Is Your Family Making You Fat?

If you have obese parents, there is a greater chance that you will be obese yourself. There may be a genetic component involved, but since you are unable to alter your genes more attention has to be given to environmental and social factors. If you were obese as a child it may have been because your parents were overindulgent and allowed you to eat lots of junk food and didn't try to encourage you to exercise. You may take these habits with you into adulthood and find yourself with an even worse weight problem. However, at some point you have to take responsibility for your own actions and make changes to your lifestyle if you want to lose weight.

Unfortunately, altering your thought patterns and developing healthier habits can be easier said than done when you seek comfort in the familiar. If you have been raised to expect large meals and plenty of junk food snacks, it can be difficult to reduce portion sizes and make an effort to control your eating. Your inclination is going to be to eat too much because this is what you have always done and since this is normal behaviour for you, you may not even realise that your eating habits are particularly bad. It may take for you to join a slimming club or seek advice online or from a doctor for you to realise that you need to address your behaviour.

This isn't easy to do when you're surrounded by overweight relatives for whom consuming large quantities of food and sitting around all day is the norm. You may want to break from your bad habits and develop healthier ones so that you can start losing weight, but then find that your family either unwittingly or maliciously sabotage your efforts. It may be comments that you're looking too slim, even though you are yet to reach a healthy weight, or the extra servings of food you receive when you go to your parents' house for a family meal. Losing weight is hard, anyway, but when you don't have the support of your family it becomes at least 10 times harder.

It might be more difficult to control your weight when you live with your parents and they provide you with food at meal times, because you don't feel in a position to ask for less food or for something else to eat and so you just accept it. When you live alone you should be better able to control your diet, although that doesn't mean you won't revert back to the old habits with which you are so familiar and which provide you with comfort. Perhaps, you're married and have your own family and find that controlling your weight is extremely challenging when you have fussy, young children and a partner who is unsympathetic about the concerns you have with your weight.

It is tempting to blame your family for making you fat and although your relatives may contribute to your weight issues, you have to face up to the fact that it is up to you to make changes in your life if you are unhappy with your weight. No one is forcing you to eat a whole tub of ice cream or to serve double the amount of pasta you need at dinner time. When it comes to exercise you may not have very much time, but even then you should still be able to do something. It all comes down to motivation and willpower. If you really want to lose weight you should be able to find the determination to reduce your calorie intake and increase your activity levels, which is clearly what is needed to help you get back in control of your weight.

Signs Your Family is Trying to Sabotage Your Weight Loss

Deciding to lose weight may well be a positive step to take, but you wouldn’t always think so when you see how your family reacts. Whilst some family members may be supportive, you may come across those who continually tell you that you don’t need to lose weight. Usually, these individuals are rather hefty themselves, although there are occasionally slim family members who prefer to see you remain fat. When you’re trying to lose weight you don’t want to hear that you’re perfectly fine the way you are, since you need all the motivation you can get.

Stocking up on junk food
Losing weight is obviously your own personal choice and so you can’t expect other family members to embrace the same enthusiasm for weight loss. At the end of the day, you’re losing weight for you and even if other family members could do with losing weight, you have to concentrate on achieving your own weight loss goal. However, this isn’t easy when the family members you live with continue to stock up on junk food, particularly if it’s the kind of food that you can’t seem to get enough of. It can be extremely frustrating when a family member decides to tease you by eating something you can’t have in front of you and you may be inclined to pig out.


Offering no encouragement
Of course you’re losing weight for your own sake, but when you’re putting in so much effort to change the way you eat it would be good to hear some words of encouragement. On those days when you’re questioning whether you should give up on your diet or not, it would be helpful to hear from a family member that your weight loss is actually noticeable and that you’re looking better for it. Words of encouragement are not always forthcoming, though, especially if the rest of your family has a weight problem. This isn’t really surprising since it can be tough seeing someone actually doing something to shed their excess pounds.

Adopting a critical attitude
Even worse than indifference is being at the receiving end of criticism, because it is hard enough sticking to a calorie-controlled diet as it is. You don’t want to have to contend with all the negativity from family members telling you that you’ve lost too much weight and that you’re looking too skinny or that you’ve lost so little weight it’s hardly worth bothering with. You have good days and bad days when trying to lose weight and, unfortunately, if you receive criticism about your weight loss efforts it becomes much easier to just give up.

Focus on yourself
No matter how much more challenging your family seems to make your weight loss journey, you know that losing weight will improve your overall health and well-being. It is therefore important that you stick to your diet and continue exercising, even when you feel like giving up and your family seems to offer no support whatsoever.

Why Losing Weight as a Family is a Good Idea

Losing weight requires you to modify your behaviour, which can be difficult when you live with other people who have certain expectations of you. When people get used to the fact you eat too much, drink too much and never bother to exercise, it can be quite a shock when you decide to change these aspects of your life. You may even find that certain members of your family decide to sabotage your efforts, especially if they are unhappy with their own weight and do not like the fact that you have decided to take action. Losing weight is always a challenge, but even more so when you’re doing it alone, which is why it may be worth getting your family on board.

If you choose to lose weight as a family, you will be able to offer each other support and encouragement, which is vital when you’re trying to stay on the right path. By losing weight as a family, you have a greater change of success since you won’t want to be the only one not to lose any weight, so that you focus on sticking to your diet and exercising on a regular basis. Even if you do not live with your family, you can still meet up for gym sessions and offer support online, over the phone or in person. It definitely helps to know that you’re not alone and that brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers are having the same issues as you!

It is definitely a good idea to lose weight as a family when you live together. If you have overweight parents, siblings, or an overweight husband or wife and children you have obviously all picked up the same bad habits. It is therefore worth challenging the family’s attitude towards diet and exercise, rather than concentrating solely on what you eat and how active you are. What is the point of cooking your own healthy meals and feeding everyone else junk food? It is hard enough to resist temptation when you’re trying to lose weight, but it can become even more so if everybody else just eats whatever they want without any thought to your weight loss aims.

By losing weight as a family, you can tackle everybody’s weight issues – eating the same healthy foods and making time for exercise as a family. You may always have the inclination to eat too much – particularly the wrong kinds of food – and to sit around, doing nothing, but seeing your family motivated to exercise and willing to eat healthy food should help to keep you motivated. It is certainly better to try to lose weight as a family, so that everyone is on the same page about what constitutes a healthy lifestyle, than to obsess about losing weight on your own and without support, so that it becomes even harder to achieve your weight loss goals.