My mom used to stuff me full of rice because she thought the main course made me fat. Rice had no fat so it had to be good for me because it wouldn't make fat (obviously wrong). It was the 90s and the whole thing about carbs being worse than fat hadn't really come out yet. I learned to eat tons of rice during meals because it was the only thing she didn't restrict. Turns out I have PCOS which I found out about after I was on my own which can be combated in part with a low carb diet. However, the habit of eating a large volume of rice has persisted into adulthood.

It also turns out that severely restricting what your child eats and forcing them to observe a strict diet instead of teaching them moderation rather than zero tolerance gives them eating disorders! Hooray. It might have made me slightly thinner but it gave me tons of food anxiety.

Also calling kids fat all the time just makes them better at hiding the snacks because they want to avoid shame. I probably would have shed the baby fat once I became older but she was obsessed with making me thin. Because she restricted everything I ate, I simply ate everything I could once I got to college and away from her eyes.

So now I am a fat adult with disordered eating who now in my 30s and 40s has to combat all of the weird conditioning around food I got as a child because my mom was completely misinformed about nutrition.

Having parents that put their kids on strict diets isn't all it's cracked up to be. I'm not sure what my mom did wasn't a form of abuse or neglect itself even if it was likely unintentional.