a bit into my late twenties. High key though, the biggest motivator for me to recover and to break free from those toxic mindsets was because I wanted to be a mom. I didn't want to pass down any of the ways I looked at my own body onto my hypothetical future children. Flashforward, seeing evrybody online talk about their "almond moms" made me realize I had made a good choice. I learned how to cook for myself and healed my terrible relationship to food, fitness, and my body all so that I would never inadverdently hurt my future kids like that
“A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips”-stuff like this just came from old diet adverts. I’ve heard a lot of others like “Your tummy isn’t growling; it’s applauding!” “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” “A taste of regret” “Mad as a hatter, thin as a dime”
"you guys are going to be so mad if you know how to cook" Said right after I was appalled at you measuring baking powder with your heart. Lap swimming is meditative for me. I can just can zone out and get good exercise without sweating. Waterproof headphones are the real game changer, though.
@@mariagiusit I use a really old waterproofed iPod shuffle, which I don't think you can get anymore. The company I got it from, Audioflood, is now making them with a player that works with Spotify or Amazon Music. It looks like the same idea - it clips to your googles. There are also waterproof Bluetooth earbuds but I have a feeling I'd be rescuing those from the bottom of the pool a lot.
Lol girl manually forming flat cookies with her hands. I don't know which recipe it was but you probably weren't supposed to do that. You either drop it in balls from a spoon/scoop, roll it out and cut it up with a glass or cookie cutter, or make a log and cut it if it doesn't go in a pan. Also flour is your friend. But it's understandable- it doesn't sound like her mom was making many cookies growing up
They taught us how to use my fitness pal in my freshman gym class during our health unit....that was the year I became uncomfortable in my body. We also learned our bmi that unit. I wasn't overweight, but it was the highest in the class so I became very very uncomfortable - and then they gave me a tool to develop disordered eating.
My dad took me to the doctor when I was in sixth grade, I’d always been chubby but my mom who usually took me and the doctors themselves weren’t rude to me about it. I stood on the scale and it said “130” and I just remember my dad going, “wow” exacerbatingly. And just that one word has fucked with me my whole life. I am so proud of what you overcame and you still have a sense of humor about it.
As a kid who grew up with candy in the house all the time for every holiday, every event, a bowl of candy on the coffee table year round… after a while, you just don’t want it anymore. It becomes the “norm” and no big deal. You don’t feel like you “have to have it”. I’ve done the same thing with my kids. Having it in the house has never been a problem. Yes when they were really little (like babies and toddlers) you couldn’t have that laying out, but since then, they’ve got used to it. I think perhaps it’s the opposite of what someone might think as far as “limiting yourself”. Perhaps after a while, it becomes uninteresting because it’s no longer a novelty. There are certain things that I know of I buy, I’ll eat the whole bag- like ruffles chips. But on the whole, my kids are bored with the treats. (You wouldn’t think that would be the case, but it is). I change out the candy (two candy dishes) for every holiday in coordinating colors or themes, and they just don’t care any more. There should be a moderation, but being super strict is not it. It gives your kids a complex about eating, and sweets. I’ve got four girls, ages 10-20, and none of us are overweight.
my brother also has access to whatever sweets he wants, but he usually chooses smoothies lol. i think it's cause when he was younger he saw me experimenting with a lot of different smoothies and i'd always let him try some. his current go-to is kale and carrots, even though he doesn't eat cooked vegetables! lol he's always been lucky, his mom has never forced him to eat anything he doesn't want to. as long as he's eating reasonably, he can grab some candy or popcorn if he wants to... when i first saw how she let him eat intuitively i kind of freaked out ngl, because i wasn't raised like that at all (we don't share a mom). he was seven and he woke up and just ate popcorn for breakfast and i was basically clutching my pearls LMAO. but seeing how it's led to him developing his own relatively healthy eating patterns has been nice. he's 16 and he definitely eats more veggies and fruits than most adults i know, because he's found his own way of enjoying them. and he doesn't have to feel guilty about eating a whole pizza, cause he's a growing boy lol. no food shaming is really nice for kids. edit- i know this entire larger conversation usually affects girls moreso than boys, but our dad's side of the family is really awful about their relationships with food, no matter the gender. so i'm glad he has his mom to just hang out and snack with
@@mightymeatymech it’s really interesting to see the different dynamics with how kids are approached about portions and types of foods growing up, and how they turn out. We moved from Southern California where everyone is super concerned over what they put in their bodies- to a southern state where it’s all mostly fried foods, sugar, and lots of meat. We were never a family that severely leaned in either direction, but the culture shock from one state to another is real. Especially moving across the US. I was for sure raised more strict with what I ate than my own kids. We were told to clear our plates “or else”. And yet if my husband and I can see that the kids are actively trying new foods and eating green stuff, we’re okay with that. My sister is opposite with her kids, she’s really strict about not wasting food. So you could go in a lot of different directions with how you teach kids. 👍
My kids' candy is sitting out 24/7 and they usually have like one piece when they get home from school and one when they go up for bath. The forbidden nature isn't there, so they don't feel a need to binge.
I grew up with the same thing. A cookie jar that we could take from whenever we wanted, Honey buns in the pantry, and so forth. That since me and my sibling knew that those things were there if we ever wanted them it almost took away the feeling of actually wanting it. The irony is as an adult now I don't crave candy or cookies but soda (something that wasn't kept in the house and only gotten when we'd eat out or special events) is something I struggle with drinking to much of.
That's so great to hear! We have all kinds of snacks at home as well. The only time I "restrict" is when I can tell they're hungry so that's when I don't allow them to snack. I think some of the downside I do is probably tell them to eat "real food" when they ask for snacks instead eat a meal. I'm also chained to MyFitnessPal so I'm constantly measuring my food on a scale. My daughter caught me measuring a nectarine and asked me why I was measuring that. So I hope that my kiddos do not have a dysfunctional relationship with food like I do.
Also - baking is a science. Cooking you can have a lot of play with, but don't wing it for baking until you actually know what you're doing. Except chocolate chips. Always measure those with your heart ❤
If you don't feel comfortable cooking I'd try to stick as close to the recipe as possible. A teaspoon vs. a quarter teaspoon can make a big difference. Of course it's also going to be way harder if you're doing it for the first time while also talking about something else!
To this day i remember how hungry i was when the whole family would diet. Weight watchers with my 15-20 something points, while everyone else had more than double. I lost five pounds and stayed at that weight afterwards, "You need to lose more weight." I was 130 pounds. The struggle was real
I did ww when I was like 15 (2008) and I was into swimming. Like 2h 5x per week. The points were not enough, i was constantly hungry. After 2 weeks I stopped doing ww. My mom had no problems with hunger. WW in the early stages clearly was not for teenagers and competitive athletes.
I had a whole almond family, my mom was bad, but I remember my grandpa said something to me that stuck for a long time. I was 7 and told him I wanted to do gymnastics, he said “You should probably go on a diet and lose some weight first. You need to be fit for that”. I had a doctor tell me earlier that year that I also needed to go on a diet.. at 7. I’m 25 now and still have body image issues..
God- no seven year old has any damn business being on a diet. Childhood and growing up means CONSTANT weight fluctuations as your body prepares to grow and develop. That doctor was actual evil. What kind of monster tells a child not even in the double digits they need to loose weight?
I have such a strong memory from when I was a kid. The ice cream truck was coming and, like a kid, I wanted a popsicle. My mom sat me down and drew me a picture comparing a happy skinny person and a sad fat person to show me what would happen if I ate too many popsicles. I couldn't have been older than four but I still see that stupid picture so clearly in my head of the sad fat person.
I started weight watchers in the 4th grade. Did the atkins diet in 6th or 7th. I remember being the only kid at the weight watchers meeting and being so proud of trying to be healthy. Diet culture is so wrong. I've been on so many diets over the years and have such a low self-esteem because of it being pushed on me by my grandma and mom
I often wonder just how many of our mothers and grandmothers have/had disordered eating. . . The harm they imposed on us came from the harm imposed on them.
With Ozempic, the diet industry is definitely worth more now. Novo Nordisk, the company that makes Ozempic, is now the most valuable company in europe, and has single-handedly propped up Denmark's currency enough that they aren't facing heavy inflation like the rest of europe and in turn has allowed them to keep their mortgage rates low. There's a small chance that Denmark might become the pharma capital of the world since they already have a big pharma industry to begin with. So, yeah, Ozempic has definitely increased the value of the weight loss industry.
There's also this injection that my nutritionist recommended, also made by them: Saxenda. I pucked my guts out for about 6 months only to gain the weight right back. Don't try this!!!!
So I hear you, but tbh, I've seen the ravages of diabetes so I can't find myself being mad at it. I absolutely don't trust any pharmaceutical company any more than I trust any junk food company, but I've seen the positive effect it can have on a person's life, and wegovy is the first weightloss medicine that my Dr actually thinks works and both of those are huge.
@@dismurrart6648 don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I actually used to be against Ozempic for weight loss, mainly because it was creating a shortage so diabetics couldn't get it, and because I still had the mindset of weight loss drugs either not working or being terrible. I know what it's like to deal with drug shortages. *Shudder* Now I'm in favor of it because of all the lives it could save. I still think that on a macro scale, society should tackle obesity legislatively by taxing hypersatiating(junk) food, but since Ozempic will likely hurt both the diet and junk food industries, I'm pretty in favor of it. Plus Ozempic has reduced alcohol cravings in some people, which in turn could reduce cancer rates(yes alcohol causes cancer, or at least massively increases cancer risk. More people should know that.) I also maybe stand to benefit because if Denmark's pharma industry gets big, I could move there after I get my PhD. I have family there, and it's one of the best countries. They've got Lego, the highest level of social mobility in the world, the least corruption of any country, windmills, and extremely well-founded public services. Denmark is great.
@sophiedowney1077 oh yeah, I'm from a family of addicts so I've seen the ways alcohol wrecks your body. I hope that that works out because yeah, if I could move to Denmark I probably would. Good luck with the PhD btw :)
16:30 i joined swim team in 2001 the older girls on my team were years ahead of the rest of my town when it came to body positivity. everyone was always complimenting eo and the captain made breakfast tacos every morning to make sure we ate. i didn't realize how good we had it until i made friends with a woman that went to the same school as me but was in cross country. they were EATING COTTON BALLS
"A second on the lips, forever on the hips". "You shouldn't be able to pinch more than an inch or you're fat" "Snacking is unattractive" "Chew every bite until it's liquid, then you can swallow" "If you're hungry you can have three almonds" 😂😂😂
Growing up dancing, I knew so many girls who struggled with EDs…I acutely remember being at a competition at like 8, and witnessing a fellow dancer get completely chastised for trying to drink a regular Coke. Her mom insisted she drink a Diet Coke because she “would get fat” from drinking eve regular soda. I was so confused, and then really sad when I realized what was going on. She cried from her mom yelling at her :’(
The other day I had a little girl in my house with his brother so we did french fries they could enjoy, she was 8 and she asked for 6 fries because she "wants to be skinny", the moment she left i started crying because i remember being that way around that age because i just absorved all the diet comments from the failed diets and conversations between my aunt and my mom, they weren't directed at me but kids understand even when they don't seem like they can.
I love my dad, very much. But I remember a flippant comment he made when I was around 14 that has always stuck with me. I was chowing down on Oreos. If anything, I was probably underweight at the time. I remember him using the word “piggy” and saying “Gee, I wonder why I have so much acne.” I remember feeling shame and going up to my bedroom to cry. You make a very good point about being conscious about what you say around people, especially young girls. I have five nieces, one of which has an ED. I’ve learned a lot from her about seemingly innocent comments that are extremely difficult to deal with for her. My husband has a rare skin condition that has almost killed him twice in his life. His face is very red which people comment on constantly. We’ve come to determine you should never comment on someone’s body. We do, however, enjoy telling people we love their hair (especially vibrant colors) or things of that nature that one chooses and can brighten their day. 😊
For me everything was blaming me being fat. If I didn’t get the job is because I was fat. My mum said no one was going to be with me because I was fat. Your life is not the way it should be because I was fat. Mind you at time I was actually dealing with Ana and Mia and seeing the photos I was skinny! I was an S! But because I had thick legs my mum considered me fat ( she was fat btw, but her excuse is that she had kids). Now I am actually overweight ( hormones, depression and basically giving up since I always thought I was fat made me like this) Whiles fat I got a great job, started my own small business, got the best of friends and I am now engaged. Still, my mum tells me to give up on my brand because it won’t be big and a fat girl will never make it popular. She is saying that my fiancé will leave me eventually and thinks that if I was skinny the job would have been better 💕🤣🤣 it’s crazy
God, I still struggle so much with my mom! I've always been overweight and my mom is skinny-fat, I felt sooo grateful to see people who confirm this is wrong (she sometimes just comes into my room while I am changing when I specifically tell her not to and she grabs my belly- mind you, I was bloated and on my period, and tells me I will never get a boyfriend like this). I've now been eating clean and going to the gym, trying to meet my protein intake, I look much better because I've gained muscle and lost some fat, it's almost been a month of consistency. But she keeps telling me to quit taking protein and stop going to the gym, only do cardio, just because the fucking scale is the same...
Jesus that's so horrible and annoying. And just so you know a lot of guys like muscular women, so your mom doesn't know what she's talking about ;) The whole scale thing reminds me of that "statistic" that like 60% of firefighters are "overweight" based on the BMI scale, but it's actually because they're heavier because of the insane amount of muscle they have and the BMI scale doesn't take into account body fat and muscle percentage.
@@sophiedowney1077 yeah, I'm now kinda leaning towards my muscle mommy era. I'm just tired of trying all the impossible diets my mom keeps suggesting, they never really worked anyways :) And I didn't know about firefighters being overweight by BMI, that's insane!!! And yet it makes perfect sense that BMI sucks :D
@@dora6090 it really is a terrible scale. That's why skinny fat is a thing to begin with. It's so flawed. I'm hoping it's flawed in the opposite direction too because I'm lanky af and like 10 pounds underweight, but I can't put on weight for the life of me. Hopefully my body type is just like this and I'm actually a healthy weight.
@@sophiedowney1077 well...I can confirm it's basically the same thing for me :) people can never really tell my weight and they unironically guess I'm like 15-20 kg lighter. Weight does not define your actual health!!!
By that logic, I am overweight, even though I am just muscle with only 12% body fat. Keep doing what you are doing. Protein burns much more when digested, and you will burn more calories the more you put muscle. You can do some cardio, if you want, but not so much to keep the muscle, and you can also take some L-carnitine. You got this 👍 My mom is angry because apparently I eat too much vegetables and oats and will become a horse 🐎 💀
This brought back a memory of being a teenager and seeing a tv commercial for a weight loss product where women at a party admire so-and-so because "she's a perfect size 8." And I thought I must be extra amazing bc I was like a size 4 or 6. And now I'm like a 14 or 16 and I still can't buy clothes without thinking about how far over 8 they are. And no matter how much therapy I've had and how much I logically reason that that's silly, I don't think it will ever truly be out of my head and that sucks. So glad your generation is doing better than mine did. Keep up the good work, love.
@@tylerbenderrYou and your mom are willing to be vulnerable and it makes it possible for other people to be vulnerable, which is so hard with something like this, there is so much unnecessary shame and self-loathing.
I didn’t grow up with almond parents but I was very much reminded of the fact that I needed to lose weight constantly (even tho as a kid I was pretty average) and that unfortunately has led to my ED that I recover slowly but then relapse as soon as someone mentions that something has too many calories (for example: my dad saying I can’t have a certain drink bc it has 100 calories)
Sweet, poor child. You developed binge eating behaviors because of mom's shared orthorexia... it happened to me too. I have pcos and I ended up crying while shopping in the supermarket because there was nothing I wanted to eat or could eat without feeling like a monster. I used my fitness pal to keep under 1100 calories, feeling faint, and losing hair. It took years of reprogramming to change that.
My mom is not an Almond Mom, being born in 1943, but grew up on a farm eating "thresher's fare" and continued serving her own family food as though we spent our days unloading hay and shoveling corn feed from silos. Then she wondered why her children were all overweight and shamed us, causing major body issues and unhealthy relationships with food. It never occurred to her that she couldn't feed suburban children the same way you feed farm hands, and then nagged us frequently about our weight. Well done.
You doing that “barbaric” thing to the flour was actually your body adapting to the baking lifestyle. You should embrace it, not name call it. Lol yeah you can touch flour with your hands. Grab everything with your hands. Youre a baker now. Accept it, and you will be a better baker uwu
OOF the jeans shopping with a mom who’s a smaller size hits HOME, I always feel so weird when mine does her annual weight loss competition (thru her work???) and talks about her waist band for like, 4 months
Only now realizing I had an almond mom. I WISH I got an apple and cheese as schoolsnack. I got raw bell pepper cut in strips. Other kids had cookies and fruit, I was so jealous. I was and am still overweight by the way, cause you can't diet away a medical condition 🤷🏼♀️
I had a fat almond mom. Watched her yo-yo diet until she died. Vowed never to do that. I’m fat today. I’m in my mid-40s and it’s hard to say that because I have so much shame around fattness. I have never not believed I was fat, even though I was eventually told that I was severely underweight as a child. At some point, I looked at the bmi with the weights I remember being from my teen years, when my body developed, and realized I had doctors criticizing me for gaining weight when I was at the bottom end of “healthy” for my weight. (I don’t subscribe to the BMI, but used it as a reference point to check my perceptions of my size). I was also extremely active-loved swim team, lol, but I felt utterly disgusting when I stopped fitting into clothes at a store called 5-7-9, for preteens, mostly because I had the unfashionable big boobs and booty. At the same time, I remember my mom having ridiculous rules around restriction when I would try to pick out cereal before I could read. Literally, corn flakes were a stretch for her. I got the yellow cheerios, bran flakes, grape nuts. Certainly never lucky charms, and my mom never let me keep the flinstones vitamins the doctor handed me-probably because I was underweight, because “they were just candy.” My undergrad was in women’s studies. I have been fighting to reject diet culture since before it was really recognized as a problem. But it has still sucked me in and made me really unhealthy/obsessed/miserable for years. I finally found peace after being diagnosed with a serious weight and diet related health problem. The nutritionists I got access to that knew that issue and the factual info on my condition helped so much. I focus on health related to managing that today instead of my weight or obsessing about every food. I was strict at first, until it became intuitive, and I focus on food choices related to that one issue. I love Abby Sharp’s focus on adding in good things. I love what you are doing, that I see fat young adults in bikinis today, the changes I see in your generation. The channel “brave gang.”. They help me focus on the positive so much. I have so much hope younger generations won’t have to wait till they’re 40 to love their bodies and food-or 60, or dead. My mom died of the consequences of bariatric surgery. I learned her mom took her to the doctor for diet pills as a child-to take them herself, and I realized I had heeded my mom’s warnings about diet pills. I saw a woman in her 70s, dying of cancer, skin and bone, create a meal of the oddest almond mom ingredients, obsessed over sugar. I’m currently working on walking away when friends start into diet culture/restrictive eating talk because it triggers me so much to hear. And too many people think they have some right to tell me how to cure one health problem or another with disordered eating. Even doctors have tried to convert me to restrictive eating that just sends my brain into a spiral. The nutritionists know what they’re talking about
My mom is like a low tier almond mom she would never make it about looks or force us to work out but just the little things like only letting me eat sugar cereal ONCE a year when I was a little kid, not letting me have any soda (except for ginger ale but that barely counts because it helps with stomach aches), when I was a little little kid and whenever I did any small thing my punishment was no sugar the entire day, or when I was 10 and she told me that the average full grown woman should only be eating 1200-1300 calories a day, calling food I eat “nothing but empty carbs”, etc combined with having access to social media at 8 telling me that all those things actually ARE about looks really messed me up
Ok, Whoa...hold up here! I grew up in the 70's and 80's and we most CERTAINLY had full on Feminism! What era do you think the Women's rights era was? Yes, I had a completely narcissistic/control freak mom who CONSTANTLY called me fat when I was a size 5! I was "Moo'd" at by other girls in my own school - again, at a SIZE 5!! My mom, had gone shopping in downtown Chicago, with a friend who convinced her to buy me a pair of "Calvin Kline" Jeans because they were sooooo trendy back then, but my mom intentionally bought a size 2 knowing I wouldn't fit into them JUST so she could call me FAT! This was NOT "normal" behavior for mom's back then. Just mine. Mine was insane. She was a "functioning" alcoholic, a narcissist, and an utter control freak! None of my friend's moms were like this to them at all. Only recently have "Almond Moms" become a thing. My mom was WAY ahead of the curve - which if she were alive today, scary enough, she'd be proud of herself! (Sick-o)
I definitely relate with my own almond mom. my mom made no effort hiding her own disordered eating. She’d make dinner and we’d all be sitting down to eat and she’d be cleaning the kitchen and not eat. She’s always been so petite and skinny and constantly complains about her being fat and overweight. We also had the strict “water only” rule at restaurants. This led to SO MUCH disordered eating on my part that I’m still working thru at age 30. I finally told her this past year that her calling herself fat with such disgust in her voice makes me feel really shitty because I’ve got like 60 lbs on her and makes me feel like she thinks of me in such a disgusting and abhorrent way.
This is insane because I also took cookie dough and hid it in my bathroom! Weirdly I’m excited for this shared experience but it’s also very sad? Thanks for making this very relatable video.
Will never forget standing next to my mom while she was making fun of my appearance and calling me fat to the neighbor we ran into at the grocery store. Or my dad telling me that it was good to go to bed hungry. It meant I was doing a good job at my diet.
The diet culture is still very much ingrained and socialised into any woman anywhere in the world. It's worse in the US because there's a whole big industry behind it including all those MLMs.
I think mother should know how their insecuritys pass on to their daughters. My mom always said she was to big and big butts run in the family. And all of that was before the bbl times. So when I reached puberty my body started to look less like a child and more like hers. Even though my mom never told me I needed to lose weight, her saying she herself needed to lose weight echoed in my head.
I never even realized that I was 120 lbs for the entire time I lived with my mom and I was honestly small, constantly skipping meals. Now my body is 160 ish and its much more normal and I notice hunger pangs as the warning they are not just "thats how my stomach feels at *insert time of day*"
I would always get told nothing tastes as good as skinny feels or work out like you're getting paid to do it. This was not what my mom told me, but I always get this from my older sister. Talk about emotional damage. 😢
I was getting bullied in 6th grade so I was turning to food and mixed a whole bowl of peanut butter and honey together and just ate that like every day after school. My mom found out and told me if I didn’t stop she would make me eat a whole bowl of ketchup. It didn’t make me stop doing it I just got better at hiding it.
the part about watching what you say around your sister was so sweet, its so important in cycle breaking. Even if it doesn't seem like a lot, it still matters
content and open discussions like this are really healing for me. im at my highest body weight after transitioning FTM and also choosing to not diet anymore, though im still diagnosed with EDNOS because i cant seem to fully get rid of the really bad self talk and restrictive mindset
thank you for this video!!!! ive been trying to teach my mom better ways to deal with this train of thought. shes not an almond mom by any means, but she openly talks so negatively about herself, and im lucky enough to be too autistic to have ever really understood the negative connotation that exists towards "being fat", but i have a little sister and im truly afraid that those thoughtless words will be something that sticks with her as she grows.. this is so important to talk about and i just cant tell you how much i appreciate this
Also about the cooking- Baking means you have to be accurate down to the letter I cook, but I don’t bake for a reason, it spooks me ✨ But this video is unironically makes me want to try to do it today!
I was that mom. I hate that I was that mom, but that is what we were taught growing up. It took your generation to help us realize how it negatively affected you and to teach us better ways. ❤
I'm skinny due to genetics and I feel like if I did put on weight, I'd still look bad. Being skinny, you'll still have body imagine issues and it isn't always better. Not everyone has to be chubby or slightly overweight either. Different bodies are different! Also, it's sad how quickly we jumped from "lose some weight to achieve a youthful figure" to "Okay ladies, you need a BBL and boob job as big as possible, and a thin waist is still ideal". I grew up in the 200s and 2010s, and those weight loss commercials that were meant for older women shouldn't have been playing on children's channels.
It’s interesting how you disconnect you and your dad’s sweet tooth with the almond mom lifestyle, because that seems pretty connected. Not having any sweets, will make you more ravenous for it
Thank you for this. Thank you for helping people with humor and facts. My aunts and mom were in diets all their lives…they just died last year. I am still healing from all that stuff. But I love and miss them
This was such a great video. It’s oddly comforting that we all went through the same thing. After a decade of therapy I’ve come to a theory; We all are on the spectrum of disordered eating. Just depends on all the factors of life where you fall on that spectrum. It’s okay to rise & fall. And get professional help if you are struggling🖤 food is medicine.
The trick is to rub a little olive oil or peanut oil on your hands. That way, stuff won't stick to them as much plus it's good for your skin. Edit: The other trick is to season your vegetables, and remember that you can fry them. In butter, if need be.
every so often i come back and watch this video, because your struggles with disordered eating help remind me to be kinder to myself. i’ve been struggling with on and off anorexia for probably almost 15 years (which is depressing to think about bc thats almost half my life) and i get so in my head about it, and i’m glad i never got into diet culture. seeing someone else struggling and attempting to get better just really helps.
With baking i find its not the amounts themselves are important but proportions. I use an eating spoon and a tea cup to bake and it works out fine all you need to do is keep the proprtions well. On the topic of everything else. I was always very tall and muscular so if course i was told that i needed to lose weight by doctors (the problem? You can see my ribs and i was doing shit like water fasting and working out for 4-6 hours a day and trying to get my calories as low as possible when i started tracking in college). BMI is the devil i swear I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to be heavier since even at my thinest and my ribs were appearing i was 190 (higher part of my BMI). But it's weird cause like I like many gained a shit ton of weight over college and the pandemic (got to like 300+ pounds) and i swear i never felt cuter. It was weird i felt feminine and pretty at that weight. Like when i was smaller i felt so big and ugly but when i was at my biggest i felt stunning. Im now halfway between the two weights and I'm fighting those old habits cause like i want to get back into being active but like i really don't wsnt to go back to the shit i did before
i think a huge issue with fatphobia and diet culture is that being fat is seen as some sort of moral failure. people see fat and immediately make assumption about a person's life and personality based on just that. also people not minding their own business and invading peoples personal life and health, which is literally not your business. also people often use the excuse of "worrying about health" to get away with bullying tbh.
my mother keeps complaining about being fat. she's not even plus-size. as someone who is clinically obese, hates it, and is struggling against a cocktail of SSRIs+hypothyroidism+ADHD to lose it, nothing makes me feel shittier.
I'm like always sooo late to comment on your videos, but when I saw your youtube shorts, my first impression was: 'Maybe I'm projecting but she's like coming off as an ADHD ballet chick!' and now I got to this video and I just had to comment! The almond mom life is rough, my sister and I both knew our mom was one but we also knew the problem was bigger than her so we kind of always felt ashamed of connecting her to our own anxieties/ ED around food. (It took me like my 31 years of age to acknowledge I had an issue, after a nutritionist asked me point blank, and I realized how off my eating habits are.) Thank you for helping me process that in such a third person way!! Also, I had this exact conversation with my mom- regarding how constrained they were growing up in their choices- and I told her she didn't need to ask for my forgiveness because every hardship she faced as a generation, opened the door for me, and I only hope to do the same for the girlies after me. TLDR; Thank you for your upbeat realism! (PS- I'm Colombian, cooking kind of comes with the turf, and my favorite part about these videos are all your novice efforts at cooking/baking! I CRACKED up and had to pause at the teaspoon measurements. In a year, I'll bet you become a natural.)
i’ll always remember the moment i realized i was overweight. i always *knew* i was bigger, but when that boy called me fat in the 1st grade and i ran to the bathroom and saw myself in the mirror, i saw it for the first time. ever since i was little i knew i wanted to be skinny.
I'm a guy and I totally feel seen by this. I think typically women have this experience, but I had an almond mom that didn't have any girls of the four of us so we got the brunt of it. I'm thankful for that but body image has been a struggle my entire life.
I distinctly remember a conversation i had with my mom where i explained that exercise didn't make me lose wight so much as it made me gain muscle (genetics inherited from my dads side). i was working at consistently for an hour and a half five days a week for four four months and i still looked virtually the same... if not a bit bigger. Which is another things that diet culture fails to address which is how genetics can affect someones ability to gain and lose weight. cutting out sugar, doing keto, intermittent fasting, what have you. not every diet is gonna be effective especially since a healthy weight looks different to different people.
My mom has been like this for my whole life. It did kinda calm down but now we're going on a beach vacation in April and she keeps obsessing about 'looking good in a bikini' again. It's so annoying when she keeps saying the sentence 'every pound goes through your mouth' (but in my language it rhymes). I've had self esteem issues my whole life because of this
I completely relate, the same time era and also being naturally curvy plus the binge eating habits. My mom was so mean to me about my weight, but she passed when I was 17. I wish I could’ve mended my relationship with food with her like you did. ❤
From the time I could chew, I was only allowed to eat snacks on a Saturday and it was like a handful of gummies and that was it. I wasn't allowed to have any sweets, chips, fizzy drinks, nothing outside of that. I was a dancer as a kid so I was pretty slim and fit but my mom would put me on 900kcal a day diets because she wanted to go on them but needed someone to do it with her, then she started dragging me to Slimming World when I was barely 14 and some old lady would berate me for gaining a pound every so often. Seeing this kind of content is genuinely cathartic, it puts into perspective how ridiculous it all is.
I came up in the 80s and 90s but there was so much talk of EDs that these parents should know better anyway. I can't imagine ever talking about dieting or weight in front of my daughters.
This is such a therapeutic video to watch. I had an almond mom who was constantly on fad diets. Everyone always said me and my mom looked so similar and anytime she was getting ready she would say things like “I’m so fat, I’m so ugly, etc…” and that was the start of my disordered eating. In middle school I was heavily into religion and my church did a fast and I was like omg this is so cool I can stop eating and lose weight and I told a kid at school that and he no joke said “you should maybe go on a fast for a long time so you’re not fat”. My weight has yo-yoed up and down for years and since becoming disabled one of the hardest things I have struggled with is my weight and eating. When my whole life all I ever knew was bingeing and anorexia, it was an impossible cycle to break. It’s easy to feel alone in that thought so hearing someone else talk about that experience in relation to their parent is very comforting. With education both my mom and I have been able to break that habit and be better for ourselves and I hope someone else out there knows that they aren’t alone ❤
I grew up in a vegetables every night, only nutritious cereal, rarely any junk food, (if we had junk food, it was rlly for dessert only,) and healthy, “boring” lunch household… and I am SO glad that I did. I used to envy my friends who would have Little Bites, Cosmic Brownies, or Lunchables for lunch everyday. However, now that I’m older, I realize that my parents were actually protecting me from skewed views of nutrition, and simply trying to keep me healthy. They never made comments about my body, however they constantly make comments about their own. Thankfully though, their comments about their bodies never had an affect on me. They never told me to eat less. They just made sure that what I was eating was nutritional. “Oh, don’t eat pasta for lunch, honey. The carbs will just make you more hungry later. How about some chili, that will keep you full for longer!” Anything they said to me about food was always aimed to enlighten me on how to intuitively eat, and make sure that I was satisfied, and healthy. I think the best way to go about the diets of the people in your household, is to not limit how MUCH they eat, but to pay attention to WHAT they’re eating. Thank you mom+dad❤
I hate that so many people went through this but am glad many are also finding community and strength together, knowing they weren’t alone. My mom put me on Adkins at age 8 during the early 2000s. The constant body shaming and diet mentality even outside of Adkins made the jump to an ED so easy. After countless trips to the hospital and being dead tired of the constant mental agony, I’m now in ED recovery treatment. Hang in there y’all 💕
I remember how I slowly developed an eating disorder back in high school and college. One of the big things that reinforce people's restrictive habits were when friends and family would compliment your weight change -- whether or not it was due to working out. It may seem positive, but it just teaches the person that people are always watching your figure and that skinny is always best (Which it isn't. Blood markers, habits, and how you feel also matter in terms of health.). They don't think about how that person lost weight. It could be due to illness, something traumatic happening, or just poor eating habits. When people complemented my figure, I would have an intense fear of gaining weight again, despite feeling okay with the body I had before. I also remembered a time when my mom would say "Do you want to be fat?" when I asked for pasta or hot dogs. They were a bit weight centered at times and when a clinic asked me how much I weighed (I was like 8-10 or something). I was already insecure about my weight rising (but I didn't realize it was natural at the time) but I told them the new number and my mom remarked in a stunned way, saying "You're ____?!?". My parents would always label foods either good or bad. All foods fit in a healthy diet. If i chose the wrong one sometimes, my dad would yell at me.
I was born in the 80s and this is familiar to me. Also, if you’re not used to baking, try more basic recipes to start. Peanut butter cookies can be made with 3 ingredients (and they’re gluten free!) 😊
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More therapy sessions like this video
Abby Cox - "Victorians were Obsessed with Ugly Children"
Hey Tyler I tried to use the discount code for the website didn’t work! I bought $72 worth of stuff and then put in your discount code, the price went down to $54 but after I put in my card they charged me $78!
@@alexterria4331 what the heck! Thanks for letting me know. Please cancel your order, I will message them and figure out what’s going on
@@tylerbenderrthank you so much for responding I emailed them and asked to cancel my order but at the bottom of the checkout page it says “once you place your order it cannot be canceled or changed” seems shady I know it’s not your fault, thank you for responding to me!
“I could lose five pounds but I could also lose my humanity”
Wow this resonated so heavily. It’s so hard to break the ED mindset but this mantra can help tbh
So glad to hear that❤️❤️
2 days after giving birth my grandmother told me that i was morbidly obese and nobody would employ me because I was a liability die to my weight. I weighed approximately 180lbs. 2 DAYS AFTER GIVING BIRTH!!!!
grr
That's around 80kg, that's nowhere NEAR morbidly obese... Your granny is delulu 😭😂
Wow she crazy af
Me *a baker watching this*: Please measure the powder. Please measure the powder you will regret it
😭😂 do you think that’s why we failed here
@tylerbenderr yes the powder causes bubbles
100%. Making soup is like jazz music, you just kind of feel it out and throw in whatever and experiment. Baking is science. The numbers MATTER so much.
@@tylerbenderr very much so….baking powder and soda can really affect the way your cookies spread or puff not to mention overall texture and flavor.
baker as well, when she's like "i'm not going to measure the teaspoons, why would i" i was like oh i know where this is going lol
I take care of a 91 year old woman who says she needs to lose weight... I tell her "you made it you dont need to watch your weight anymore, eat what you want"
😭🥹🖤🖤 i hope she has all the yummy food she wants to. she's got no reason to lose weight, i'd be lucky to reach her age!
idk why but this made me think of a story from my life- i worked with a girl around my age (20s) who already had a kid and was pregnant with her second. and our job didn't have many breaks, we had to drive everywhere, so we usually stopped for fast food. and one day she broke down and almost started crying because she was saying she felt 'fat' for eating fast food and i was there in the car like girl you're eating for two, but even if you weren't, you have to eat!! i was out here breaking down how many calories we burn every hour while cleaning houses and everything 😭😭i pray she's doing well
@@mightymeatymech I hope so too. I’ve struggled with my weight and doing stupid things to lose weight including hard drugs. Even now (although I dont have a choice my wedding dress is non refundable and I put on weight since trying it on. They don’t have bigger sizes.) I’m doing a crash diet that ends on my wedding day in a little over a month. I don’t let my daughter know and I don’t allow anyone to comment on her body. I don’t want her to grow up with a messed up relationship with food. I yo-yo from mostly binge eating (that’s why I’m a big girl) to starving myself only to binge more. My dad forced diets on on me and locked the pantry. Like with a padlock. I never got a chance to learn what a healthy food relationship even looks like.
To manage to live a whole 91 years is incredible, she definitely deserves to just enjoy good food and live her life happily before she goes ❤
@@sp00kyg1rl I bake her lots of her favorite things it makes me feel good to see her enjoy them and she has like 100 year old cook books it’s fun to make the recipes
That’s so depressing, it literally never ends 😭
I was very lucky to have an aunt who gave me the exact opposite advice. She would always say to have two cookies, one for each hip. "You don't want to get lopsided."
That’s the cutest thing
That’s adorable, they’re called love handles for a reason
That’s too cute lol
almost teared up reading this, thank you for sharing
Awe auntie's little pork chop 😂
having obese almond parents was crazy. there was no idea about nutrition, just failed fad diets fuelled by self hatred. loving to cook has def healed my relationship with food but I still have to fight not to binge, and my body issues...lets not get into that
Ugh I’m so sorry! Sending good vibes
Oh my God! That was my mother! And she would insist on cooking all of the desserts! That situation made me afraid of pizza and chips for decades!
The whole situation pushed me into bulimia as a teen and bulimia/orthorexia as an adult.
Oh my god reading this made me feel so much less alone!! I’m so sorry you had to go through that ❤
Omg yes what a perfect description of my mother.
Mooooooood
Weight watchers points will haunt me forever
I was once almost grounded for eating 4 Oreos before 12 pm while on my period. My mom said that she was worried about my weight and that I had a serious problem. She told me that I was going to die before 25 from my eating habits.
Girl i hope now you can DEVOUR the entire oreo package because you deserve it. In my period I feel so hungry all the time, the oreos are a must
You might not have this relationship with your mom but if you could send her this video it might help her reflect on that.
As a parent you're often scared of everything, all the time. She probably wasn't trying to do anything but help you, but she didn't know how to do that properly. No one teaches us how to be good parents, we learn from watching others and if they do it wrong then what hope do we have?
Yup. This. My mom tried to have a séance (I called it this because we all held hands around a table) with my grandma because of how fat I was. I tried to diet but have issues with impulse control so she would just get so mad at me. Now I’m the biggest I’ve ever been but I like myself so I mostly don’t care.
@@claremiller9979if you are a bad parent you are a bad parent
Having good intentions doesn't make your child not traumatized
Information is freely available, there are so many psychologists and the like writing wonderful books about childcare, if you can't be arsed with any of this just don't be so selfish and don't have kids
My mom always tried her best and always had the best intentions, I am still no where close to being okay after over one and a half decades of therapy.
I'm so sorry so much sympathy from a fellow "forced to go on a diet as a 12 yo" person
Rise and grind, my fellow Red-40 maxers!!!! 🍟👹
red40 max 4ever 💪
@@trueloverhnit’s lifestyle, my dude! 😊🖍️
Hell yes 🥵🥵🥵
Hell yeah 😼😼
Was in a rush so I had a handful of Jelly Bellys for breakfast. Crushing it! 💪
I never heard the "moment on the lips" thing but I did hear "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels" GAG
YUCK
And it’s like…..have y’all tried garlic bread? French fries? Chocolate chip cookies? So *many* things taste that good!
When I was skinny, it felt like being constantly weak and sick, so I kinda knew that was bs. The truth is positive attention feels good and it is sad that she felt like that was the ultimate source of positive attention for her.
As a skinny person, if nothing tastes as good as skinny feels, then you've never had good good. Food is better than skinny. I'm a bit underweight, and I'm always cold, a little tired, I can't sit on bleachers for more than 5 minutes because my bones have nothing to keep them from touching the seats and it hurts, and I don't have a figure. Food is delicious, and it's nice to be skinny, but not *that* nice.
as tina fey once said, “have you ever microwaved a donut?”
Don't forget "You're not hungry, you're thirsty."
On the 'How do you control a kid that will binge on sugar? the answer is', you don't create an environment where they feel they need to, and you help them build good relationships with food.
When I moved out of home and eventually realised that my Mum's rules no longer applied I gained a lot of weight (I also started a medication that made me ravenously hungry all the time which did not help)
when I went to college I stopped eating (binging) on candy/ sweets because I could get it whenever I wanted and when it wasn't so restricted I realized I liked sweets but it wasn't consuming me
12:17 But if you restrict a child that much, they'll never learn by themselves when enough is enough. In my opinion its a form of food insecurity that does nothing but create a difficult relationship later on with food
Exactly. Parents are the problem.
Yeah food insecurity was a huge cause of my issues with food as well as my husband’s. We are trying desperately to give our son a healthy relationship with food.
And that's how I developed binge eating! It's rough to get rid of eating disorders, worse when you were just raised like that
I was so blessed my mom's mom body shamed her. And I ate what I wanted... and didn't realize I was overweight til I was 12
This was me. My parents restricted the heck out of me and forced me to constantly exercise. And now I struggle with self control around food. Any food.
I am fat and have a fat almond mom, so I assumed that everyone else ate even less and it lowkey ruined me as a kid and made me develop so much food fear . The only thing that helped me was nutritionists on tiktok showing their meals and explaining food to me and showing me how restrictive I actually was
I LOVE the TikTok nutritionists, in fact, I have abbey sharp linked in the description bc I love her that much! ❤️❤️💓❤️
Why was this going be my comment being plus size but growing up with mom that been small her life... I bring dieting my whole life
I have a very similar experience to you. Even at my most active, I’ve never been skinny. I’ve had to learn since then that over restricting was doing me more harm than good.
I'm aware that I'm not actually fat, but just the way I've heard everyone talk it made me obsessively think I am. Now I know that being fat is ok, not an insult, a description
It did make me restrictive of how I eat to this day, but tiktok nutritionists definitely boost my confidence
Actually during my sister's wedding my mom was obsessively covering her stomach. Every other word was just a synonym to ugly, my mom is fat, and she's beutiful.
I still struggle with wanting a flat stomach, but now I know that every body is beautiful
Same, I’m fat and grew up with medical parents, the only time in my life I’ve been an “average” size was in my 20s when I ended up with anorexia, (+ over exercising), sure I ended up a size 10-12 but I had to live on 500 calories a day plus intense exercise to get there, as and it really messed me up,
I’m now in my 30s and I’ve been able to slowly improve my diet (gaining weight as a result), I still eat less than a normal person should, but it’s better than it was, plus now I’m in my 30s, I’ve been finally able to convince my doctors to run some comprehensive tests to figure out what the heck is going on … and turns out the reason I can never lose weight is I have PCOS related Insulin resistance… seriously that would have been good to know like 30 years ago🙄.
My mom is a bit overweight and I was always a tiny underweight child and she used to praise my tininess like it was the best quality I had. I remember she would say that "pinch an inch" thing and pinch the skin on my stomach and praise it. When I went up a pants size for the first time as an adult, I had a complete meltdown thinking I wasn't worth anything anymore.🙃
At this point, I dread the moments that my parents ask me about what I ate that day cause I know it will end with "you ate too many carbs". 🙈
Oh ew! I’m sorry
That sucks dude
Start telling them insane lies about what you ate. "An entire block of cheese, a broccoli bush, an almond (just one), and a half a loaf of bread."
In my experience, if people ask you annoying questions and you answer something insane, they stop asking. That's how I got my relatives to stop asking if I had a boyfriend.
Set boundaries?!?!?
thats not on them to set the boundary @@korva_puusti its on their parents to not cause their child to feel shame around talking about what they ate/say dumb s like that
You were one of the first seeds that let me know I was becoming an almond mum and I later found out I have an eating disorder. Now sitting here with a treat and my kids have chocolate & lollies in the pantry (and wow, turns out when you restrict kids don’t go & gorge on them all!). So thank you
I'm so proud of you.
@jssfrk161 amazing to hear this story. Congrats on turning things around, I’m sure it wasn’t easy❤
❤
I didn’t have an almond mom but I also grew up in Utah and was surrounded by almond moms because they basically spawn there so lots of body issues still haunt me. I was always the chubby kid surrounded by the skinniest little Mormon kids and I was already a target since I wasn’t Mormon. Oh Utah…
Felt !
I’ve lived in Utah and totally agree! I was Mormon but a liberal one so I felt ostracized as well. The mold of what’s acceptable there is so, so small. I now live in a rural East Coast town where everyone is weird and I love it 😂
spawn there LMAO
I struggled super hard with an ED throughout my teenage years, and a bit into my late twenties. High key though, the biggest motivator for me to recover and to break free from those toxic mindsets was because I wanted to be a mom. I didn't want to pass down any of the ways I looked at my own body onto my hypothetical future children. Flashforward, seeing evrybody online talk about their "almond moms" made me realize I had made a good choice.
I learned how to cook for myself and healed my terrible relationship to food, fitness, and my body all so that I would never inadverdently hurt my future kids like that
“A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips”-stuff like this just came from old diet adverts. I’ve heard a lot of others like
“Your tummy isn’t growling; it’s applauding!”
“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”
“A taste of regret”
“Mad as a hatter, thin as a dime”
Will Wood reference
"you guys are going to be so mad if you know how to cook"
Said right after I was appalled at you measuring baking powder with your heart.
Lap swimming is meditative for me. I can just can zone out and get good exercise without sweating. Waterproof headphones are the real game changer, though.
Can you recommend some waterproof headphones? 😊
@@mariagiusit I use a really old waterproofed iPod shuffle, which I don't think you can get anymore. The company I got it from, Audioflood, is now making them with a player that works with Spotify or Amazon Music. It looks like the same idea - it clips to your googles. There are also waterproof Bluetooth earbuds but I have a feeling I'd be rescuing those from the bottom of the pool a lot.
Lol girl manually forming flat cookies with her hands. I don't know which recipe it was but you probably weren't supposed to do that. You either drop it in balls from a spoon/scoop, roll it out and cut it up with a glass or cookie cutter, or make a log and cut it if it doesn't go in a pan. Also flour is your friend. But it's understandable- it doesn't sound like her mom was making many cookies growing up
They taught us how to use my fitness pal in my freshman gym class during our health unit....that was the year I became uncomfortable in my body. We also learned our bmi that unit. I wasn't overweight, but it was the highest in the class so I became very very uncomfortable - and then they gave me a tool to develop disordered eating.
Brooo they did that to us too in our gym classes
The intense Sugar / Carbs craving usually happens before your monthly cycle due to change in progesterone and Estrogen level
It’s always 😭😭
Yes! I don’t like sweets most of the time but the hormones are real 😂
Wait until you're in perimenopause. The cravings get 10x worse.
My dad took me to the doctor when I was in sixth grade, I’d always been chubby but my mom who usually took me and the doctors themselves weren’t rude to me about it.
I stood on the scale and it said “130” and I just remember my dad going, “wow” exacerbatingly. And just that one word has fucked with me my whole life.
I am so proud of what you overcame and you still have a sense of humor about it.
As a kid who grew up with candy in the house all the time for every holiday, every event, a bowl of candy on the coffee table year round… after a while, you just don’t want it anymore. It becomes the “norm” and no big deal. You don’t feel like you “have to have it”. I’ve done the same thing with my kids. Having it in the house has never been a problem. Yes when they were really little (like babies and toddlers) you couldn’t have that laying out, but since then, they’ve got used to it. I think perhaps it’s the opposite of what someone might think as far as “limiting yourself”. Perhaps after a while, it becomes uninteresting because it’s no longer a novelty. There are certain things that I know of I buy, I’ll eat the whole bag- like ruffles chips. But on the whole, my kids are bored with the treats. (You wouldn’t think that would be the case, but it is). I change out the candy (two candy dishes) for every holiday in coordinating colors or themes, and they just don’t care any more. There should be a moderation, but being super strict is not it. It gives your kids a complex about eating, and sweets. I’ve got four girls, ages 10-20, and none of us are overweight.
my brother also has access to whatever sweets he wants, but he usually chooses smoothies lol. i think it's cause when he was younger he saw me experimenting with a lot of different smoothies and i'd always let him try some. his current go-to is kale and carrots, even though he doesn't eat cooked vegetables! lol
he's always been lucky, his mom has never forced him to eat anything he doesn't want to. as long as he's eating reasonably, he can grab some candy or popcorn if he wants to... when i first saw how she let him eat intuitively i kind of freaked out ngl, because i wasn't raised like that at all (we don't share a mom). he was seven and he woke up and just ate popcorn for breakfast and i was basically clutching my pearls LMAO. but seeing how it's led to him developing his own relatively healthy eating patterns has been nice. he's 16 and he definitely eats more veggies and fruits than most adults i know, because he's found his own way of enjoying them. and he doesn't have to feel guilty about eating a whole pizza, cause he's a growing boy lol. no food shaming is really nice for kids.
edit- i know this entire larger conversation usually affects girls moreso than boys, but our dad's side of the family is really awful about their relationships with food, no matter the gender. so i'm glad he has his mom to just hang out and snack with
@@mightymeatymech it’s really interesting to see the different dynamics with how kids are approached about portions and types of foods growing up, and how they turn out. We moved from Southern California where everyone is super concerned over what they put in their bodies- to a southern state where it’s all mostly fried foods, sugar, and lots of meat. We were never a family that severely leaned in either direction, but the culture shock from one state to another is real. Especially moving across the US. I was for sure raised more strict with what I ate than my own kids. We were told to clear our plates “or else”. And yet if my husband and I can see that the kids are actively trying new foods and eating green stuff, we’re okay with that. My sister is opposite with her kids, she’s really strict about not wasting food. So you could go in a lot of different directions with how you teach kids. 👍
My kids' candy is sitting out 24/7 and they usually have like one piece when they get home from school and one when they go up for bath. The forbidden nature isn't there, so they don't feel a need to binge.
I grew up with the same thing. A cookie jar that we could take from whenever we wanted, Honey buns in the pantry, and so forth. That since me and my sibling knew that those things were there if we ever wanted them it almost took away the feeling of actually wanting it. The irony is as an adult now I don't crave candy or cookies but soda (something that wasn't kept in the house and only gotten when we'd eat out or special events) is something I struggle with drinking to much of.
That's so great to hear! We have all kinds of snacks at home as well. The only time I "restrict" is when I can tell they're hungry so that's when I don't allow them to snack. I think some of the downside I do is probably tell them to eat "real food" when they ask for snacks instead eat a meal. I'm also chained to MyFitnessPal so I'm constantly measuring my food on a scale. My daughter caught me measuring a nectarine and asked me why I was measuring that. So I hope that my kiddos do not have a dysfunctional relationship with food like I do.
Also - baking is a science. Cooking you can have a lot of play with, but don't wing it for baking until you actually know what you're doing. Except chocolate chips. Always measure those with your heart ❤
If you don't feel comfortable cooking I'd try to stick as close to the recipe as possible. A teaspoon vs. a quarter teaspoon can make a big difference. Of course it's also going to be way harder if you're doing it for the first time while also talking about something else!
i make yeast bread with my heart.
@@platannapipidae9621. I do this, too, but this is after many years of bread baking.
i always make bread with my heart‼️
To this day i remember how hungry i was when the whole family would diet. Weight watchers with my 15-20 something points, while everyone else had more than double.
I lost five pounds and stayed at that weight afterwards, "You need to lose more weight." I was 130 pounds. The struggle was real
I did ww when I was like 15 (2008) and I was into swimming. Like 2h 5x per week. The points were not enough, i was constantly hungry. After 2 weeks I stopped doing ww. My mom had no problems with hunger. WW in the early stages clearly was not for teenagers and competitive athletes.
I had a whole almond family, my mom was bad, but I remember my grandpa said something to me that stuck for a long time. I was 7 and told him I wanted to do gymnastics, he said “You should probably go on a diet and lose some weight first. You need to be fit for that”. I had a doctor tell me earlier that year that I also needed to go on a diet.. at 7. I’m 25 now and still have body image issues..
God- no seven year old has any damn business being on a diet. Childhood and growing up means CONSTANT weight fluctuations as your body prepares to grow and develop. That doctor was actual evil. What kind of monster tells a child not even in the double digits they need to loose weight?
I have such a strong memory from when I was a kid. The ice cream truck was coming and, like a kid, I wanted a popsicle. My mom sat me down and drew me a picture comparing a happy skinny person and a sad fat person to show me what would happen if I ate too many popsicles. I couldn't have been older than four but I still see that stupid picture so clearly in my head of the sad fat person.
I started weight watchers in the 4th grade. Did the atkins diet in 6th or 7th. I remember being the only kid at the weight watchers meeting and being so proud of trying to be healthy.
Diet culture is so wrong. I've been on so many diets over the years and have such a low self-esteem because of it being pushed on me by my grandma and mom
I often wonder just how many of our mothers and grandmothers have/had disordered eating. . . The harm they imposed on us came from the harm imposed on them.
With Ozempic, the diet industry is definitely worth more now. Novo Nordisk, the company that makes Ozempic, is now the most valuable company in europe, and has single-handedly propped up Denmark's currency enough that they aren't facing heavy inflation like the rest of europe and in turn has allowed them to keep their mortgage rates low. There's a small chance that Denmark might become the pharma capital of the world since they already have a big pharma industry to begin with. So, yeah, Ozempic has definitely increased the value of the weight loss industry.
There's also this injection that my nutritionist recommended, also made by them: Saxenda. I pucked my guts out for about 6 months only to gain the weight right back. Don't try this!!!!
Omg that’s wild! Thanks for sharing
So I hear you, but tbh, I've seen the ravages of diabetes so I can't find myself being mad at it. I absolutely don't trust any pharmaceutical company any more than I trust any junk food company, but I've seen the positive effect it can have on a person's life, and wegovy is the first weightloss medicine that my Dr actually thinks works and both of those are huge.
@@dismurrart6648 don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I actually used to be against Ozempic for weight loss, mainly because it was creating a shortage so diabetics couldn't get it, and because I still had the mindset of weight loss drugs either not working or being terrible. I know what it's like to deal with drug shortages. *Shudder* Now I'm in favor of it because of all the lives it could save.
I still think that on a macro scale, society should tackle obesity legislatively by taxing hypersatiating(junk) food, but since Ozempic will likely hurt both the diet and junk food industries, I'm pretty in favor of it.
Plus Ozempic has reduced alcohol cravings in some people, which in turn could reduce cancer rates(yes alcohol causes cancer, or at least massively increases cancer risk. More people should know that.)
I also maybe stand to benefit because if Denmark's pharma industry gets big, I could move there after I get my PhD. I have family there, and it's one of the best countries. They've got Lego, the highest level of social mobility in the world, the least corruption of any country, windmills, and extremely well-founded public services. Denmark is great.
@sophiedowney1077 oh yeah, I'm from a family of addicts so I've seen the ways alcohol wrecks your body.
I hope that that works out because yeah, if I could move to Denmark I probably would. Good luck with the PhD btw :)
16:30 i joined swim team in 2001 the older girls on my team were years ahead of the rest of my town when it came to body positivity. everyone was always complimenting eo and the captain made breakfast tacos every morning to make sure we ate.
i didn't realize how good we had it until i made friends with a woman that went to the same school as me but was in cross country. they were EATING COTTON BALLS
"A second on the lips, forever on the hips".
"You shouldn't be able to pinch more than an inch or you're fat"
"Snacking is unattractive"
"Chew every bite until it's liquid, then you can swallow"
"If you're hungry you can have three almonds"
😂😂😂
omg the inch pinch is obnoxious . I stretched out 4" of skin on my mum tum-it doesn't count.
@@HosCreates so obnoxious! And such an unhealthy standard to hold people to. We're going to have squishy bits and thats totally ok!
Don't forget about the "sweat is just the fat crying' and the incredible "if you are hungry, just drink water" :))
@@dora6090 so much water! I still can't drink water on an empty stomach to this day without feeling sick!
@@HappyIsAGoodThing that's so sad :(((
Growing up dancing, I knew so many girls who struggled with EDs…I acutely remember being at a competition at like 8, and witnessing a fellow dancer get completely chastised for trying to drink a regular Coke. Her mom insisted she drink a Diet Coke because she “would get fat” from drinking eve regular soda. I was so confused, and then really sad when I realized what was going on. She cried from her mom yelling at her :’(
competitive/pro dance training was a wiiiiiild wild world! i did ballet for years. the lasting effects remain lol
The other day I had a little girl in my house with his brother so we did french fries they could enjoy, she was 8 and she asked for 6 fries because she "wants to be skinny", the moment she left i started crying because i remember being that way around that age because i just absorved all the diet comments from the failed diets and conversations between my aunt and my mom, they weren't directed at me but kids understand even when they don't seem like they can.
I love my dad, very much. But I remember a flippant comment he made when I was around 14 that has always stuck with me. I was chowing down on Oreos. If anything, I was probably underweight at the time. I remember him using the word “piggy” and saying “Gee, I wonder why I have so much acne.” I remember feeling shame and going up to my bedroom to cry.
You make a very good point about being conscious about what you say around people, especially young girls. I have five nieces, one of which has an ED. I’ve learned a lot from her about seemingly innocent comments that are extremely difficult to deal with for her. My husband has a rare skin condition that has almost killed him twice in his life. His face is very red which people comment on constantly. We’ve come to determine you should never comment on someone’s body. We do, however, enjoy telling people we love their hair (especially vibrant colors) or things of that nature that one chooses and can brighten their day. 😊
For me everything was blaming me being fat.
If I didn’t get the job is because I was fat.
My mum said no one was going to be with me because I was fat.
Your life is not the way it should be because I was fat. Mind you at time I was actually dealing with Ana and Mia and seeing the photos I was skinny! I was an S! But because I had thick legs my mum considered me fat ( she was fat btw, but her excuse is that she had kids).
Now I am actually overweight ( hormones, depression and basically giving up since I always thought I was fat made me like this)
Whiles fat I got a great job, started my own small business, got the best of friends and I am now engaged. Still, my mum tells me to give up on my brand because it won’t be big and a fat girl will never make it popular. She is saying that my fiancé will leave me eventually and thinks that if I was skinny the job would have been better 💕🤣🤣 it’s crazy
God, I still struggle so much with my mom! I've always been overweight and my mom is skinny-fat, I felt sooo grateful to see people who confirm this is wrong (she sometimes just comes into my room while I am changing when I specifically tell her not to and she grabs my belly- mind you, I was bloated and on my period, and tells me I will never get a boyfriend like this). I've now been eating clean and going to the gym, trying to meet my protein intake, I look much better because I've gained muscle and lost some fat, it's almost been a month of consistency. But she keeps telling me to quit taking protein and stop going to the gym, only do cardio, just because the fucking scale is the same...
Jesus that's so horrible and annoying. And just so you know a lot of guys like muscular women, so your mom doesn't know what she's talking about ;)
The whole scale thing reminds me of that "statistic" that like 60% of firefighters are "overweight" based on the BMI scale, but it's actually because they're heavier because of the insane amount of muscle they have and the BMI scale doesn't take into account body fat and muscle percentage.
@@sophiedowney1077 yeah, I'm now kinda leaning towards my muscle mommy era. I'm just tired of trying all the impossible diets my mom keeps suggesting, they never really worked anyways :)
And I didn't know about firefighters being overweight by BMI, that's insane!!! And yet it makes perfect sense that BMI sucks :D
@@dora6090 it really is a terrible scale. That's why skinny fat is a thing to begin with. It's so flawed. I'm hoping it's flawed in the opposite direction too because I'm lanky af and like 10 pounds underweight, but I can't put on weight for the life of me. Hopefully my body type is just like this and I'm actually a healthy weight.
@@sophiedowney1077 well...I can confirm it's basically the same thing for me :) people can never really tell my weight and they unironically guess I'm like 15-20 kg lighter. Weight does not define your actual health!!!
By that logic, I am overweight, even though I am just muscle with only 12% body fat. Keep doing what you are doing. Protein burns much more when digested, and you will burn more calories the more you put muscle. You can do some cardio, if you want, but not so much to keep the muscle, and you can also take some L-carnitine. You got this 👍
My mom is angry because apparently I eat too much vegetables and oats and will become a horse 🐎 💀
This brought back a memory of being a teenager and seeing a tv commercial for a weight loss product where women at a party admire so-and-so because "she's a perfect size 8." And I thought I must be extra amazing bc I was like a size 4 or 6. And now I'm like a 14 or 16 and I still can't buy clothes without thinking about how far over 8 they are. And no matter how much therapy I've had and how much I logically reason that that's silly, I don't think it will ever truly be out of my head and that sucks. So glad your generation is doing better than mine did. Keep up the good work, love.
I love your way of explaining things, very chill. I am so glad people are finally talking about how bad this is for children.
Thank you! It was definitely hard for me to talk about and a lot of credit goes to my editor haha
@@tylerbenderrYou and your mom are willing to be vulnerable and it makes it possible for other people to be vulnerable, which is so hard with something like this, there is so much unnecessary shame and self-loathing.
Growing up with an almond mom and grandmother has given me such body issues and food related issues :/
So sorry, sending love❤️
@@tylerbenderr 🥺🥺 omg thank you lovely
I didn’t grow up with almond parents but I was very much reminded of the fact that I needed to lose weight constantly (even tho as a kid I was pretty average) and that unfortunately has led to my ED that I recover slowly but then relapse as soon as someone mentions that something has too many calories (for example: my dad saying I can’t have a certain drink bc it has 100 calories)
Sweet, poor child. You developed binge eating behaviors because of mom's shared orthorexia... it happened to me too. I have pcos and I ended up crying while shopping in the supermarket because there was nothing I wanted to eat or could eat without feeling like a monster. I used my fitness pal to keep under 1100 calories, feeling faint, and losing hair. It took years of reprogramming to change that.
My mom is not an Almond Mom, being born in 1943, but grew up on a farm eating "thresher's fare" and continued serving her own family food as though we spent our days unloading hay and shoveling corn feed from silos. Then she wondered why her children were all overweight and shamed us, causing major body issues and unhealthy relationships with food. It never occurred to her that she couldn't feed suburban children the same way you feed farm hands, and then nagged us frequently about our weight. Well done.
Farmer bods are the best bods. I got one
I need an almond mom and sugar daddy
HELP 😭😭
Ma’am, please 😂
HAHAHAHA
How about a raisin kid? Then you can have all the raisins and almonds, like the song.
@@beebaritter4952I ain’t RAISIN no kids! 😅
You doing that “barbaric” thing to the flour was actually your body adapting to the baking lifestyle. You should embrace it, not name call it. Lol yeah you can touch flour with your hands. Grab everything with your hands. Youre a baker now. Accept it, and you will be a better baker uwu
Hahaha love this 😂💓💓💓
Tyler noooo teaspoon measurements defs matter 😰
Unless it’s for seasonings. You ALWAYS need more cinnamon than recipes call for
OOF the jeans shopping with a mom who’s a smaller size hits HOME, I always feel so weird when mine does her annual weight loss competition (thru her work???) and talks about her waist band for like, 4 months
Only now realizing I had an almond mom. I WISH I got an apple and cheese as schoolsnack. I got raw bell pepper cut in strips. Other kids had cookies and fruit, I was so jealous. I was and am still overweight by the way, cause you can't diet away a medical condition 🤷🏼♀️
I had a fat almond mom. Watched her yo-yo diet until she died. Vowed never to do that. I’m fat today. I’m in my mid-40s and it’s hard to say that because I have so much shame around fattness. I have never not believed I was fat, even though I was eventually told that I was severely underweight as a child. At some point, I looked at the bmi with the weights I remember being from my teen years, when my body developed, and realized I had doctors criticizing me for gaining weight when I was at the bottom end of “healthy” for my weight. (I don’t subscribe to the BMI, but used it as a reference point to check my perceptions of my size). I was also extremely active-loved swim team, lol, but I felt utterly disgusting when I stopped fitting into clothes at a store called 5-7-9, for preteens, mostly because I had the unfashionable big boobs and booty. At the same time, I remember my mom having ridiculous rules around restriction when I would try to pick out cereal before I could read. Literally, corn flakes were a stretch for her. I got the yellow cheerios, bran flakes, grape nuts. Certainly never lucky charms, and my mom never let me keep the flinstones vitamins the doctor handed me-probably because I was underweight, because “they were just candy.” My undergrad was in women’s studies. I have been fighting to reject diet culture since before it was really recognized as a problem. But it has still sucked me in and made me really unhealthy/obsessed/miserable for years. I finally found peace after being diagnosed with a serious weight and diet related health problem. The nutritionists I got access to that knew that issue and the factual info on my condition helped so much. I focus on health related to managing that today instead of my weight or obsessing about every food. I was strict at first, until it became intuitive, and I focus on food choices related to that one issue.
I love Abby Sharp’s focus on adding in good things. I love what you are doing, that I see fat young adults in bikinis today, the changes I see in your generation. The channel “brave gang.”. They help me focus on the positive so much. I have so much hope younger generations won’t have to wait till they’re 40 to love their bodies and food-or 60, or dead. My mom died of the consequences of bariatric surgery. I learned her mom took her to the doctor for diet pills as a child-to take them herself, and I realized I had heeded my mom’s warnings about diet pills. I saw a woman in her 70s, dying of cancer, skin and bone, create a meal of the oddest almond mom ingredients, obsessed over sugar. I’m currently working on walking away when friends start into diet culture/restrictive eating talk because it triggers me so much to hear. And too many people think they have some right to tell me how to cure one health problem or another with disordered eating. Even doctors have tried to convert me to restrictive eating that just sends my brain into a spiral. The nutritionists know what they’re talking about
Sugar feeds cancer I see why the 70 year old was obsessed with it
My mom is like a low tier almond mom she would never make it about looks or force us to work out but just the little things like only letting me eat sugar cereal ONCE a year when I was a little kid, not letting me have any soda (except for ginger ale but that barely counts because it helps with stomach aches), when I was a little little kid and whenever I did any small thing my punishment was no sugar the entire day, or when I was 10 and she told me that the average full grown woman should only be eating 1200-1300 calories a day, calling food I eat “nothing but empty carbs”, etc combined with having access to social media at 8 telling me that all those things actually ARE about looks really messed me up
Sugar makes kids hyper that’s why she took it away
@@katemiller7874 lol I think I know my own mom and childhood better than you do
Ok, Whoa...hold up here!
I grew up in the 70's and 80's and we most CERTAINLY had full on Feminism! What era do you think the Women's rights era was?
Yes, I had a completely narcissistic/control freak mom who CONSTANTLY called me fat when I was a size 5!
I was "Moo'd" at by other girls in my own school - again, at a SIZE 5!!
My mom, had gone shopping in downtown Chicago, with a friend who convinced her to buy me a pair of "Calvin Kline" Jeans because they were sooooo trendy back then, but my mom intentionally bought a size 2 knowing I wouldn't fit into them JUST so she could call me FAT!
This was NOT "normal" behavior for mom's back then. Just mine. Mine was insane. She was a "functioning" alcoholic, a narcissist, and an utter control freak!
None of my friend's moms were like this to them at all.
Only recently have "Almond Moms" become a thing. My mom was WAY ahead of the curve - which if she were alive today, scary enough, she'd be proud of herself! (Sick-o)
I definitely relate with my own almond mom. my mom made no effort hiding her own disordered eating. She’d make dinner and we’d all be sitting down to eat and she’d be cleaning the kitchen and not eat. She’s always been so petite and skinny and constantly complains about her being fat and overweight. We also had the strict “water only” rule at restaurants. This led to SO MUCH disordered eating on my part that I’m still working thru at age 30. I finally told her this past year that her calling herself fat with such disgust in her voice makes me feel really shitty because I’ve got like 60 lbs on her and makes me feel like she thinks of me in such a disgusting and abhorrent way.
This is insane because I also took cookie dough and hid it in my bathroom! Weirdly I’m excited for this shared experience but it’s also very sad?
Thanks for making this very relatable video.
OMG I also had to do swim team because of my weight. And I was SO SLOW that I had to swim with kids younger than me 😂
Will never forget standing next to my mom while she was making fun of my appearance and calling me fat to the neighbor we ran into at the grocery store.
Or my dad telling me that it was good to go to bed hungry. It meant I was doing a good job at my diet.
😢 Awful
The diet culture is still very much ingrained and socialised into any woman anywhere in the world. It's worse in the US because there's a whole big industry behind it including all those MLMs.
I think mother should know how their insecuritys pass on to their daughters. My mom always said she was to big and big butts run in the family. And all of that was before the bbl times. So when I reached puberty my body started to look less like a child and more like hers. Even though my mom never told me I needed to lose weight, her saying she herself needed to lose weight echoed in my head.
“Bathroom cookie dough “ thanks that’s my band name now
This was a really fun and inspiring vid to edit! Hope it helps many that struggle with body dysmorphia accept themselves...
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
I never even realized that I was 120 lbs for the entire time I lived with my mom and I was honestly small, constantly skipping meals. Now my body is 160 ish and its much more normal and I notice hunger pangs as the warning they are not just "thats how my stomach feels at *insert time of day*"
I would always get told nothing tastes as good as skinny feels or work out like you're getting paid to do it. This was not what my mom told me, but I always get this from my older sister. Talk about emotional damage. 😢
I was getting bullied in 6th grade so I was turning to food and mixed a whole bowl of peanut butter and honey together and just ate that like every day after school. My mom found out and told me if I didn’t stop she would make me eat a whole bowl of ketchup.
It didn’t make me stop doing it I just got better at hiding it.
the part about watching what you say around your sister was so sweet, its so important in cycle breaking. Even if it doesn't seem like a lot, it still matters
content and open discussions like this are really healing for me. im at my highest body weight after transitioning FTM and also choosing to not diet anymore, though im still diagnosed with EDNOS because i cant seem to fully get rid of the really bad self talk and restrictive mindset
thank you for this video!!!! ive been trying to teach my mom better ways to deal with this train of thought. shes not an almond mom by any means, but she openly talks so negatively about herself, and im lucky enough to be too autistic to have ever really understood the negative connotation that exists towards "being fat", but i have a little sister and im truly afraid that those thoughtless words will be something that sticks with her as she grows.. this is so important to talk about and i just cant tell you how much i appreciate this
Also about the cooking- Baking means you have to be accurate down to the letter
I cook, but I don’t bake for a reason, it spooks me ✨
But this video is unironically makes me want to try to do it today!
I realized that my mom is an Almond mom. She always forced me on different diets. I still don't have a healthy relationship with food because of it.
Reminds me of the “you’re not hungry, you’re board”💀
I was that mom. I hate that I was that mom, but that is what we were taught growing up. It took your generation to help us realize how it negatively affected you and to teach us better ways. ❤
My mom put me on slimfast when I was 6. No breakfast, salad for lunch and slimfast shake for dinner 😢
I'm skinny due to genetics and I feel like if I did put on weight, I'd still look bad. Being skinny, you'll still have body imagine issues and it isn't always better. Not everyone has to be chubby or slightly overweight either. Different bodies are different! Also, it's sad how quickly we jumped from "lose some weight to achieve a youthful figure" to "Okay ladies, you need a BBL and boob job as big as possible, and a thin waist is still ideal". I grew up in the 200s and 2010s, and those weight loss commercials that were meant for older women shouldn't have been playing on children's channels.
It’s interesting how you disconnect you and your dad’s sweet tooth with the almond mom lifestyle, because that seems pretty connected. Not having any sweets, will make you more ravenous for it
A good rule my friend has is that we’re not allowed to talk about dieting or weight around the dinner table and I love that 😍
Thank you for this. Thank you for helping people with humor and facts. My aunts and mom were in diets all their lives…they just died last year. I am still healing from all that stuff. But I love and miss them
♥️ sorry for your losses.
This was such a great video. It’s oddly comforting that we all went through the same thing.
After a decade of therapy I’ve come to a theory; We all are on the spectrum of disordered eating. Just depends on all the factors of life where you fall on that spectrum. It’s okay to rise & fall. And get professional help if you are struggling🖤 food is medicine.
The trick is to rub a little olive oil or peanut oil on your hands. That way, stuff won't stick to them as much plus it's good for your skin.
Edit: The other trick is to season your vegetables, and remember that you can fry them. In butter, if need be.
every so often i come back and watch this video, because your struggles with disordered eating help remind me to be kinder to myself. i’ve been struggling with on and off anorexia for probably almost 15 years (which is depressing to think about bc thats almost half my life) and i get so in my head about it, and i’m glad i never got into diet culture. seeing someone else struggling and attempting to get better just really helps.
As someone who grew up with a binge eating disorder and was very overweight, this hit home hard.
With baking i find its not the amounts themselves are important but proportions. I use an eating spoon and a tea cup to bake and it works out fine all you need to do is keep the proprtions well.
On the topic of everything else. I was always very tall and muscular so if course i was told that i needed to lose weight by doctors (the problem? You can see my ribs and i was doing shit like water fasting and working out for 4-6 hours a day and trying to get my calories as low as possible when i started tracking in college). BMI is the devil i swear I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to be heavier since even at my thinest and my ribs were appearing i was 190 (higher part of my BMI).
But it's weird cause like I like many gained a shit ton of weight over college and the pandemic (got to like 300+ pounds) and i swear i never felt cuter. It was weird i felt feminine and pretty at that weight. Like when i was smaller i felt so big and ugly but when i was at my biggest i felt stunning.
Im now halfway between the two weights and I'm fighting those old habits cause like i want to get back into being active but like i really don't wsnt to go back to the shit i did before
my grandparents would tell me “looks like you’ve been eating good”. They’re southern and meant nothing bad by it but it still stung when I was 8
i think a huge issue with fatphobia and diet culture is that being fat is seen as some sort of moral failure. people see fat and immediately make assumption about a person's life and personality based on just that. also people not minding their own business and invading peoples personal life and health, which is literally not your business. also people often use the excuse of "worrying about health" to get away with bullying tbh.
Wow this was my childhood story too. Thank you for sharing and being vulnerable 🏊🏾♂️
my mother keeps complaining about being fat. she's not even plus-size. as someone who is clinically obese, hates it, and is struggling against a cocktail of SSRIs+hypothyroidism+ADHD to lose it, nothing makes me feel shittier.
We getting the post almond mom clarity with this one 🙌👏
You're so interesting and make everything so relatable and so accessible and you're so transparent and open. Amazing content. Thank you.
I'm like always sooo late to comment on your videos, but when I saw your youtube shorts, my first impression was: 'Maybe I'm projecting but she's like coming off as an ADHD ballet chick!' and now I got to this video and I just had to comment! The almond mom life is rough, my sister and I both knew our mom was one but we also knew the problem was bigger than her so we kind of always felt ashamed of connecting her to our own anxieties/ ED around food. (It took me like my 31 years of age to acknowledge I had an issue, after a nutritionist asked me point blank, and I realized how off my eating habits are.)
Thank you for helping me process that in such a third person way!! Also, I had this exact conversation with my mom- regarding how constrained they were growing up in their choices- and I told her she didn't need to ask for my forgiveness because every hardship she faced as a generation, opened the door for me, and I only hope to do the same for the girlies after me.
TLDR; Thank you for your upbeat realism! (PS- I'm Colombian, cooking kind of comes with the turf, and my favorite part about these videos are all your novice efforts at cooking/baking! I CRACKED up and had to pause at the teaspoon measurements. In a year, I'll bet you become a natural.)
i’ll always remember the moment i realized i was overweight. i always *knew* i was bigger, but when that boy called me fat in the 1st grade and i ran to the bathroom and saw myself in the mirror, i saw it for the first time.
ever since i was little i knew i wanted to be skinny.
♥️♥️♥️
I'm a guy and I totally feel seen by this. I think typically women have this experience, but I had an almond mom that didn't have any girls of the four of us so we got the brunt of it. I'm thankful for that but body image has been a struggle my entire life.
I distinctly remember a conversation i had with my mom where i explained that exercise didn't make me lose wight so much as it made me gain muscle (genetics inherited from my dads side). i was working at consistently for an hour and a half five days a week for four four months and i still looked virtually the same... if not a bit bigger. Which is another things that diet culture fails to address which is how genetics can affect someones ability to gain and lose weight. cutting out sugar, doing keto, intermittent fasting, what have you. not every diet is gonna be effective especially since a healthy weight looks different to different people.
My mom has been like this for my whole life. It did kinda calm down but now we're going on a beach vacation in April and she keeps obsessing about 'looking good in a bikini' again. It's so annoying when she keeps saying the sentence 'every pound goes through your mouth' (but in my language it rhymes). I've had self esteem issues my whole life because of this
Ugh so annoying! Sorry girl
I completely relate, the same time era and also being naturally curvy plus the binge eating habits. My mom was so mean to me about my weight, but she passed when I was 17. I wish I could’ve mended my relationship with food with her like you did. ❤
From the time I could chew, I was only allowed to eat snacks on a Saturday and it was like a handful of gummies and that was it. I wasn't allowed to have any sweets, chips, fizzy drinks, nothing outside of that. I was a dancer as a kid so I was pretty slim and fit but my mom would put me on 900kcal a day diets because she wanted to go on them but needed someone to do it with her, then she started dragging me to Slimming World when I was barely 14 and some old lady would berate me for gaining a pound every so often. Seeing this kind of content is genuinely cathartic, it puts into perspective how ridiculous it all is.
I came up in the 80s and 90s but there was so much talk of EDs that these parents should know better anyway. I can't imagine ever talking about dieting or weight in front of my daughters.
This is such a therapeutic video to watch. I had an almond mom who was constantly on fad diets. Everyone always said me and my mom looked so similar and anytime she was getting ready she would say things like “I’m so fat, I’m so ugly, etc…” and that was the start of my disordered eating. In middle school I was heavily into religion and my church did a fast and I was like omg this is so cool I can stop eating and lose weight and I told a kid at school that and he no joke said “you should maybe go on a fast for a long time so you’re not fat”. My weight has yo-yoed up and down for years and since becoming disabled one of the hardest things I have struggled with is my weight and eating. When my whole life all I ever knew was bingeing and anorexia, it was an impossible cycle to break. It’s easy to feel alone in that thought so hearing someone else talk about that experience in relation to their parent is very comforting. With education both my mom and I have been able to break that habit and be better for ourselves and I hope someone else out there knows that they aren’t alone ❤
I grew up in a vegetables every night, only nutritious cereal, rarely any junk food, (if we had junk food, it was rlly for dessert only,) and healthy, “boring” lunch household… and I am SO glad that I did. I used to envy my friends who would have Little Bites, Cosmic Brownies, or Lunchables for lunch everyday. However, now that I’m older, I realize that my parents were actually protecting me from skewed views of nutrition, and simply trying to keep me healthy. They never made comments about my body, however they constantly make comments about their own. Thankfully though, their comments about their bodies never had an affect on me. They never told me to eat less. They just made sure that what I was eating was nutritional. “Oh, don’t eat pasta for lunch, honey. The carbs will just make you more hungry later. How about some chili, that will keep you full for longer!” Anything they said to me about food was always aimed to enlighten me on how to intuitively eat, and make sure that I was satisfied, and healthy. I think the best way to go about the diets of the people in your household, is to not limit how MUCH they eat, but to pay attention to WHAT they’re eating. Thank you mom+dad❤
I hate that so many people went through this but am glad many are also finding community and strength together, knowing they weren’t alone. My mom put me on Adkins at age 8 during the early 2000s. The constant body shaming and diet mentality even outside of Adkins made the jump to an ED so easy. After countless trips to the hospital and being dead tired of the constant mental agony, I’m now in ED recovery treatment. Hang in there y’all 💕
I remember how I slowly developed an eating disorder back in high school and college. One of the big things that reinforce people's restrictive habits were when friends and family would compliment your weight change -- whether or not it was due to working out. It may seem positive, but it just teaches the person that people are always watching your figure and that skinny is always best (Which it isn't. Blood markers, habits, and how you feel also matter in terms of health.). They don't think about how that person lost weight. It could be due to illness, something traumatic happening, or just poor eating habits. When people complemented my figure, I would have an intense fear of gaining weight again, despite feeling okay with the body I had before.
I also remembered a time when my mom would say "Do you want to be fat?" when I asked for pasta or hot dogs. They were a bit weight centered at times and when a clinic asked me how much I weighed (I was like 8-10 or something). I was already insecure about my weight rising (but I didn't realize it was natural at the time) but I told them the new number and my mom remarked in a stunned way, saying "You're ____?!?". My parents would always label foods either good or bad. All foods fit in a healthy diet. If i chose the wrong one sometimes, my dad would yell at me.
I went to weight watchers with my mom
I was four 😅
I was born in the 80s and this is familiar to me.
Also, if you’re not used to baking, try more basic recipes to start. Peanut butter cookies can be made with 3 ingredients (and they’re gluten free!) 😊