I have the same problem with my daughter. I just spent a week with her. She brought up the subject of my weight. We are now the same size and I can tell it bothers her. I told her I didn't want her to have all the health issues i had. I gave her a copy of my pre-op diet.I also got her to exercise with me every day. I talked to her today and she has joined a health club and has lost 10 lbs. I guess all we can do is love them and when they are ready help them to get motivated.

Thanks for your reply. You have my complete understanding.
This is heartbreaking for me because my daughter does excercise (Tebo with Billy blanks at 5 am every day)
She has taken my suggestion and tried the 2 week liquid protien diet.
She couldn;t do it and I know she was inwardly unhappy because I did ( I even told her I cheated and it did not help)
She is doing everything she can but she is not built like me (very petite) but more like her dad ( barrel chested with a thicker frame) .
This is simply the way god made her. She doesn't need weight loss advice, support possibly, but she tries hard.
She is terrified she will be obese like I was.
My daughter is very beautiful, she has a fiance who (I can see in his eyes when he looks at her) thinks she is a godess, and she is.
But she just doesn't want to look like her mother.
She seems to feel competitive in this way and I can't understand why,
She is so young and beautiful I could never hold a candle even if I wanted too.
I don't know how to get to me without hurting her,

Hope... I may understand how your daughter feels. I have four older brothers and one was severly obese, about 200 lbs overweight when I used to be maybe 40 (at most) over my limit. Well one year he went on a great diet and got small as or smaller than me and I felt like "hell no" your the fat one not me. Well I love my brother more than anything... Thinking back on it it made me feel bad about myself when I should have been happy for him (I was like 16 at the time) So maybe your daughter is feeling a bit like she does not want to be larger than you.


Good luck

I am dealing with the daughter thing now. She is hispanic and has a big build. Right now she weighs about 20 lbs more than I do, pre-surgery. She seems very jealous about the surgery, but she is only 15. There is no way to justify her having it. She exercises some, but sneaks food to her room. I don't know how to help her. We have strife anyway because of our personalities. I do not want this to become like a wall between us. At firsh she thought I was having liposuction and that I would come out of surgery skinny. Hearing the reality has helped some, and I think seeing the actual process will help too. I just don't want to lose her along with all of this excess weight! Advice, anyone? Hope, please keep me posted.

The media has set up unrealistic expectations about appearance since it started; newspapers, magazines, movies, television, and now computers make young people think there must be something wrong with them if they don't look just like their favorite celebrity. This is the root of the jealousy over the weight we are losing, and the fact that we no longer match their mental image of us doesn't help any. Keep in mind these are their own insecurities, and there isn't much to be done but be understanding and supportive. Certainly don't jeopardize all the hard work you have done just to make someone else feel better about themselves! Both my siblings are obese adults, and both are envious of my weight loss. As children, I was the fat one, and now I'm the thin one and they can't seem to come to terms with that. I made my choice, they have to make their own.

Ive struggled with this one, too. My daughter has never been skinny but she has never been more than 25 lbs from goal. I never wanted to give her my crash-dieting issues, so I always just encouraged her to eat healthy and strive to maintain her weight. She is a senior in HS right now.

Well, after my surgery, we realized she had lost her eating buddy. Although I hadnt ever modeled crash dieting with her or complaining about my weight all the time like my mother had, I had modeled using food for emotional supportbad day? Lets get blizzards! Celebration? Lets get McDonalds! My husband is a healthy eater, so after surgery, she had no-one to eat bad foods with. Every time she ate something unhealthy, she was doing it alone and the voice in her head was telling her she was fat.

Then, I started getting compliments. At first, she didnt mind and gave them freely herself. When I got within 10 lbs, however, her attitude changed. Every compliment I got felt like a criticism to her. She really fell apart when I started wearing smaller sizes than she did.

We finally sat down and talked about ithow I had tried so hard not to give her the same weight/food issues I had but I am not a perfect parent and gave her different ones. I apologized, told her I had done my best, and offered her whatever support she wanted from me. I told her I loved her no matter what she did and that my concern was that she was unhappy with her weight (not that I thought she was fat or needed to lose weight). She told me she was happy for me and proud of me, but it was hard to be the only overweight person in the family. After the talk, she seemed to relax. A week or 2 later, she asked to join WW online. She did that for a couple months and then decided it wasnt for her, although she learned a lot from it.

Now, she is focusing on exercising and eating sensibly. I am supporting her, but it is her thing. I dont tell her what to eat or not eat. She hates comparisons with me. She doesnt want my advice or instruction in this area of her life.

She seems to have come to peace with the fact I am smaller than she is, right now. I believe she has stopped seeing my success as having anything to do with her issues. The last time I cleaned out my closet, she asked for my clothes.

All I can offer her is unconditional love, a healthy example, and support as she asks for it. She has to take her own journey. My mother couldn't do it for me and I can't do it for her.

JJ

I am so happy to be getting this feedback.
I think sweetsal has nailed it with "Oh no your not gonna be the small one"
However JJ makes a point as well.
It all sounds very nice and I wish I could have a loving chat with Alyshia and put an end to this
However my daughter is 30 but when she gets around me she acts 12.
We are slowly working out that issue.
Sometimes however our children are only to happy to lay the blame at our feet.
She is cetainly intelligent and self aware enough to know that her feelings are not right but sometimes the maturity level is not there.
I think that talking about it openly is better than hiding though.
I tell her that she is beautiful as she is, I buy all kinds of healthy stuff she is welcome to enjoy, she may borrow my clothes anytime as long as she asks permission first, I revel in her successes and console her when she feels she has failed.
It's all very complicated (sigh)
However, I can't understand anyone who sees the success of another as a failure for them....

Wow. The mother-daughter relationship is fraught with layers and complexities. I don't have a daughter. What I have is a mother who is/was supermodel beatiful. Gorgeous. During miy youth, I always compared myself to her and fell short. If others would tell me that I looked like her in her presence, she would contradict it and say no, I looked like my dad's older sister....

Anyway. I think that it is very common for daughters to use their mothers as "mirrors." They look at their mothers and compare themselves to them. This can be good, it can be bad. But no matter what the mother does, it's the daughter who is doing it and only the daughter can change it.

Don't beat yourselves up, ladies because of your daughters' emotions. You aren't responsible for their thinking and food issues. At some point, we all of us realize that we are solely responsible for our thoughts, emotions, actions and choices.

By all means keep the lines of communication open, if you can. I learned many years ago that I could not be honest with my mother (about so many topics) because she has her own complicated issues. I accepted it and decided to communicate with her only on the level that she was comfortable with. I did this so that we could maintain a peaceful relationship. It isn't as intimate as it could have been, but it is all that is possible for us.

Find out what works for you and your daughters. Communicate as best you can, but don't sabotage yourselves or feel guilty about your choices and success just because the girls aren't ready yet to let themselves succeed.

I fear for this very same problem with my own Daughter... I will watch this post very closely...I feel for you Hope...we have discussed our daughters before..so very very hard to know what to do..but we deserve happiness too...and sometimes we just have to put ourselves first in order to help them more...

Kayla x

I decided to have surgery when I became the biggest of the women in my family. (I am the youngest and was previously the smallest) i admit, some of my milestones are weighing less than each sister in turn. But, I don't tell them that!!!

I also had the surgery for my daughter. She is 13 and beautiful and "normal" height and weight. But, she thinks she's fat. She has picked up some of my bad habits around food and body image.

However, I don't think I will ever be smaller than her because I am taller. So, this shouldn't be an issue.

If my sisters (or brothers) end up being jealous of me...I will happy dance and then offer my support! :D

Ugh. Mother - Daughter relationship is the hardest most complicated one there is.

My Mother has been morbidly obese all my life with the exception of brief periods when she was very thin (weighted less than me).

She never once commented on my weight loss. NOT ONCE. However, she still insists on buying me clothes that are too big and stretchy. I give them to Goodwill or charity.

I cannot make it any better for her. Neither can you for your daughter.

Sometimes dialog helps. But it can be tricky to offer advice in the situation.

My Mom does not know how to have open dialog without being hurt and blaming. She talks about her weight and herself negatively and I do not engage her on that level.

I wish you good luck.

You might ask your daugher outright if she feels like talking or how you can help her.

Hi Hope,
I don't think you can make it better. I hope it will bubble up for her and then once it gets out it will be better. I think it is hard for all of us when our parents change. You aren't who she knows anymore. You aren't the same. Probably you sound and act different. Will you still love her? I know that sounds simplistic, but losing your parent is a frightening thing, even when you can't vocalize or even think about what the problem is.
Tek

Something my PCP said to me not long after surgery, "You have no idea how many women I see who are 15 or 20 pounds overweight and are asking if they qualify for gastric bypass."

We live in a culture that teaches women they must look like Barbie.

I guess I had 2 huge advantages. first, I'm male, and in general, men are not usually as focused on self image as are women. Second, a 'side effect/symptom/characteristic' of my ADHD expresses itself is that, all my life, I've been quite comfortable with not always listening to or feeling compelled to follow the crowd. I never was compelled to engage in behaviors that let me fit in with the 'in crowd'. Social climbing is just not in my DNA. I've always been comfortable with being somewhat different. Not anti-social by any means but I'm not really driven by what others may or may not think of me.

As this applies to GBS, my primary reason for proceeding was not a strong desire to look better - I could have lived with the excess weight. Rather, it was the diabetes that had me on the short road to a wooden box...

I found this post rather interesting, but from the viewpoint of me being the daughter going through the surgery process and my mother also being obese but not doing anything to help herself.

I'm very close with my mother, and she has always thought of herself as more of a "sister" to me ... even to the point that sometimes we get into sibling-rivalry kinds of squabbles (over inconsequential things, nothing drastic). So far she has been extremely supportive of me and what I've been going through, but I worry about how she is going to start reacting once I have the surgery and my weight starts coming off while she continues to stay the same.

I hope that it will inspire her to try to do better for herself, but I'm worried that it will have a less desired effect.