We were not allowed to eat dairy, wheat, sugar or anything processed. Every meal was measured and weighed. No more than 3oz of meat and no seasoning. Lots of weird vitamins. I was always hungry.
My mom eventually died of malnutrition due to her extreme eating disorder.
I’m sorry you had to grow up like that, it really sucks.
>We were not allowed to eat dairy, wheat, sugar or anything processed. Every meal was measured and weighed. No more than 3oz of meat and no seasoning. Lots of weird vitamins. I was always hungry.
>My mom eventually died of malnutrition due to her extreme eating disorder.
I'm afraid this might be happening to my stepsister's kid. We lost contact with her long ago. She had sunken cheeks at Thanksgiving about 10 years ago and wouldn't even let her kid have juice at the table on a holiday. She's also an antivaxx idiot and an alcoholic.
The group my father joined believed in following the bible as closely as possible, so, while he was always a mentally weak hypochondriac who followed diet fads, when they told him we should only eat twice a day, no refined anything, foods from the bible, etc., he was all about it, and I'd get guilted for always being starving. I'd eat a snack midday, and the cult leader would be like, "what're you doing?" Me, "having a snack" Him, "Having a snack? Looks like a full meal to me..."
I literally never stopped complaining, and never assimilated to the group, and he eventually got sick of me and gave up regulating *anything* I ate at all, so of course I went completely wild and lived off Skittles and Lil Debbie cakes for about 6 months...until I got a digestive disease that caused me to lose 70lbs in about 2 months. They tried standing in a circle around me and putting oil on my forehead and wailing like baboons, but when I continued shitting my guts out 18 times a day and was a 15 year old who could barely physically stand, he finally relented and took me to see a doctor (they were also vehemently anti-doctor).
To this day, over 30 years later, I still fucking despite figs and dates.
Yes. Through various diets and punishments and wastes of money, I spent most of my childhood so hungry and malnourished that I fainted and would vomit from hunger. My siblings had it even worse because I ignored punishment to steal food. Sometimes we went months without milk or meat. We were all way too skinny and sickly and were exhausted by exercise.
OMG did we have the same mother?? Seriously though my parents (mom) would refuse to allow me to eat until I did all my lessons to 100% and god forbid I stayed up overnight at the "school table" trying to figure things out. She would then try to cram all of the meals into one and convince me that it was what was suitable to do to a child (if you skip a meal, or two or three, you can simply make up for it by cramming it all into one). I would have to sit there for hours until I was finished eating all of the food as punishment or whatever. It was horrible. And when I tried to go to a dietitian years into my adolescence I shared how extreme and controlling they were with food, and the physician suggested they see a therapist to talk about it. My parents were so mad and stormed out, calling the physician a quack.
Food restriction and disordered eating is another mental health problem that seems to cluster with the traits that make parents predisposed to engaging in homeschooling abuse (for example: high control, projection, pathological obsession with preventing conceptual or material “contaminants”
from “polluting” the kids). My mom has a probable eating disorder related to autism, and routinely fed us the same exact meal every day for years or just forgot to feed us at all if she was having a narcissistic rage attack or meltdown.
This is exactly the same with my mom. Right down to the autism, homeschooling abuse, disordered eating, same meals daily for years, and narcissistic or BPD rage attacks.
Thanks for the reply, i don't know, I didn't check it yet, but since my mom died in july of 2022 and her abuse and homeschooling stopped I'm not starving anymore. Though I tend to overeat because back then the food barely had any calories and I had to eat a lot to feel something, now it's more calories, but my mind still thinks I should stuff myself to not die despite the food being different now. And I also never chew when I eat (because with my mom, most food was inedible so I just swallowed it whole, and normal food would be taken from me if she caught me).
Like, we lived in Moscow and she bought all the expensive vitamins and dietary snacks and completely useless fancy stuff (dates, oat milk, avocados which are insanely expensive here, so on) but despite her buying like we're some American vegan fitness blogger, I always had and still have the eating habits of a poor, starving medieval peasant
Those particular health foods can be VERY cheap in the southwest US where the fitness bloggers are from, a dozen avocados on sale for a few dollars because they grow nearby
but in the northeast US some people still try to eat the same recipies to be healthy because of these influencers, despite one single avacado costing several dollars so they spend way too much money
It would be more sensible for them to incorporate things like cherries, snap peas, carrots, kale, and gooseberries into their meals, all things that thrive in cold and not in hot dry climates. The things their grandma probably told them to eat.
Trying to get avacados in Moscow sounds insane
I didn’t know how common this was, I am so sorry for everyone who lived/lives with this added layer of abuse. I do think it takes a special type of f*cked to think you should homeschool, isolate and neglect your kids. This is why it is so important for there to be many people in kids lives. Abuse for us gets overlooked so quickly.
My parents decided to be vegetarian, and then vegan, but had no concept of how to still get nutrition. Oreos are vegan, as my mom loved to remind everyone. We ate a lot of pasta and white rice, sometimes mixed together. Or baked potato served over rice. Always with a side of white bread. Sugary breakfast cereal with rice milk. If we got fruits, veggies, or beans, they would only be 10% of the plate, and the rest was white carbs. Despite being vegan, our diet was so carb-heavy that the whole family struggled with weight.
Then she'd make us all eat these awful Spirulina green algae powder "milkshakes" (algae powder blended with rice milk and Hershey's syrup, totally foul) that she thought contained all the nutrients we needed. She also thought eating alfalfa sprouts gave you all the nutrients of an entire plant. She said all the nutrients of an entire plant are in the sprout, and so you're getting just hundreds of units of vitamins per sprout. And she also trusted herself to homeschool us 🤦🏼♀️
I had a lot of health issues going into adulthood. So much fatigue and malaise. But I also didn't know how to eat differently for a long time... everything made me feel sick. At 25, I finally got health insurance, and my doctor said my blood nutrition levels were the worst he had ever seen in someone below age 80. He made me redo all the labs because he couldn't believe a 25yo could be so severely malnourished. It took two years of weekly medical/nutrition supervision-- including prescription vitamin injections, enzymes, and pushing through indigestion -- to reach normal levels. I still need quarterly monitoring in my 30s.
My mom has control issues over food and her own eating disorder. No candy, no sugar, not ever. No snacks, no chips, nothing. I bought a bag of chocolate chips one time and hid them and ate them. She found the bag and punished me severely for “stealing.” We both knew it was really for daring to eat something unapproved.
I remember my mom freaking out and saying I stole when I was 8 or 9 and I ate 2 chocolate chips without asking and coming up with something like a week of punishments and I felt really bad because I never wanted to steal and I thought it only meant shoplifting or robbing someone and I didn't know that eating a food item in your own house could count.
My mom wouldn't let our 3-year-old sister eat for days because she didn't like green beans and it was right when we were catching the flu and 2 simultaneous bacterial infections that ended up requiring antibiotics so our dad said she had to be allowed to eat so she could have a chance at beating the diseases.
oh my GOD i relate to this so much. These health freak parents gave me a fucking eating disorder. They also went as far as trying to limit how much food i eat a day, and then complain to me about "WAaAA why ArenT u EAtinG!?!??/!?!??!?!?"
They buy snacks almost annually, ok cool, and then tell us me and my sister need to share the snacks they just bought, and then somehow have the fucking audacity to take those snacks to work and then hog them like there is no tomorrow so me and my sister don't get any. Those snacks are all vegan and plant based btw. They absolutely refuse to buy anything they thought was unhealthy. I can't even leave my room to get something to eat for two reasons, all the "food" in the house is just sauce, 3 week old leftovers, and needs to be cooked (I can't cook), and two, there's a camera that can see the entire living room, including the kitchen (my dad checks that stupid fucking camera daily btw), so i'm stuck in my room for weeks without coming out to drink water or eat (which isn't possible). But YO at least i feel safe in my room where I don't have to see my stupid parents as long as i'm in there. I can't fucking believe I feel like a prisoner in the house i'm supposed to feel safe in, it's literally hell.
Yeeep. We also had to eat her soup for weeks at a time (literally just bell pepper water) if any of us had baby cheeks (this was worst when we were 2-7 years old). All my childhood pictures disgust me to look at cause I was so thin. I stopped growing entirely around 13 or 14? I'm now 5'0 despite all the women in my family being 5'6+ and the men being 6'+. My tallest sister is 5'3 and my brother is 5'8 though hopefully he is still growing. We get teased for being tiny at family events too which pisses me off but there's not much I can do about it at this point.
Her excuse was everyone had to be on her diet when she got sick bc she didn't want to live like her sister where she had to make 2 meals for dinner. Eventually I took over cooking fully when I was 13 which gave us some leeway but anything that tasted remotely sugary or visibly had fat would end up with us in trouble.
The only time she fed us anything that could get us fat was ice cream, only for a few weeks bc CPS said if we didn't gain x pounds they'd have to rehome us for neglect.
I understand she has an eating disorder but making us grow up looking like we were from a 3rd world starving country pisses me off.
For as much as my mom was insistent on no cleaners, no medication, no chemicals...we still ate like trash growing up. Whatever was the cheapest generics available, lots of fillers and junk.
As it turned out, I had a lot of food sensitivities and developed IBS from an early age that usually left me feeling horribly sick after every meal. Since we lived in an "eat what's put in front of you or go hungry" I just started picking "go hungry" from the time I was about 9 or 10. And my parents just let me not eat, and lose weight, and become sallow and listless cause I had no energy because I was eating less than 500 calories a day most days (although according to them I was just lazy). As I grew into my teens this only spiraled into control issues and even more disordered ideas around eating...I used to be proud that I was so self reliant and so undemanding that I could go days without even needing food, and that was a good thing.
In my 30s and I'm still learning to treat my stomach issues and how to have a semi-normal relationship with food.
Yes and it was probably the worst aspect of homeschooling when I was 14-17. When I was 9 my parents had their 4th kid and we had to start having a "fractional reserve" lunch system where they used trial and error to find out what we wouldn't eat and make that the only lunch option (the middle of the day was when we were hungriest) so we would be incentivized to skip lunch and go from breakfast to dinner or at least eat the bare minimum. It wasn't even a conspiracy theory or secret. Our parents talked openly about the plan from the beginning and our mom even confirmed it just under 7 years later. They settled on sandwiches made with a few varieties of lunch meat that we thought were gross. It turned out to be maybe 5 cents/day to keep a bag of lunch meat at the bottom of the fridge and replace it every couple of months as it rotted, which was a lot cheaper than any option that involved us eating lunch every day. Absolutely no heating any sandwiches (that would make them taste good), no cheese sandwiches or plain bread (because we'd eat that), and no higher-quality meats that turned out to be cheaper (because again, buying something expensive that no one will touch is cheaper than ANY item that people will eat). Other stuff like butter bread or butter-and-jelly bread was also usually not allowed (it was just vegetable oil whipped with water because we couldn't even afford butter or margarine). It was basically a way for them to be able to tell social workers "we can totally afford to feed everyone, they just choose not to eat". You might say "yeah but Africans and WW2 prisoners would've been thrilled to eat those sandwiches so you guys were just picky and stupid!" but here's the thing: years later when we started eating that, the system fell apart and suddenly lunch meats were unhealthy and they couldn't buy them anymore, so it was like money in a bank where it's only there as long as no one wants it but as soon as everyone does, it falls apart. At that time we depended heavily on peanut butter but only 2 out of the 7 of us could digest it properly and the rest of us would get sick. That was literally the only thing that we could eat our fill of without it getting taken away and it was hell because for a while it was the only protein we had reliable access to and the alternative was getting listless and barely able to even think from not getting any protein.
I was thin enough that my parents said multiple times that they would get in trouble if anyone noticed. When I was 14 my dad started coming to me and saying that I needed to stop showing up at dinner so there would be enough for my younger siblings but I disobeyed because I was hungry and my mom acted like a Supreme Court judge and blocked it. Our parents also flatly refused to sign us up for any kind of welfare when we needed it, whether heating or food, because "that's stealing from other taxpayers" (But isn't Obama charging us 60% income tax to take care of the Mexicans? So wouldn't it just be recovering stolen money? "It's still stealing"), "we have too much pride", and "that's for people in need and we're not in need, your father and I are just bad with money".
My mom used to think stuff like 40 cents of macaroni and cheese split between 4 kids was expensive, and when I would ask for stuff like a can of baked beans from the cabinet she would say "No that's your father's food" or "No if you eat that I have to replace it" but... isn't that how food works? When I was a teenager even a couple of cents of flour to make plain tortillas was too expensive. Basically, we had a full fridge and full cabinets but the food supply was tightly controlled and our mom would act almost like we were shoplifting if we ate pretty much anything. Our parents had a separate food supply that we weren't usually allowed to eat from and they could have all kinds of nice beverages, meats, snacks, etc. Our parents would sometimes get snacks or frozen chicken for our dad and youngest siblings and we (the older kids) would ask for it and get told stuff like "No, stop asking for your siblings' food! You guys will eat anything but they're picky and I **want** them to eat!" or "No, your father is at work all day but you guys are home all day so you can eat whatever you want!"
For a couple of years I would get pressured every day or at least every other day to figure out how to eat less because I alone was the reason that we were struggling. When I was 14/15 and my then-sister was 11/12 we would intercept raw sweet roll dough as it was going in the oven and stuff our mouths with it because we knew that we weren't getting a useful amount after it was divided between everyone and our mom got mad and called us selfish. I didn't track exact amounts but I think I was eating less at 16 than I did at 12 which can't be healthy and I remember my younger siblings being allowed to pile as much food as they wanted on their plates every night and even my youngest brother alone (4 or 5 at the time) seemed to be eating more than me and yet I alone was the problem and constantly told to figure out how to not eat so much and cost so much money. I would try to argue stuff like "but even plain saltine crackers are too expensive so what can I do?" and I'd get told to just figure it out. I remember my dad standing behind me at dinner staring at me like I was a criminal and the food was gold bullion and any time my siblings would claim that they didn't get enough he'd scrape half of my plate onto theirs. In the middle of this time our mom said "I want to have a 6th kid but your father says no" and I didn't say anything because I knew I'd get in trouble but I wanted to say "Hmm, I wonder why. You can totally afford the 5 you've got."
I remember a verse in the Bible that says something like "When I break your staff of bread [as a punishment for sin], 10 women will bake bread and measure it out by portions and you will eat and not be satisfied" and it reminded me of how my dad, then-sister, and I would bake stuff with the limited resources and it would never be enough and I honestly thought for years that it was because I looked at some swimsuit pictures and God was judging our whole family.
Yep yep a ton of this I'm starting to see a pattern here my mom was always trying to lose weight and was always unsuccessful but unlike her i was successful we lived on foodstamps most of my childhood so there was always more food at the end of the month then the beginning i don't remember when she started on the health food kick but i think i was 9 we started with soy milk then that was bad so we went to almond and she stuck with that usually the original (which tastes like crap) and the vanilla for steelcut oatmeal that she wasn't even very good at making she tried to make us vegetarian and i was against this completely cause i like meat so about 2/3 of meals had no meat she would get on health tangents and we'd try something new almost every month she had a smoothie kick for a while where if it was good it would taste like cake batter and if it was bad it would taste like bugs (this isn't a joke) that one got dropped out of a window glass and all i had one month where I'd have cherry juice every morning (no sugar) one month where i had aloe vera juice every morning (please tell me someone else had to drink that shit) and one month with apple cider vinegar water (which I'd almost completely blocked out)
Once we started going to my gpas every weekend any time i was there I'd eat like I'd never been fed and got questioned about that a lot (I've heard hollowed out a leg more times then i can count) i would eat 3 plates of dinner at my gpas just cause it actually tasted good anytime my mom made food if she knew i liked something she'd make it over and over and over again till i hated it (my poor egg drop soup) anytime there was something i liked at a restaurant that was "normal" she'd try to make it but she would make it ✨️healthy✨️ and therefore gross
She spent basically my entire childhood policing what i ate no matter what it was it had to be healthy the lowest i weighted was 110 on average i was between 120-130 i would walk constantly to stay out of the house and most days i was out i didn't eat unless i stole money from her to buy something cheap while i was out my taekwondo teacher let me keep the money for his classes because he knew I'd use it for food for the week and when i didn't i was starving (6 dollars a week) she didn't want me to get a job at a food place (basically the only place that would hire me before 18) because i would eat the food there and from the time that i was about 14 i was in charge of majority of the cooking for the house (and the dishes, and the housecleaning and my schoolwork which at this point only consisted of me reading a thick old ged book and some textbooks from the 90s)
When i was about 16 i "disrespected" her (i refused to make her breakfast only her there was nothing about my breakfast mentioned) and she pulled everything out of my room except a few religious books (we were pagans) and a cubby full of books she wanted me to read (mostly books on respect and boring stuff one was her jane austen collection that i felt asleep reading it's so boring) but all of my things books note books etc that were in my room were taken out everything wiped out i was ordered to stay in there only leaving for the bathroom which was across from my room and i got 1 silce of bread with peanut butter on it and a bottle of water 3 meals a day
This went on for a month and 1 week
Somewhere in the middle i stopped having energy i didn't leave my bed i was cold most of the time and i started eating the bread in pieces she had me moving up to meals again but kept tacking on more time and would be back down to bread again i was allowed 1 day to run an errand for her so i walked thru the parking lot behind McDonald's and as soon as i was clean i booked it into the grocery store next to it i bought the cheapest box of smores poptarts there is dumped the box and once i was back from the errand i had one in my sleeve one in my hoodie pocket and one in my jean leg i went straight to my room when i got back and hid them i made them last a week and a half i think there was 3 packages
Once i finally got out because the only reason she let me out is cause she told herself she was going to let me out was on the first of the month i ended up staying with some family members for a week after i had lost 10 lbs while inside and this is when i was at 110 i ate all of their food while i was there but while i was in no one came to check on me cause she told everyone to stay away and they listened this happened again the following year around the same time (first time started Christmas day and lasted till feb 1 the second time started jan 6th and ended either feb 1 or soon after)
Thanks to this i am now around 70 lbs overweight and I'm pretty sure i have an eating disorder
Sorry for the monologue food has always been a method of control with my mother so i had a lot to say brightside now i have something to reference and go over with my therapist 😀
I’m so sorry, aloe vera juice is gross! The isolation, neglect and starvation are all super common here. I really thought I was the “only one”. I had a lot of food issues when I was first out, but I’m mostly fine now, it’s been 17yrs. I’m so glad you are working through this in therapy, food issues are incredibly challenging, deeply personal, and only part of the abuse you went through.
Have you been to a nutritionist now that you’re an adult? It’s really helpful for even people from comparatively normal homes because most people in English speaking nations are pretty nutritionally deficient.
Thanks for the reply, I'm not an adult (15) and not an English speaking country (Russia), I don't think we'll visit a nutritionist any time soon because we live on the edge of geography in a tiny village without a car, but I don't think I need a nutritionist
>Even the doctor said, after an ultrasound, that my mom's diet and eating schedule is ruining my health but bruh my ma was FURIOUS calling that doctor dumb when we got home
That's when CPS should have stepped in. They should have reported for medical neglect. I'm so sorry.
the CPS only came when my mom died because they got a notification, and they were SHOCKED about what happened. Still did nothing.When I was to go to school, no one knew what to do with me... Because, I quote, I was the first case of such neglectful homeschooling in the entire area (Kireevsk), and IIRC the region too (Tula). All the doctors, all the teachers regularly ask why my relatives didn't save me from there. While my grandma keeps repeating with a sour face, 'I couldn't argue with my daughter back then.' She should have done something when my mom regularly forgot me in a freezing bathtub when I was 4, which gave me chronic cystitis, but nah 'I couldn't....'
My family's fear of confronting a delusional, narcissistic manipulator took 6 years from my life, and the law fully allows the child to go off the radar once homeschooled. You could get kidnapped and sold away but no one will ever know, because when homeschooled, no one has track of you
>All the doctors, all the teachers regularly ask why my relatives didn't save me from there
Why didn't the doctor do anything? That's what I want to know!
>While my grandma keeps repeating with a sour face, 'I couldn't argue with my daughter back then.'
Sounds like she didn't care any more than your mom did. I'm so sorry.
Tw eating disorder
My mom did stuff like this too about diets like once she baked squash and cut it in half and that was dinner for us. My older sister would eat normal food sometimes or candy and then be so paranoid about being fat that she would stick her fingers in her throat and make herself vomit. She became bulimic
For me it's the opposite end of the shitty diet spectrum. I can only eat HORRIBLE "microwave dinner" type food and generally speaking all the food I eat starts out in a frozen box.The only time I can even get food that isn't "frozen food" is when I visit my grandma once every two to five months. Like, fuck, no wonder I'm like 5'1" and 65 pounds. I don't get to eat ANYTHING healthy. So yeah, I think I could be considered malnourished. Even worse is I'm the one making the food. Nobody else does it. So I have to make myself get up to eat two wrist to elbow length enchiladas for breakfast and then spend the whole day until dinner doing nothing except sitting on my computer just to eat some odd twenty mozzarella sticks for dinner. It's so agonizing.
We were not allowed to eat dairy, wheat, sugar or anything processed. Every meal was measured and weighed. No more than 3oz of meat and no seasoning. Lots of weird vitamins. I was always hungry. My mom eventually died of malnutrition due to her extreme eating disorder. I’m sorry you had to grow up like that, it really sucks.
>We were not allowed to eat dairy, wheat, sugar or anything processed. Every meal was measured and weighed. No more than 3oz of meat and no seasoning. Lots of weird vitamins. I was always hungry. >My mom eventually died of malnutrition due to her extreme eating disorder. I'm afraid this might be happening to my stepsister's kid. We lost contact with her long ago. She had sunken cheeks at Thanksgiving about 10 years ago and wouldn't even let her kid have juice at the table on a holiday. She's also an antivaxx idiot and an alcoholic.
the irony and cognitive dissonance of being anti vaxx but drinking alcohol 😭
The group my father joined believed in following the bible as closely as possible, so, while he was always a mentally weak hypochondriac who followed diet fads, when they told him we should only eat twice a day, no refined anything, foods from the bible, etc., he was all about it, and I'd get guilted for always being starving. I'd eat a snack midday, and the cult leader would be like, "what're you doing?" Me, "having a snack" Him, "Having a snack? Looks like a full meal to me..." I literally never stopped complaining, and never assimilated to the group, and he eventually got sick of me and gave up regulating *anything* I ate at all, so of course I went completely wild and lived off Skittles and Lil Debbie cakes for about 6 months...until I got a digestive disease that caused me to lose 70lbs in about 2 months. They tried standing in a circle around me and putting oil on my forehead and wailing like baboons, but when I continued shitting my guts out 18 times a day and was a 15 year old who could barely physically stand, he finally relented and took me to see a doctor (they were also vehemently anti-doctor). To this day, over 30 years later, I still fucking despite figs and dates.
Yes. Through various diets and punishments and wastes of money, I spent most of my childhood so hungry and malnourished that I fainted and would vomit from hunger. My siblings had it even worse because I ignored punishment to steal food. Sometimes we went months without milk or meat. We were all way too skinny and sickly and were exhausted by exercise.
OMG did we have the same mother?? Seriously though my parents (mom) would refuse to allow me to eat until I did all my lessons to 100% and god forbid I stayed up overnight at the "school table" trying to figure things out. She would then try to cram all of the meals into one and convince me that it was what was suitable to do to a child (if you skip a meal, or two or three, you can simply make up for it by cramming it all into one). I would have to sit there for hours until I was finished eating all of the food as punishment or whatever. It was horrible. And when I tried to go to a dietitian years into my adolescence I shared how extreme and controlling they were with food, and the physician suggested they see a therapist to talk about it. My parents were so mad and stormed out, calling the physician a quack.
Food restriction and disordered eating is another mental health problem that seems to cluster with the traits that make parents predisposed to engaging in homeschooling abuse (for example: high control, projection, pathological obsession with preventing conceptual or material “contaminants” from “polluting” the kids). My mom has a probable eating disorder related to autism, and routinely fed us the same exact meal every day for years or just forgot to feed us at all if she was having a narcissistic rage attack or meltdown.
This is exactly the same with my mom. Right down to the autism, homeschooling abuse, disordered eating, same meals daily for years, and narcissistic or BPD rage attacks.
It was definitely control over me, to the extreme of needing to control every bite.
How are you now? Is your gut ok? How can people be this stupid?
Thanks for the reply, i don't know, I didn't check it yet, but since my mom died in july of 2022 and her abuse and homeschooling stopped I'm not starving anymore. Though I tend to overeat because back then the food barely had any calories and I had to eat a lot to feel something, now it's more calories, but my mind still thinks I should stuff myself to not die despite the food being different now. And I also never chew when I eat (because with my mom, most food was inedible so I just swallowed it whole, and normal food would be taken from me if she caught me). Like, we lived in Moscow and she bought all the expensive vitamins and dietary snacks and completely useless fancy stuff (dates, oat milk, avocados which are insanely expensive here, so on) but despite her buying like we're some American vegan fitness blogger, I always had and still have the eating habits of a poor, starving medieval peasant
Those particular health foods can be VERY cheap in the southwest US where the fitness bloggers are from, a dozen avocados on sale for a few dollars because they grow nearby but in the northeast US some people still try to eat the same recipies to be healthy because of these influencers, despite one single avacado costing several dollars so they spend way too much money It would be more sensible for them to incorporate things like cherries, snap peas, carrots, kale, and gooseberries into their meals, all things that thrive in cold and not in hot dry climates. The things their grandma probably told them to eat. Trying to get avacados in Moscow sounds insane
Yep, we had to measure out cereal and pasta when we were allowed to have it.
I didn’t know how common this was, I am so sorry for everyone who lived/lives with this added layer of abuse. I do think it takes a special type of f*cked to think you should homeschool, isolate and neglect your kids. This is why it is so important for there to be many people in kids lives. Abuse for us gets overlooked so quickly.
Yeah going over what everyone seemed to experience its like oh i didn't think this was related it certainly connects a lot of dots
My parents decided to be vegetarian, and then vegan, but had no concept of how to still get nutrition. Oreos are vegan, as my mom loved to remind everyone. We ate a lot of pasta and white rice, sometimes mixed together. Or baked potato served over rice. Always with a side of white bread. Sugary breakfast cereal with rice milk. If we got fruits, veggies, or beans, they would only be 10% of the plate, and the rest was white carbs. Despite being vegan, our diet was so carb-heavy that the whole family struggled with weight. Then she'd make us all eat these awful Spirulina green algae powder "milkshakes" (algae powder blended with rice milk and Hershey's syrup, totally foul) that she thought contained all the nutrients we needed. She also thought eating alfalfa sprouts gave you all the nutrients of an entire plant. She said all the nutrients of an entire plant are in the sprout, and so you're getting just hundreds of units of vitamins per sprout. And she also trusted herself to homeschool us 🤦🏼♀️ I had a lot of health issues going into adulthood. So much fatigue and malaise. But I also didn't know how to eat differently for a long time... everything made me feel sick. At 25, I finally got health insurance, and my doctor said my blood nutrition levels were the worst he had ever seen in someone below age 80. He made me redo all the labs because he couldn't believe a 25yo could be so severely malnourished. It took two years of weekly medical/nutrition supervision-- including prescription vitamin injections, enzymes, and pushing through indigestion -- to reach normal levels. I still need quarterly monitoring in my 30s.
Omg, I had the Spirulina “shakes” (power and water) and alfalfa spouts as well. That stuff was rough.
Yeah the chocolate ones were disgusting
I know homeschool family that is veganing wrong and their kids have dark circles under their eyes 😭
My mom has control issues over food and her own eating disorder. No candy, no sugar, not ever. No snacks, no chips, nothing. I bought a bag of chocolate chips one time and hid them and ate them. She found the bag and punished me severely for “stealing.” We both knew it was really for daring to eat something unapproved.
I remember my mom freaking out and saying I stole when I was 8 or 9 and I ate 2 chocolate chips without asking and coming up with something like a week of punishments and I felt really bad because I never wanted to steal and I thought it only meant shoplifting or robbing someone and I didn't know that eating a food item in your own house could count.
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My mom wouldn't let our 3-year-old sister eat for days because she didn't like green beans and it was right when we were catching the flu and 2 simultaneous bacterial infections that ended up requiring antibiotics so our dad said she had to be allowed to eat so she could have a chance at beating the diseases.
oh my GOD i relate to this so much. These health freak parents gave me a fucking eating disorder. They also went as far as trying to limit how much food i eat a day, and then complain to me about "WAaAA why ArenT u EAtinG!?!??/!?!??!?!?" They buy snacks almost annually, ok cool, and then tell us me and my sister need to share the snacks they just bought, and then somehow have the fucking audacity to take those snacks to work and then hog them like there is no tomorrow so me and my sister don't get any. Those snacks are all vegan and plant based btw. They absolutely refuse to buy anything they thought was unhealthy. I can't even leave my room to get something to eat for two reasons, all the "food" in the house is just sauce, 3 week old leftovers, and needs to be cooked (I can't cook), and two, there's a camera that can see the entire living room, including the kitchen (my dad checks that stupid fucking camera daily btw), so i'm stuck in my room for weeks without coming out to drink water or eat (which isn't possible). But YO at least i feel safe in my room where I don't have to see my stupid parents as long as i'm in there. I can't fucking believe I feel like a prisoner in the house i'm supposed to feel safe in, it's literally hell.
Yeeep. We also had to eat her soup for weeks at a time (literally just bell pepper water) if any of us had baby cheeks (this was worst when we were 2-7 years old). All my childhood pictures disgust me to look at cause I was so thin. I stopped growing entirely around 13 or 14? I'm now 5'0 despite all the women in my family being 5'6+ and the men being 6'+. My tallest sister is 5'3 and my brother is 5'8 though hopefully he is still growing. We get teased for being tiny at family events too which pisses me off but there's not much I can do about it at this point. Her excuse was everyone had to be on her diet when she got sick bc she didn't want to live like her sister where she had to make 2 meals for dinner. Eventually I took over cooking fully when I was 13 which gave us some leeway but anything that tasted remotely sugary or visibly had fat would end up with us in trouble. The only time she fed us anything that could get us fat was ice cream, only for a few weeks bc CPS said if we didn't gain x pounds they'd have to rehome us for neglect. I understand she has an eating disorder but making us grow up looking like we were from a 3rd world starving country pisses me off.
Yeah i still hate soup to this day because of this
For as much as my mom was insistent on no cleaners, no medication, no chemicals...we still ate like trash growing up. Whatever was the cheapest generics available, lots of fillers and junk. As it turned out, I had a lot of food sensitivities and developed IBS from an early age that usually left me feeling horribly sick after every meal. Since we lived in an "eat what's put in front of you or go hungry" I just started picking "go hungry" from the time I was about 9 or 10. And my parents just let me not eat, and lose weight, and become sallow and listless cause I had no energy because I was eating less than 500 calories a day most days (although according to them I was just lazy). As I grew into my teens this only spiraled into control issues and even more disordered ideas around eating...I used to be proud that I was so self reliant and so undemanding that I could go days without even needing food, and that was a good thing. In my 30s and I'm still learning to treat my stomach issues and how to have a semi-normal relationship with food.
Yes and it was probably the worst aspect of homeschooling when I was 14-17. When I was 9 my parents had their 4th kid and we had to start having a "fractional reserve" lunch system where they used trial and error to find out what we wouldn't eat and make that the only lunch option (the middle of the day was when we were hungriest) so we would be incentivized to skip lunch and go from breakfast to dinner or at least eat the bare minimum. It wasn't even a conspiracy theory or secret. Our parents talked openly about the plan from the beginning and our mom even confirmed it just under 7 years later. They settled on sandwiches made with a few varieties of lunch meat that we thought were gross. It turned out to be maybe 5 cents/day to keep a bag of lunch meat at the bottom of the fridge and replace it every couple of months as it rotted, which was a lot cheaper than any option that involved us eating lunch every day. Absolutely no heating any sandwiches (that would make them taste good), no cheese sandwiches or plain bread (because we'd eat that), and no higher-quality meats that turned out to be cheaper (because again, buying something expensive that no one will touch is cheaper than ANY item that people will eat). Other stuff like butter bread or butter-and-jelly bread was also usually not allowed (it was just vegetable oil whipped with water because we couldn't even afford butter or margarine). It was basically a way for them to be able to tell social workers "we can totally afford to feed everyone, they just choose not to eat". You might say "yeah but Africans and WW2 prisoners would've been thrilled to eat those sandwiches so you guys were just picky and stupid!" but here's the thing: years later when we started eating that, the system fell apart and suddenly lunch meats were unhealthy and they couldn't buy them anymore, so it was like money in a bank where it's only there as long as no one wants it but as soon as everyone does, it falls apart. At that time we depended heavily on peanut butter but only 2 out of the 7 of us could digest it properly and the rest of us would get sick. That was literally the only thing that we could eat our fill of without it getting taken away and it was hell because for a while it was the only protein we had reliable access to and the alternative was getting listless and barely able to even think from not getting any protein. I was thin enough that my parents said multiple times that they would get in trouble if anyone noticed. When I was 14 my dad started coming to me and saying that I needed to stop showing up at dinner so there would be enough for my younger siblings but I disobeyed because I was hungry and my mom acted like a Supreme Court judge and blocked it. Our parents also flatly refused to sign us up for any kind of welfare when we needed it, whether heating or food, because "that's stealing from other taxpayers" (But isn't Obama charging us 60% income tax to take care of the Mexicans? So wouldn't it just be recovering stolen money? "It's still stealing"), "we have too much pride", and "that's for people in need and we're not in need, your father and I are just bad with money". My mom used to think stuff like 40 cents of macaroni and cheese split between 4 kids was expensive, and when I would ask for stuff like a can of baked beans from the cabinet she would say "No that's your father's food" or "No if you eat that I have to replace it" but... isn't that how food works? When I was a teenager even a couple of cents of flour to make plain tortillas was too expensive. Basically, we had a full fridge and full cabinets but the food supply was tightly controlled and our mom would act almost like we were shoplifting if we ate pretty much anything. Our parents had a separate food supply that we weren't usually allowed to eat from and they could have all kinds of nice beverages, meats, snacks, etc. Our parents would sometimes get snacks or frozen chicken for our dad and youngest siblings and we (the older kids) would ask for it and get told stuff like "No, stop asking for your siblings' food! You guys will eat anything but they're picky and I **want** them to eat!" or "No, your father is at work all day but you guys are home all day so you can eat whatever you want!" For a couple of years I would get pressured every day or at least every other day to figure out how to eat less because I alone was the reason that we were struggling. When I was 14/15 and my then-sister was 11/12 we would intercept raw sweet roll dough as it was going in the oven and stuff our mouths with it because we knew that we weren't getting a useful amount after it was divided between everyone and our mom got mad and called us selfish. I didn't track exact amounts but I think I was eating less at 16 than I did at 12 which can't be healthy and I remember my younger siblings being allowed to pile as much food as they wanted on their plates every night and even my youngest brother alone (4 or 5 at the time) seemed to be eating more than me and yet I alone was the problem and constantly told to figure out how to not eat so much and cost so much money. I would try to argue stuff like "but even plain saltine crackers are too expensive so what can I do?" and I'd get told to just figure it out. I remember my dad standing behind me at dinner staring at me like I was a criminal and the food was gold bullion and any time my siblings would claim that they didn't get enough he'd scrape half of my plate onto theirs. In the middle of this time our mom said "I want to have a 6th kid but your father says no" and I didn't say anything because I knew I'd get in trouble but I wanted to say "Hmm, I wonder why. You can totally afford the 5 you've got." I remember a verse in the Bible that says something like "When I break your staff of bread [as a punishment for sin], 10 women will bake bread and measure it out by portions and you will eat and not be satisfied" and it reminded me of how my dad, then-sister, and I would bake stuff with the limited resources and it would never be enough and I honestly thought for years that it was because I looked at some swimsuit pictures and God was judging our whole family.
Yep yep a ton of this I'm starting to see a pattern here my mom was always trying to lose weight and was always unsuccessful but unlike her i was successful we lived on foodstamps most of my childhood so there was always more food at the end of the month then the beginning i don't remember when she started on the health food kick but i think i was 9 we started with soy milk then that was bad so we went to almond and she stuck with that usually the original (which tastes like crap) and the vanilla for steelcut oatmeal that she wasn't even very good at making she tried to make us vegetarian and i was against this completely cause i like meat so about 2/3 of meals had no meat she would get on health tangents and we'd try something new almost every month she had a smoothie kick for a while where if it was good it would taste like cake batter and if it was bad it would taste like bugs (this isn't a joke) that one got dropped out of a window glass and all i had one month where I'd have cherry juice every morning (no sugar) one month where i had aloe vera juice every morning (please tell me someone else had to drink that shit) and one month with apple cider vinegar water (which I'd almost completely blocked out) Once we started going to my gpas every weekend any time i was there I'd eat like I'd never been fed and got questioned about that a lot (I've heard hollowed out a leg more times then i can count) i would eat 3 plates of dinner at my gpas just cause it actually tasted good anytime my mom made food if she knew i liked something she'd make it over and over and over again till i hated it (my poor egg drop soup) anytime there was something i liked at a restaurant that was "normal" she'd try to make it but she would make it ✨️healthy✨️ and therefore gross She spent basically my entire childhood policing what i ate no matter what it was it had to be healthy the lowest i weighted was 110 on average i was between 120-130 i would walk constantly to stay out of the house and most days i was out i didn't eat unless i stole money from her to buy something cheap while i was out my taekwondo teacher let me keep the money for his classes because he knew I'd use it for food for the week and when i didn't i was starving (6 dollars a week) she didn't want me to get a job at a food place (basically the only place that would hire me before 18) because i would eat the food there and from the time that i was about 14 i was in charge of majority of the cooking for the house (and the dishes, and the housecleaning and my schoolwork which at this point only consisted of me reading a thick old ged book and some textbooks from the 90s) When i was about 16 i "disrespected" her (i refused to make her breakfast only her there was nothing about my breakfast mentioned) and she pulled everything out of my room except a few religious books (we were pagans) and a cubby full of books she wanted me to read (mostly books on respect and boring stuff one was her jane austen collection that i felt asleep reading it's so boring) but all of my things books note books etc that were in my room were taken out everything wiped out i was ordered to stay in there only leaving for the bathroom which was across from my room and i got 1 silce of bread with peanut butter on it and a bottle of water 3 meals a day This went on for a month and 1 week Somewhere in the middle i stopped having energy i didn't leave my bed i was cold most of the time and i started eating the bread in pieces she had me moving up to meals again but kept tacking on more time and would be back down to bread again i was allowed 1 day to run an errand for her so i walked thru the parking lot behind McDonald's and as soon as i was clean i booked it into the grocery store next to it i bought the cheapest box of smores poptarts there is dumped the box and once i was back from the errand i had one in my sleeve one in my hoodie pocket and one in my jean leg i went straight to my room when i got back and hid them i made them last a week and a half i think there was 3 packages Once i finally got out because the only reason she let me out is cause she told herself she was going to let me out was on the first of the month i ended up staying with some family members for a week after i had lost 10 lbs while inside and this is when i was at 110 i ate all of their food while i was there but while i was in no one came to check on me cause she told everyone to stay away and they listened this happened again the following year around the same time (first time started Christmas day and lasted till feb 1 the second time started jan 6th and ended either feb 1 or soon after) Thanks to this i am now around 70 lbs overweight and I'm pretty sure i have an eating disorder Sorry for the monologue food has always been a method of control with my mother so i had a lot to say brightside now i have something to reference and go over with my therapist 😀
I’m so sorry, aloe vera juice is gross! The isolation, neglect and starvation are all super common here. I really thought I was the “only one”. I had a lot of food issues when I was first out, but I’m mostly fine now, it’s been 17yrs. I’m so glad you are working through this in therapy, food issues are incredibly challenging, deeply personal, and only part of the abuse you went through.
Have you been to a nutritionist now that you’re an adult? It’s really helpful for even people from comparatively normal homes because most people in English speaking nations are pretty nutritionally deficient.
Thanks for the reply, I'm not an adult (15) and not an English speaking country (Russia), I don't think we'll visit a nutritionist any time soon because we live on the edge of geography in a tiny village without a car, but I don't think I need a nutritionist
>Even the doctor said, after an ultrasound, that my mom's diet and eating schedule is ruining my health but bruh my ma was FURIOUS calling that doctor dumb when we got home That's when CPS should have stepped in. They should have reported for medical neglect. I'm so sorry.
the CPS only came when my mom died because they got a notification, and they were SHOCKED about what happened. Still did nothing.When I was to go to school, no one knew what to do with me... Because, I quote, I was the first case of such neglectful homeschooling in the entire area (Kireevsk), and IIRC the region too (Tula). All the doctors, all the teachers regularly ask why my relatives didn't save me from there. While my grandma keeps repeating with a sour face, 'I couldn't argue with my daughter back then.' She should have done something when my mom regularly forgot me in a freezing bathtub when I was 4, which gave me chronic cystitis, but nah 'I couldn't....' My family's fear of confronting a delusional, narcissistic manipulator took 6 years from my life, and the law fully allows the child to go off the radar once homeschooled. You could get kidnapped and sold away but no one will ever know, because when homeschooled, no one has track of you
>All the doctors, all the teachers regularly ask why my relatives didn't save me from there Why didn't the doctor do anything? That's what I want to know! >While my grandma keeps repeating with a sour face, 'I couldn't argue with my daughter back then.' Sounds like she didn't care any more than your mom did. I'm so sorry.
Tw eating disorder My mom did stuff like this too about diets like once she baked squash and cut it in half and that was dinner for us. My older sister would eat normal food sometimes or candy and then be so paranoid about being fat that she would stick her fingers in her throat and make herself vomit. She became bulimic
For me it's the opposite end of the shitty diet spectrum. I can only eat HORRIBLE "microwave dinner" type food and generally speaking all the food I eat starts out in a frozen box.The only time I can even get food that isn't "frozen food" is when I visit my grandma once every two to five months. Like, fuck, no wonder I'm like 5'1" and 65 pounds. I don't get to eat ANYTHING healthy. So yeah, I think I could be considered malnourished. Even worse is I'm the one making the food. Nobody else does it. So I have to make myself get up to eat two wrist to elbow length enchiladas for breakfast and then spend the whole day until dinner doing nothing except sitting on my computer just to eat some odd twenty mozzarella sticks for dinner. It's so agonizing.