As a mother who has struggled with AN since childhood, “almond mom” is - to me - an apt descriptor for women who intentionally instil ED behaviours and poor self worth in their offspring. In a world where information on the problematic nature of diet culture is ubiquitous, there is no excuse for knowingly handing down that kind of trauma to one’s own children. To apply the term to mothers operating in different generations, and without access to such information, would be cruel (I agree), but so many know better, and should do better; it is these mothers I would describe as “almond moms”.
As someone with multi generational eating disorders (my gran died in her late 70s with anorexia, I also have a lot of cousins, a sibling and cousins with EDs as well as having struggled with anorexia and bulimia for 20 years). What I struggle with is my parents who haven't changed anything in relation to their attitudes despite 2 out of 3 children ending up with EDs. They continue on, they know the harm, my mum says she has a great relationship with food, it is highly disordered. My niece is 2 and I will do anything to prevent her being the next generation. I struggle with the fact my parents accept very very little responsibility
@@pliktl thank you. Yep have pretty strong boundaries and not a lot of contact with parents. Therapy has been crucial and so helpful. Sending best wishes to you, its a hard hard journey. X
This situation makes me so angry, they know they are putting their children's life's at risk and don't stop. Do you think they have any narcissistic traits? I'm also proud of you for doing your best to protect your niece, but I don't want you to put all this pressure on yourself. We can't control everything and if her relationship with food doesn't turn out great in the end, I don't want you to blame yourself. Sending love ❤️
My mother was a diet culture mother, but the thing I remember most was her telling me a story about a friend of the family who “only ate on Thursdays” when she was in college. My mom was astonishingly compassionate toward and concerned for this friend considering how fixated she was on her own weight loss. She told me the story on purpose to discourage me from a fad diet. She said the friend had a horrible time getting better and outright warned me. My poor mom, she systematically destroyed my self esteem, violently and severely over disciplined me and instilled every kind of body shame, but she did have these moments when her heart would take over and she would do or say something really good. I never forgot this story. I probably escaped with my life because of it.
I really struggle to extend compassion to people who pass on their disordered eating to their children. While I understand "Almond moms" are often suffering from an eating disorder and this is not their fault, my compassion sort of ends at the point where people harm others. Is it unforgivable? No. Does it require apology and accountability? Yes. This is similar to a mother with depression who is so depressed she doesn't hqve the energy to feed or bathe her children. Not her fault, but definitely her responsibility.
Your videos never cease to be astoundingly educational. I came into this thinking almond mom was an inventive, helpful concept, though I also approached the video with an open mind because your videos are always enlightening. You've made such an important point.
So, my mom I guess was an almond mom.... and I still struggle with my relationship with food. I now have a little girl... my mom makes comments about her weight to her all the time. Grabbing at her and telling her she needs to eat less. I'm trying to help my little one have a healthy relationship with food and fitness but it's so hard when there is so much influence both in social media AND my mother.... On top of that, my daughter's father, who I'm separated from, was over weight and kind of contributed to her weight gain. He was diagnosed with diabetes so thankfully, that has made him choose healthier options for the both of them. Before that, I was the bad guy because I would limit the junk food intake, and she hated me for it. Now her dad and I are on the same page. She already calls herself fat. But I try so hard to remind her that's she's beautiful. If I see her feel insecure, I do things with her to help her feel good and ignore those thoughts. It's hard. I don't want her to cry over her weight or get stuck in an ED cycle. I really pray she can talk to me about these things.
PLEASE do the Real House franchise ED-content!!!!! I haven't seen it, but I've heard about it and I don't want to be left out when people talk about it 🤣 [I'm gonna end up continuing to edit this with responses] I used to believe that some people grew out of their EDs... then I saw the amount of people who developed an ED in childhood and still had it when meeting me as an adult. The reason I thought that was because 40yo women tried to set an example for me when I was ~15-22.
Ive definitely noticed how my ed bahaviors or thoughts were passed down from my grandma to my mother then to me and my older sister and brother. Its like generational trauma.
I'm 57, my mom definitely had an ED, and so do I since I was 8 years old. I tried to hide my ED and ED thougts because I didn't want it to influence my three children, especially my daughter. She is now 25 and studying to be a doctor, she eats normally thank God. Recently se talked to me about my ED and she now understands how difficult it still is for me, because there was no knowledge about ED's or good help/therapy when I was young ...
My dad is an almond dad. I feel very unremorseful about calling him that. He was the main purveyor of diet culture narratives, fatphobia etc. when I was growing up (my mom also plated a part, to be fair). But my dad sold supplements for an MLM at one point, and he made us take them. He still believes a lot of the same things. For example, I've had to ban the topic of seed oils from my house. There's just so much I remember him saying and doing around food that I've had to unpack...having a lens to call that behaviour something is tremendously healing, even though it's a bad joke, and kind of a flippant term. My views are definitely impacted by the fact that he's straight man. I doubt very much that he's batting internally about body image, self-worth and all that as a mom in a similar position might be. If he really opened up, and turned out that he was suffering from severe orthorexia, I'd probably change my tune and be more compassionate. But until that day comes...he's an almond dad. 🤣Laughing the nonsense off is the best coping tool I've found.
Yes! Please consider doing one of those deep dive type of videoes for the Real Hoeswives franchise. It would take a lot work as disordered eating etc was sooo prevalent on there and probably many other reality programs. I havent watched these shows for years so im not sure how they are these days.
I think Almond mom is a term a lot of people use because many children including me have been traumatized. I started sneaking food and binge eating because of my moms extreme restriction of food and went from a normal weight to obese as a child then I developed a eating disorder as a teenager and lost a bunch of weight and looked good enough for my mother but felt like crap. I think saying well the mom is suffering isn’t an excuse you can’t put your mental health issues on your children.
Hello Mia, thank you for your video. It's a real topic. I know a lot of "almond" mums, like 50/60 years old. My dad's wife really has issues with food. Obsessed by thinness and overexercizing. Also some of my aunts. Like Victoria Beckam style. It's true it has impacts on kids.
my mother is almost 60 and we had a convo about her disordered eating patterns- she has steadily lost weight over the past 20 years, and when both of her parents died last year her weight plummeted even further. she wasn't ever someone who was concerned about her appearance or figure, but she kept developing a lot of disordered behaviors around food: past 7pm being "too late" to eat even if she was hungry, claiming to be "so full" after tiny amounts of food, subsisting on ginger candies throughout the day so she could get quick sugar without having to eat real food. she justified all of these behaviors by saying she has IBS and is just trying not to upset her stomach. of course, it is good to avoid foods that trigger IBS flare-ups, but she was taking it to a point of avoiding almost all food/eating in general and depriving herself of nutrients, plus risking bone health issues by being underweight at her age. when we spoke, i suggested that a lot of these "IBS flareups" were caused or exacerbated by her stressing about eating. a lot of people feel bloated after eating, but that doesn't drive them to stop eating all together. if the bloating and stomach pain were severe, then ok, see a doctor, but otherwise, i suggested that she might be using minor bloating as an excuse to not eat. i also explained that eating disorders are a way to control something in your life when you feel like everything else is out of your control. she related to this a lot, especially given the recent death of her parents. she had never thought of herself as eating disordered, because she wasn't restricting her food to look a certain way or because it was trendy. she also related to feeling "pure" or "light" on an empty stomach, which is definitely something she instilled in me and contributed to my own ED. ultimately i told her i'm not trying to force her to get help or gain weight, but i wanted her to recognize her eating habits for what they really are, and perhaps challenge some of them so as to not deprive herself of nutrition and good health.
This was interesting to listen to, this is not usually the angle I'm exposed to. I come from the polar opposite end; obese as a child, complete neglect of my nutrition from parents, no teachings about what to eat or how calories work. Even discouraging me from sports, because "oh no girls don't do that". Getting me out of PE after my knee started hurting from obesity... even though working out was a big part of fixing it later. Just making every wrong choice that could be made for someone they were supposed to guide. Now I live healthy, and at a healthy weight, but i have to live with the loose skin, heavy stretch marks and developmental issues from childhood malnutrition. And it took years to retrain myself on how to eat well. The endless ads for "magic diets" didn't help either; I'm glad by that time the internet had better information and I was able to do actual research, and make my own conclusions on what makes sense. In a way, even if we started at opposite ends, the journey seems very similar. Clueless parents passing down bad habits, and then the child struggling to reach that healthy middle, struggling with an ED, having all sorts of misinformation and problematic takes online about it.
Thank you for this educational video. I keep seeing these “almond” mom videos around my recommendations, and as a recovering anorexic it has become very weird now that I look at it. People are trying to normalize these disordered behaviors. I also agree that we need to be more cautious and helpful to these moms.
I would recommend looking into some AL-ANON stuff. My mom had issues with drugs and it hurt me and my brother a lot. Understanding her issues with drugs was a medical issue changed how I viewed her and what I held her accountable for. Her disease wasn't her fault and even some of her actions were not her fault, but some of it is her fault. It's complicated, but I am glad that I processed it and our relationship is much better now. I'm not saying all relationships are repairable nor am I trying to excuse everything they did wrong, I am just saying in many cases they are not fully to blame for what happened.
I think it’s complicated, and to be fair it’s not just moms. My parents certainly both played a role in the development of my eating disorder at age 14 (I have been recovered from AN/BN for 25+ years). My father in particular encouraged low restriction, and projected a lot of body issues on me. When I was struggling with anorexia, one morning I showed him my flat stomach and I remember him telling me that whether your stomach could REALLY be considered flat was whether it was flat when you sat down, not just when standing. When I started binging and purging a couple years later and my weight became erratic he told me to just lose 5 pounds so I could regain a sense of control. So, yeah. I don’t condemn him but I do think there is a level of responsibility. I don’t really like the term “almond mom/dad” either because I think it’s snide, basically, but I think it’s pointing towards something real. It is ok to recognize being a good parent means encouraging healthy behaviors and a child’s basic self worth. One of the reasons I don’t agree with certain ED therapies is because I think they gloss over interpersonal trauma and parental responsibility- but I think we can find ways to talk about these things with sincerity and seriousness, and without name calling.
“Almond mom” definitely feels like a reactionary expression, I can understand why, especially if you’ve spent your younger years being gaslight into thinking you were the problem and this was normal behavior. Thankfully it does seem to be more of an online thing in spaces where there tends to be less older parents that these qualifiers are targeted at. But as you said, I think a big part of healing is also recognizing that “almond moms” also are victims of diet culture and may unknowingly or quietly suffer from decade long EDs. It is frustrating because we have to come to terms with the fact that, although someone may have have had a big role in triggering our disordered behaviours, they are not solely responsible and probably have suffered or are also suffering of similar things.
i’m 25 and i consider myself fully recovered from my ed, but my mom definitely has some type of ed at the age of 58 and even though she saw me suffer through mine, she cannot see the same for herself :/
It's their responsibility as mothers to sort their shit out BEFORE they have kids and traumatize them. Moral failing, not to have an eating disorder but to bring children into that kind of environment or subject them to that. Their orthorexia explains their behaviour but will never excuse the outright abuse
I am of generation of you were either a or ic ok r bulimic. In fact to date myself . I was anorexic at the same time as Karen Carpenter was struggling. She died that horrible death. I still remember my father said " if you die I wrll never forgive me ". I did get help but they never real seLt with mental illness side but with weight restoration.
for me the difference between an almond mom and a mom with an eating disorder is that a mom with only an eating disorder is going to say "i need to loos weight im to fat." a mom that is also a almond mom is also going to say "your fat you need to loos the weight" to the children,
I grew up with both parents as almond mum and dad. My mum is 89 and she goes to slimming club which for her is absolutely not necessary. Every time I see her she sobs over my ED! WTF🤯🤯🤯🤯
I definitely see your point - but I think it's easier to say as someone who has completely come out the other end, and now thinks of these things on a structural and political level. However, satire aside, I think someone in recovery acknowledging that a parent who partially enabled (or sometimes outright caused) their ED is a 'flawed person', can be really powerful to someone in the thick of recovery - particularly someone who may have delusionally idolised their mother's restrictive behaviour. I am reminded of Jennette McCurdy's recently memoir, 'I'm Glad My Mom Died' - her mother was someone who, without a shadow of a doubt, had an ED (along with other severe mental health issues), and directly passed it on to Jennette. I think Jennette's whole journey in the book is coming to terms with her mother as someone who was suffering but who nonetheless caused her immense psychological pain, as opposed to someone aspirational (as she had viewed her while she herself was suffering). Obviously, this is an extreme example, and I definitely see your point that so many of these women are victims of the same structural issues (as an activist, I prefer to call them 'political failures', as I believe this framing implies potential solutions resulting in due course for victims via legislation), bbuuutt I also think daring to point out flaws in the ever-pedastalised figure of 'Mother' can be immensely relieving for sufferers working through their trauma :)
My Mum was a feeder, food was love so I grew up with a lot of both! “Almond Mum“ mmmh not sure if I care about the label I guess it’s what is meant the behaviour of the person labelled “Almond Mum”. It’s complex when we consider that “diet culture” wasn’t called out so I am mindful of that with my situation. In my case it definitely was not abuse of any kind quite the opposite.
A feeder can be abusive as well. When I was terrified in consultation for anorexia, my mum told the dr, she just does this to eat as much as she wants after. (It was naive but both of us having been bullied for being fat and having overweight issues, she talked way too lightly and harmfully about it).
Wow, never been here so early. And, before I watch anything, 'almond mum' is upsetting because it stigmatises and makes fun of mothers suffering disordered eating. It upsets me to see people just casually making fun of people like us. My mum supplied vegetables, fruit, and crackers. No nuts, because **something something** too fatty. My mum was a fruit mum 🤣
I hate the term "almond mom" because the clip of Yolanda Hadid was completely taken out of context. As much as I disagree with Yolanda's treatment of her daughters, the scene with almonds was actually different. Her daughter had recently done a special kind of cleanse or fast, and she was supposed to come off it very slowly. She called her mom crying and saying she was feeling dizzy and her Yolanda said "have a few almonds but chew them slowly" because she was concerned for her stomach.
My ex was really skinny and I loved that about him. Both that he seemed younger and that he was skinny and could teach me. He said "You've said you've had anorexia but because you didn't want to eat, right??!" Like saying that him being thin was a deliberate and natural decision not to eat and me being "forced" behaviour was fake. Or result of less trauma??!
As a mother who has struggled with AN since childhood, “almond mom” is - to me - an apt descriptor for women who intentionally instil ED behaviours and poor self worth in their offspring.
In a world where information on the problematic nature of diet culture is ubiquitous, there is no excuse for knowingly handing down that kind of trauma to one’s own children.
To apply the term to mothers operating in different generations, and without access to such information, would be cruel (I agree), but so many know better, and should do better; it is these mothers I would describe as “almond moms”.
As someone with multi generational eating disorders (my gran died in her late 70s with anorexia, I also have a lot of cousins, a sibling and cousins with EDs as well as having struggled with anorexia and bulimia for 20 years). What I struggle with is my parents who haven't changed anything in relation to their attitudes despite 2 out of 3 children ending up with EDs. They continue on, they know the harm, my mum says she has a great relationship with food, it is highly disordered. My niece is 2 and I will do anything to prevent her being the next generation. I struggle with the fact my parents accept very very little responsibility
@@pliktl thank you. Yep have pretty strong boundaries and not a lot of contact with parents. Therapy has been crucial and so helpful. Sending best wishes to you, its a hard hard journey. X
This situation makes me so angry, they know they are putting their children's life's at risk and don't stop. Do you think they have any narcissistic traits? I'm also proud of you for doing your best to protect your niece, but I don't want you to put all this pressure on yourself. We can't control everything and if her relationship with food doesn't turn out great in the end, I don't want you to blame yourself. Sending love ❤️
Please do the real housewives video 🙏🏼
Yes would love a deep dive on the latest with housewives and a certain diabetes drug that seems to have become rampant amongst the diff franchices
I agree it would be interesting
My mother was a diet culture mother, but the thing I remember most was her telling me a story about a friend of the family who “only ate on Thursdays” when she was in college. My mom was astonishingly compassionate toward and concerned for this friend considering how fixated she was on her own weight loss. She told me the story on purpose to discourage me from a fad diet. She said the friend had a horrible time getting better and outright warned me. My poor mom, she systematically destroyed my self esteem, violently and severely over disciplined me and instilled every kind of body shame, but she did have these moments when her heart would take over and she would do or say something really good. I never forgot this story. I probably escaped with my life because of it.
I really struggle to extend compassion to people who pass on their disordered eating to their children. While I understand "Almond moms" are often suffering from an eating disorder and this is not their fault, my compassion sort of ends at the point where people harm others. Is it unforgivable? No. Does it require apology and accountability? Yes.
This is similar to a mother with depression who is so depressed she doesn't hqve the energy to feed or bathe her children. Not her fault, but definitely her responsibility.
Your videos never cease to be astoundingly educational. I came into this thinking almond mom was an inventive, helpful concept, though I also approached the video with an open mind because your videos are always enlightening. You've made such an important point.
Agreed! I was skeptical coming into this video but appreciate the compassionate approach here
So, my mom I guess was an almond mom.... and I still struggle with my relationship with food.
I now have a little girl... my mom makes comments about her weight to her all the time. Grabbing at her and telling her she needs to eat less.
I'm trying to help my little one have a healthy relationship with food and fitness but it's so hard when there is so much influence both in social media AND my mother....
On top of that, my daughter's father, who I'm separated from, was over weight and kind of contributed to her weight gain.
He was diagnosed with diabetes so thankfully, that has made him choose healthier options for the both of them. Before that, I was the bad guy because I would limit the junk food intake, and she hated me for it. Now her dad and I are on the same page.
She already calls herself fat. But I try so hard to remind her that's she's beautiful. If I see her feel insecure, I do things with her to help her feel good and ignore those thoughts.
It's hard. I don't want her to cry over her weight or get stuck in an ED cycle. I really pray she can talk to me about these things.
PLEASE do the Real House franchise ED-content!!!!! I haven't seen it, but I've heard about it and I don't want to be left out when people talk about it 🤣
[I'm gonna end up continuing to edit this with responses]
I used to believe that some people grew out of their EDs... then I saw the amount of people who developed an ED in childhood and still had it when meeting me as an adult. The reason I thought that was because 40yo women tried to set an example for me when I was ~15-22.
I agree 100%. "Holding two thoughts in our heads at the same time." Yes!
Good point actually!
Ive definitely noticed how my ed bahaviors or thoughts were passed down from my grandma to my mother then to me and my older sister and brother. Its like generational trauma.
not just *like* it really *is*
I'm 57, my mom definitely had an ED, and so do I since I was 8 years old. I tried to hide my ED and ED thougts because I didn't want it to influence my three children, especially my daughter. She is now 25 and studying to be a doctor, she eats normally thank God. Recently se talked to me about my ED and she now understands how difficult it still is for me, because there was no knowledge about ED's or good help/therapy when I was young ...
My grandma had, my mum says, no teeth by 30 due to purging.
I honestly can’t decide how i feel about the term. But i think it’s a valuable conversation and I appreciate your perspective on it 🙏
I always appreciate your thoughtful, nuanced 😊takes
My dad is an almond dad. I feel very unremorseful about calling him that. He was the main purveyor of diet culture narratives, fatphobia etc. when I was growing up (my mom also plated a part, to be fair). But my dad sold supplements for an MLM at one point, and he made us take them. He still believes a lot of the same things. For example, I've had to ban the topic of seed oils from my house. There's just so much I remember him saying and doing around food that I've had to unpack...having a lens to call that behaviour something is tremendously healing, even though it's a bad joke, and kind of a flippant term.
My views are definitely impacted by the fact that he's straight man. I doubt very much that he's batting internally about body image, self-worth and all that as a mom in a similar position might be. If he really opened up, and turned out that he was suffering from severe orthorexia, I'd probably change my tune and be more compassionate. But until that day comes...he's an almond dad. 🤣Laughing the nonsense off is the best coping tool I've found.
Yes! Please consider doing one of those deep dive type of videoes for the Real Hoeswives franchise. It would take a lot work as disordered eating etc was sooo prevalent on there and probably many other reality programs. I havent watched these shows for years so im not sure how they are these days.
I think Almond mom is a term a lot of people use because many children including me have been traumatized. I started sneaking food and binge eating because of my moms extreme restriction of food and went from a normal weight to obese as a child then I developed a eating disorder as a teenager and lost a bunch of weight and looked good enough for my mother but felt like crap. I think saying well the mom is suffering isn’t an excuse you can’t put your mental health issues on your children.
Hello Mia, thank you for your video. It's a real topic. I know a lot of "almond" mums, like 50/60 years old. My dad's wife really has issues with food.
Obsessed by thinness and overexercizing. Also some of my aunts. Like Victoria Beckam style.
It's true it has impacts on kids.
my mother is almost 60 and we had a convo about her disordered eating patterns- she has steadily lost weight over the past 20 years, and when both of her parents died last year her weight plummeted even further. she wasn't ever someone who was concerned about her appearance or figure, but she kept developing a lot of disordered behaviors around food: past 7pm being "too late" to eat even if she was hungry, claiming to be "so full" after tiny amounts of food, subsisting on ginger candies throughout the day so she could get quick sugar without having to eat real food. she justified all of these behaviors by saying she has IBS and is just trying not to upset her stomach. of course, it is good to avoid foods that trigger IBS flare-ups, but she was taking it to a point of avoiding almost all food/eating in general and depriving herself of nutrients, plus risking bone health issues by being underweight at her age.
when we spoke, i suggested that a lot of these "IBS flareups" were caused or exacerbated by her stressing about eating. a lot of people feel bloated after eating, but that doesn't drive them to stop eating all together. if the bloating and stomach pain were severe, then ok, see a doctor, but otherwise, i suggested that she might be using minor bloating as an excuse to not eat.
i also explained that eating disorders are a way to control something in your life when you feel like everything else is out of your control. she related to this a lot, especially given the recent death of her parents. she had never thought of herself as eating disordered, because she wasn't restricting her food to look a certain way or because it was trendy. she also related to feeling "pure" or "light" on an empty stomach, which is definitely something she instilled in me and contributed to my own ED.
ultimately i told her i'm not trying to force her to get help or gain weight, but i wanted her to recognize her eating habits for what they really are, and perhaps challenge some of them so as to not deprive herself of nutrition and good health.
What did she say?
This was interesting to listen to, this is not usually the angle I'm exposed to. I come from the polar opposite end; obese as a child, complete neglect of my nutrition from parents, no teachings about what to eat or how calories work. Even discouraging me from sports, because "oh no girls don't do that". Getting me out of PE after my knee started hurting from obesity... even though working out was a big part of fixing it later. Just making every wrong choice that could be made for someone they were supposed to guide.
Now I live healthy, and at a healthy weight, but i have to live with the loose skin, heavy stretch marks and developmental issues from childhood malnutrition. And it took years to retrain myself on how to eat well. The endless ads for "magic diets" didn't help either; I'm glad by that time the internet had better information and I was able to do actual research, and make my own conclusions on what makes sense.
In a way, even if we started at opposite ends, the journey seems very similar. Clueless parents passing down bad habits, and then the child struggling to reach that healthy middle, struggling with an ED, having all sorts of misinformation and problematic takes online about it.
Thank you for this educational video. I keep seeing these “almond” mom videos around my recommendations, and as a recovering anorexic it has become very weird now that I look at it. People are trying to normalize these disordered behaviors. I also agree that we need to be more cautious and helpful to these moms.
I would love to see a housewives video. I constantly think about their toxic relationship with food while I watch
I would recommend looking into some AL-ANON stuff. My mom had issues with drugs and it hurt me and my brother a lot. Understanding her issues with drugs was a medical issue changed how I viewed her and what I held her accountable for. Her disease wasn't her fault and even some of her actions were not her fault, but some of it is her fault. It's complicated, but I am glad that I processed it and our relationship is much better now. I'm not saying all relationships are repairable nor am I trying to excuse everything they did wrong, I am just saying in many cases they are not fully to blame for what happened.
I think it’s complicated, and to be fair it’s not just moms. My parents certainly both played a role in the development of my eating disorder at age 14 (I have been recovered from AN/BN for 25+ years).
My father in particular encouraged low restriction, and projected a lot of body issues on me. When I was struggling with anorexia, one morning I showed him my flat stomach and I remember him telling me that whether your stomach could REALLY be considered flat was whether it was flat when you sat down, not just when standing. When I started binging and purging a couple years later and my weight became erratic he told me to just lose 5 pounds so I could regain a sense of control. So, yeah.
I don’t condemn him but I do think there is a level of responsibility. I don’t really like the term “almond mom/dad” either because I think it’s snide, basically, but I think it’s pointing towards something real. It is ok to recognize being a good parent means encouraging healthy behaviors and a child’s basic self worth. One of the reasons I don’t agree with certain ED therapies is because I think they gloss over interpersonal trauma and parental responsibility- but I think we can find ways to talk about these things with sincerity and seriousness, and without name calling.
“Almond mom” definitely feels like a reactionary expression, I can understand why, especially if you’ve spent your younger years being gaslight into thinking you were the problem and this was normal behavior. Thankfully it does seem to be more of an online thing in spaces where there tends to be less older parents that these qualifiers are targeted at. But as you said, I think a big part of healing is also recognizing that “almond moms” also are victims of diet culture and may unknowingly or quietly suffer from decade long EDs. It is frustrating because we have to come to terms with the fact that, although someone may have have had a big role in triggering our disordered behaviours, they are not solely responsible and probably have suffered or are also suffering of similar things.
It is hard for us Mums - thankyou😢
I'm here. Teach me please. I m never on Tik Tok
i’m 25 and i consider myself fully recovered from my ed, but my mom definitely has some type of ed at the age of 58 and even though she saw me suffer through mine, she cannot see the same for herself :/
It's their responsibility as mothers to sort their shit out BEFORE they have kids and traumatize them. Moral failing, not to have an eating disorder but to bring children into that kind of environment or subject them to that. Their orthorexia explains their behaviour but will never excuse the outright abuse
I’ve never heard this term
Great points.
I can relate. Thanks❤
I am of generation of you were either a or ic ok r bulimic. In fact to date myself . I was anorexic at the same time as Karen Carpenter was struggling. She died that horrible death. I still remember my father said " if you die I wrll never forgive me ". I did get help but they never real seLt with mental illness side but with weight restoration.
for me the difference between an almond mom and a mom with an eating disorder is that a mom with only an eating disorder is going to say "i need to loos weight im to fat." a mom that is also a almond mom is also going to say "your fat you need to loos the weight" to the children,
I grew up with both parents as almond mum and dad. My mum is 89 and she goes to slimming club which for her is absolutely not necessary. Every time I see her she sobs over my ED! WTF🤯🤯🤯🤯
Almond mum just minimises the hell out of it. I had an alcoholic narcissist who dragged me up and blamed me for it.
It’s kind of ironic because almonds and nuts in general are quite high in calories, not good for weight loss at all
I definitely see your point - but I think it's easier to say as someone who has completely come out the other end, and now thinks of these things on a structural and political level.
However, satire aside, I think someone in recovery acknowledging that a parent who partially enabled (or sometimes outright caused) their ED is a 'flawed person', can be really powerful to someone in the thick of recovery - particularly someone who may have delusionally idolised their mother's restrictive behaviour. I am reminded of Jennette McCurdy's recently memoir, 'I'm Glad My Mom Died' - her mother was someone who, without a shadow of a doubt, had an ED (along with other severe mental health issues), and directly passed it on to Jennette. I think Jennette's whole journey in the book is coming to terms with her mother as someone who was suffering but who nonetheless caused her immense psychological pain, as opposed to someone aspirational (as she had viewed her while she herself was suffering).
Obviously, this is an extreme example, and I definitely see your point that so many of these women are victims of the same structural issues (as an activist, I prefer to call them 'political failures', as I believe this framing implies potential solutions resulting in due course for victims via legislation), bbuuutt I also think daring to point out flaws in the ever-pedastalised figure of 'Mother' can be immensely relieving for sufferers working through their trauma :)
My Mum was a feeder, food was love so I grew up with a lot of both! “Almond Mum“ mmmh not sure if I care about the label I guess it’s what is meant the behaviour of the person labelled “Almond Mum”. It’s complex when we consider that “diet culture” wasn’t called out so I am mindful of that with my situation. In my case it definitely was not abuse of any kind quite the opposite.
A feeder can be abusive as well. When I was terrified in consultation for anorexia, my mum told the dr, she just does this to eat as much as she wants after. (It was naive but both of us having been bullied for being fat and having overweight issues, she talked way too lightly and harmfully about it).
Wow, never been here so early. And, before I watch anything, 'almond mum' is upsetting because it stigmatises and makes fun of mothers suffering disordered eating. It upsets me to see people just casually making fun of people like us.
My mum supplied vegetables, fruit, and crackers. No nuts, because **something something** too fatty.
My mum was a fruit mum 🤣
But suffering from disordered eating doesn’t make you want to starve your loved ones
I’ve been hearing this expression, and have NO IDEA what I’m hearing lmao
Real housewives!!! Please tell us your thoughts! Love the trash but I want the read from the ED recovery community’s perspective.
I hate the term "almond mom" because the clip of Yolanda Hadid was completely taken out of context. As much as I disagree with Yolanda's treatment of her daughters, the scene with almonds was actually different. Her daughter had recently done a special kind of cleanse or fast, and she was supposed to come off it very slowly. She called her mom crying and saying she was feeling dizzy and her Yolanda said "have a few almonds but chew them slowly" because she was concerned for her stomach.
My ex was really skinny and I loved that about him. Both that he seemed younger and that he was skinny and could teach me. He said "You've said you've had anorexia but because you didn't want to eat, right??!" Like saying that him being thin was a deliberate and natural decision not to eat and me being "forced" behaviour was fake. Or result of less trauma??!