BlubberBusters Tips from Lucy

How to Lose Weight

When Parents are Unsupportive and Siblings Tease

The Problem

You want to lose weight, but your family and brothers or sisters are a different story. There are many ways in which parents and siblings can be UNHELPFUL when you want to lose weight. Do any of these sound like your situation?

Your Parents, Siblings, Grandparents, or extended Family…

• deny that you are overweight, despite doctor warnings and BMI calculators that show otherwise



• state they have no faith in you (“You can’t do it.”) or put you down with labels (“Miss Piggy”)

• are overweight too and don’t want to make any changes in their food choices or exercise levels

• complain about you exercising or changing your diet



• tease or make fun of you

• recruit their friends or even recruit your own friends to also make fun of you

• tempt you with fattening foods

Why Won't They Help?

Before looking at possible solutions, it may be helpful to understand why your family or siblings react so negatively. This doesn’t justify their actions, but it may help you better understand why they react the way they do. Some of their actions may be intentional, while others are not done consciously to hurt you.

• They don’t recognize that they are reacting negatively or making comments that could wreck your efforts.

• They don’t feel comfortable with their own weight. Seeing you make an effort to lose weight makes them feel badly about themselves and they may feel pressure to lose weight unless they can convince you that your weight is “normal”.

• They feel competitive with you and if you are losing weight, they are not “winning”.

• They control you through supporting your negative behaviors (such as overeating) and your weight loss may mean their loss of control over you.

• They don’t understand the health consequences of being overweight.

• They use food as a way to show you their love and affection and are offended when you don’t accept as much food.

• They received love from you by pleasing you, when they gave you food.  When you no longer want the food, they will feel loss of this love.

• They saw that food brought you comfort and joy in the past, so they hate to see you depriving yourself of food now and would prefer that you just accept being overweight.

• They view you as a food buddy and your new weight loss desires threatens this kind of relationship, perhaps eliminating any common ground between you.

• They may be normal weight and perhaps don’t understand why you are so worried about your own weight. They can’t understand that reaching and maintaining a healthy weight is hard work for you.

Solutions for You

So maybe you can’t control the actions of your parents and siblings, but you can control your own. Here are several ideas for things you can do that may stop their attempts to sabotage (spoil, disrupt) your weight loss goals.

A healthy weight is important to you. Tell your parents and siblings that losing weight is important to you. You don’t have to ask them to agree with you and you don’t need to convince them of anything. You are just letting them know that reaching a healthy weight is important to you. Family and siblings who want you to be happy will respect your decision.

Don’t let them bring you down. If your family remains judgmental or critical of your decision to lose weight, don’t take the comments personally. Their statements and actions are usually based on their own feelings of insecurity. Most likely your family doesn’t fully understand the challenges you face with being overweight. Instead, focus on the positive that you know that you are doing something good for yourself.

Plan your responses to common sabotage tactics from family members. For example, if a family member is often tempting you with unhealthy food, have some responses planned in advance. They can be: “Thanks, but I just ate.” or “It looks delicious, but I will pass.” If they are persistent, you can say “I’m trying to do something good for myself. Please support me in this.”

Explore new activities. Meals are often considered an important activity that families do together. Try to find other ways you can spend pleasurable time with your family that don’t include food. Take walks, fly a kite at a park, work outside in the garden together, visit flea markets, or go to concerts or plays. These are a just a few ideas of activities that families can enjoy together.

Find support elsewhere. If your parents and siblings remain unsupportive of your efforts to lose weight after talking with them, then find support elsewhere. You may have friends who are at a healthy weight and would understand your desire to lose weight. They can serve as cheerleaders in your successes. You may have other friends who are also overweight and who, like you, might benefit from teaming up to lose weight by doing fun, non-food related, activities together. They can help keep you on track and serve as motivators when you slip-up. This website also offers an online support group through the bulletin boards (pre-teens, teens, and 18+), kid’s chat room, and Lucy chat. There is probably not a single person that can serve all your emotional needs in losing weight, but drawing upon the support from many, including your own internal strength, can help you immensely in achieving your weight loss goals.

Check out the Parents/Family section in the Kids Helping Kids area for more tips on how to deal with your parents and siblings while trying to lose weight. Below are some sample posts.