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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/KatieSimmons_ on 2023-06-26 10:50:01+00:00.
A couple of years ago, I(34f) lost my job due to the company I worked for going into financial trouble. My husband at the time didn’t work which caused us to struggle for money and eventually led to him abandoning me and our 3 children (9f, 7f and 5m). Because of this, my parents (65m and 64f) offered to let us move back in with them for a while.
Everything was fine, but after a few weeks I noticed that the food being given to us was both unhealthy and given in very large quantities. I didn’t want to offend my mom so instead of bringing it up with her, I offered to do some of the cooking instead. However, she insisted it was all done by her because she “enjoys it”. Reluctantly, I obliged and just thought “I’ll just leave most of it”. The problem with this, is that she started offering anything I didn’t eat to the children who ALWAYS ate ALL of it since they didn’t realise how bad it was for them. I also didn’t want to talk about this with the children because creating a fear about gaining weight always does more harm than good.
This carried on for about a year before I finally brought it up with her. I’ve gained almost 50 pounds and am now almost obese and 2 of the children are clinically obese now as well with the youngest still being firmly overweight. All of them get a reasonable amount of exercise but it makes little difference when they’re eating almost 3000 calories a day. A few weeks ago I watched their school sports day and it was worrying how little they could run. The 2 girls couldn’t even run 100m and had to walk the final part.
I told my mom she had to stop giving us so much unhealthy food but she snapped at me and said I should be grateful that she’s even letting us stay there. I hate conflict so I ended up backing down but I feel really bad about the effect it’s having on my kids. Recently, the oldest one has been trying to avoid sport at all costs since she doesn’t enjoy it with the extra weight.
AITA for bringing it up with my mom?