NYT Social Q’s: "Can You Guys Not Eat Garbage?"

[colorwheel]

Q: I have struggled with bulimia for 20 years. I cope with it by keeping junk food out of my house. My overweight parents, on the other hand, have awful eating habits. They keep their home stocked with junk food and offer it constantly. I find this triggering — like offering an alcoholic a drink. I’ve been visiting them more frequently now that we have kids, and I’d like to ask them not to buy junk food when we’re around. But my husband thinks it’s my responsibility to change my behavior, not my parents’ job to change theirs. Who is right?

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A: Right and wrong are beside the point here. All that matters is what serves your recovery and what undermines it. I’m a little surprised that your husband is out of step on this one. We all need a helping hand occasionally.

If you speak openly with your parents about what you need, I hope they will do what they can to support you. (Leave out the shaming criticism of their weight and diets, though.) If they refuse your request, cut back on visits to their place and encourage them to see the grandkids at your place, where you control the pantry.

Comments

[colorwheel]

is there not a difference between what the parents stock -- keeping it in their own kitchen cupboards with the cupboard doors closed -- and what they set out and offer to guests? it's one thing for LW to request that they don't offer certain types of food. it's another to want them to empty out their own kitchen of their preferred foods.

[azurelunatic]

I can see not buying as a cycle interrupt (my daughter's birth mom had that disorder). Say Mom discovers the Cheetos despite them not being offered and now there are no more Cheetos in the house. If Papa buys more Cheetos while Mom is home, it will happen again. If Papa waits to restock the Cheetos until Mom leaves, Mom will not have the opportunity to encounter more Cheetos.

I think forbidding them to have it in the house at all would be extreme, but I also would understand if LW simply cannot be in the same space safely.

A family home can be a different food dynamic than other kinds of guesting, and I wouldn't be surprised if the pantry was still fair game to an adult child if it was fair game as a teen.

[colorwheel]

that's a good point about how being at their parents' house is different from being a guest at someone else's house.

[cereta]

My issue isn't nearly as extreme as the LW's, but I feel for them. My mom keeps a lot of things in her house (potato chips, pudding cakes) that I don't because I know that if a thing is in my house, I will eat it, rapidly. She's able to make a bag of potato chips last over a week. I'm not. What really chafes my chaps is that she then makes constant remarks about what I eat, in very moralistic terms.

That said, she does not push those items on me, which is, I think, a key difference. I think it's reasonable to ask them to stop doing that, and perhaps not keep the items on the counter or otherwise in plain view. I don't know about actually asking them to not have them in the house. A lot might depend on how much the parents knows about LW's bulimia.

[lilysea]

I think it's reasonable to ask them to stop doing that, and perhaps not keep the items on the counter or otherwise in plain view. I don't know about actually asking them to not have them in the house.

I think

"can you keep [snack foods] in a plastic tub in your wardrobe in your bedroom when I visit?"

is a reasonable compromise -

looking in the kitchen pantry is a normal thing for an adult child to do,

whereas they are unlikely to rummage in their parents wardrobe.

[jadelennox]

When we have alcoholics in recovery over to our house, we put all the liquor in a tubs in rooms they won't enter, or at the back of cupboard they won't ever be opening (eg. behind the cornmeal). We don't get rid of it, but we don't leave it in front of them as a temptation, either. It's never been a hardship, and if the parents won't do it, then the LW should stop going to their house.

But the columnist is correct that LW's comments about their parents' weight and bad habits are not the point (besides being dickish), and they should drop it from their argument about the situation.

[cereta]

That does sound fair, yes, or at least put them in the back of a cabinet the LW is unlikely to rummage through. If, for example, LW is short like me, a high shelf where things like seldom-used glasses or random stuff would work.