I'm gonna steal a topic:

My friend Kristen over at http://catchytitlehere-elise.blogspot.com/ has an interesting topic today. She talks about the people around us and how their size affects how we feel about our size.

I'm going to make that my post today. I want to share with you the deal with my in-laws.

I love my IL's very much. They're pretty young for grandparents (51 and 49), so they are GREAT with my kids. I can send my girls over there for two weeks if I wanted to, and they would be fine. My father in law routinely buys my little girls nail polish when he's out shopping because he knows what they like. Both of them have never had any qualms about changing diapers, and they now have no problems taking my girls potty. Anyway, they're great with the kids.

They're also very skinny. I've heard my MIL remark before that, "It just doesn't matter what I eat, I always weigh 140!" She's had 3 kids. She's ALWAYS telling us about people that she works with, etc, telling her that she just doesn't look old enough to have grandkids, or a son who's almost 30. She make it well know that she gets compliments all the time on her looks.

My FIL is like a lot of men. He gets to 190, thinks he's getting way to big, so he stops eating cookies, and loses 10 lbs in 2 weeks. He's done that several times, and it always works.

My hubby is 6 ft tall, and weighs 185 lbs. He could probably lose 10 lbs in his stomach, but he's more or less ok. His two sisters probably weigh 110 and 140 lbs. The whole family doesn't watch what they eat, and very closely resemble the "Buttertons" from the commercial. I have never seen a family use so much butter. But still they remain skinny.

Before I was fat, they always dogged on overweight people. Comments such as, "I don't know how anyone can let themselves go like that!", etc, were a commonplace. I always wanted to say, "Those people probably eat less calories than you, but you would never understand that the same caloric intake turns out differently on different people." They don't get that. They just believed that people are lazy about it.

One time a few months ago, when my hubby was closer to 195, his family was all at our house because his sister was headed to the east coast for the summer and we had to take her to the airport (we live the closest). We needed to weigh her suitcase, so my hubby stood on the scale with it, put it down, and then got back on the scale. My MIL refused to believe that he weighed 195. She kept going, "YOU DO NOT weigh that much. That's impossible. Try it again." He keeps going, "Yes, I do Mom." And here's little ol' me sitting in the corner watching this whole spectacle, weighing probably around 230. Talk about wanting to crawl in a hole and disappear.

Well, after being around for a while, I started telling my husband that his parents' comments made me feel bad. My mom was very overweight before she died, and it started to occur to me that I'm glad she never met my IL's. I would've hated to subject her to their criticism.

As I've said before, my whole family is overweight. I kept my weight off for a few years while we were getting engaged and married and such, but I KNEW, just KNEW that it'd come back when I had kids. I know I told some of my friends that my IL's would hate me once I had kids, because I knew I'd be overweight again.

Well, the fat comments have slowed now that I'm fat. Well, maybe they haven't slowed, but for some reason, they just aren't about me. I don't know why they hold their tongues about me, but they sure talk about other fatties. Their one daughter, who is the skinniest, has told them before that their comments about overweight people aren't appropriate, so maybe they've sort of gotten the point. I don't know, they still make enough fat comments to bother me.

I waited till about the last minute to tell them about my lapband. I fear that they're thinking that I'm just weak, and should be able to do this by myself. But now that we've told them (I actually had my hubby do the talking) they haven't asked ONE SINGLE QUESTION about the whole thing. They know they have to keep the kids for 4 days, but they don't know anything else. It seems to me that they either don't care, or just can't bring themselves to accept that a family member needs help to not be fat. I know they know NOTHING about the lapband (because of course neither of them would ever need it), so you'd think they'd ask a few questions. But no, there's been absolute silence from their end. Zero, Zilch. That bothers me too.

But, here's my silver lining: With all of this belittling, at least it makes me want to be thinner. If my hubby and ILs were all overweight like myself, I almost guarantee it that I wouldn't feel the need for the lapband. But because they aren't overweight, I feel completely out of place.

I've always said that I'm doing this because I want to be there for my kids, which I certainly do, but maybe my "feeling 1 inch tall" around my ILs plays a big part. Probably bigger than I would have guessed.

Man, this blogging sure is therapeutic, isn't it?