Going mad

Living with my parents is driving me a little bit mad.

Firstly, I don't have control over what food is brought into the house. When I was living alone, I had a gentle process of habituation where I introduced one 'dangerous' food at a time. Now, I have corn chips and pastries and Nutella and cut-up watermelon constantly in my face. Furthermore, at dinner time, instead of being served a portion, we have the entire serving dish on the table in front of us. I find it EXTREMELY hard to be mindful and stop when full when I am being visually bombarded.

Secondly, my family are very watchful of what I eat, and are constantly making comments like "I hear you rustling in the pantry" or "you're a big eater, I don't eat that much" or "dinner is in an hour, do you really want to be eating?. What this does is creates a sense of guilt and shame in me, even if I am happy with the choice that I am making. In turn, this makes it harder for me to trust that what I am doing is the right thing, and build up self-confidence in making choices that are right for me.

Thirdly, and most annoyingly, my family and family friends feel entitled to comment freely on my body, a privilege they truly love to indulge in. We have an absolutely beautiful family friend staying with us for a couple of days now (beautiful in terms of her soul and personality, I mean), who would rather cut off her foot than hurt me. However, she has struggled with her weight all her life, and has no problems with projecting that on me. Just now, she said that "if I lived with Nina, I would have big problems, we would just eat sooo much" because we are gutses, and before that she compared me to a fat fluffy ("cute") cat with my puffy cheeks. She is not alone; my mum (who has also been fat most of her life) will gently slap/rub my arms or my tummy and make comments. I would never say anything to the family friend because she really loves me, and my mum's comments also are from a position of love (she thinks I will never find a partner and therefore never be happy unless I lose weight. She pretends this is about health but then admits this is an excuse). But it is just so trying to have to put up with and really interferes with this process of trying to improve my body image and feel comfortable at any weight.

Furthermore, this family friend and my mum (who grew up together) often talk about food and diets. My mum is not dieting anymore due to her illness but the friend will still talk about how she cuts out this or is trying to do that, sort of making implicit suggestions to me to try things. Their discourse on what is 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' is along dieting lines where food most definitely has a moral value. I don't know if I'm entitled to use the word 'trigger', but this is a massive trigger for me in terms of feeling shame. I know this is a very common thing for people to have to deal with, but I have actually been very lucky in my life in that my friends are bright and beautiful and not caught up with the cultural obsession with weight loss - some do have their own issues but they don't presume to make that struggle a topic of social bonding. So it's my family that really drives me nuts on this topic. However, it's one that I have to learn to adapt to, as I can't expect that everyone else will change their unhealthy thinking just because I ask them to.

How to fix this?
The first topic is one where I can take responsibility and work on my problems. I have actually been lucky to begin my therapy process without being surrounded by 'unsafe' foods, but now I am squarely back in the real world. Tips my therapist suggested:
1. Only eat sitting down at the table
2. Before eating anything, try to evaluate hunger levels (this is hard because when I see things, I go straight for them without any delay! The object here is to extend that delay period from 2 secs to a minute or so) and the reason for eating.
3. Try to maintain mindfulness throughout eating...
4. Try to eat slowly, evaluating hunger at every bite
5. Try to take in the taste, smell, texture of food.

All that is regular mindfulness stuff, but I'm not sure about how to mitigate the instant visual reaction I get ("delay" is not very helpful) when I see certain foods in certain settings. I found this article on visual food cues, and can hopefully come up with some strategies to break that strong connection I have between seeing food and immediately eating it if it is in reach (or craving it if it is a particular kind of food). I doubt this is just a BED problem - I'm sure regular non-emotional obese folks suffer from it too - but overeating then triggers the emotional problems, so it's in my interests to figure out a solution.

As for the other stuff, I have already spoken to my family, but I want to speak to my mum again and make it clear that I don't want her to comment on my appearance or food unless asked in future. my therapist gave me tips on how to ask people assertively for what you want, so I will try to follow those steps. She has these guests hovering around her for the next forever, but I'll try to get a moment to tell her today. (Edit: Asked her and she said of course. She is really supportive, just has to be asked what to do.)