As I explained, you have no idea whether or not she’s healthy based solely on her BMI.
If needing to unbutton weren’t a fairly common problem, they wouldn’t make these: https://www.amazon.com/5-Pack-Button-Pant-Extender-instantly/dp/B005OCRZO8. (Learned about them when an elderly friend pulled his out after a hearty lunch.)
A fetish
No, it’s not fine. There are no “emergencies” where the goal is being able to sit at dinner and enjoy conversation until the check comes. “Whipping your pants open in the middle of a restaurant” is not an emergency action. If it’s not okay a second or third time, it’s not okay a first time.
What part? I see nothing to suggest that and I don’t see why it matters.
Part of the story was her mom blurting out at dinner that the OP was exposing herself- no one is just making that up here. What wasn’t part of the story was the OP denying that she was. If I was telling a story of me unzipping my pants in public and someone announcing that I was exposing myself, but I wasn’t, I would make sure I included that the announcement was bullshit. If the announcement was correct, I wouldn’t comment further, just like the OP left it. If it turns out that skin, panties, etc., wasn’t showing and it was hyperbole by the mom, it’s still far from okay. The OP made sure we knew the chairs were high and she included “so everyone could see I was undoing my jeans.”
The “I agree the boyfriend should have stuck up for you” posts are incredible. I can’t believe so many dopers are not only okay with the OP’s actions, they take it further and place some blame on the boyfriend. Yeah, the boyfriend should have spoken up. Once home he should have said “are you fucking crazy! Unbuttoning and unzipping your jeans at the table sitting on that tall chair with my father sitting there?! What the fuck is wrong with you!”
The OP’s starting weight and BMI have absolutely nothing to do with the discussion. Please refrain from intrusively analyzing/shaming her weight.
Look, your Mom was a complete a-hole there. No question at all. She has a right to her frustration and embarrassment, but she exacerbated the situation and attacked you when you were in pain. Unacceptable response to an unfortunate situation. In the annals of etiquette, pointing out someone else’s errors is the worst sin of all.
Your bf’s Mom is a saint. She is probably someone you could look to in learning social graces. Graciousness is all about minimizing or preventing the discomfort of others.
And speaking of that, there is a great deal you could be doing differently, much of which has been pointed out already. A few suggestions:
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It’s unfair, but tight sexy jeans just are not a reasonable choice for those of us with gastro issues. You need to search out pants with “easing” features. This will sound crazy, but there are many nice fashions to be found in the maternity department. I know you want to slap me right now, but there are pants made for the first and second trimesters, which are exactly what you need.
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Yoga pants. A good pair of yoga pants in dark blue or black can go anywhere. I even wear them to work under longer blazers.
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Use the ladies room for all adjustments. If you get up from the table a couple of times, that’s ok too. People will get the hint that you are uncomfortable and start wrapping it up to get you home.
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Ox bile pills. Get them at your local health food store. Also Bean-aid and Lact-aid. Take one of each with restaurant meals and give your body the support it needs to break down this food and use it to your benefit.
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Probiotics. You want a product with a large variety of beneficial flora and fauna. You will continue to suffer until you get your intestinal biome balanced. IBS sufferers generally need to continue to boost the variety at intervals. One with variety plus one acidophiluswill go a long way to preventing your pain. Those are just examples though,be sure to read the labels and see how many of each variety you are getting. Some products will fake you out and only provide fiber.
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Accept that this easing behavior is enormously embarrassing to those around you. I do understand your pain,but prevention and management of your condition are on you. It doesn’t matter that it’s unfair, this is your burden, so heft it. No one is going to want to go out in public with you if you continually wear tight pants and then have to undress in public.
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To reiterate, you should not be publicly shamed when you are caught off guard or handle your symptoms badly. Don’t hang outwith people who do that to you.
Your mom said a totally appalling thing! I’d have left immediately. And if your BF didn’t get up and go with you then goodbye to him.
You are the doctor, so I will defer to your opinion. Still, I don’t see how “overweight” is “healthy”.
Yeah, Drunky, uh, I don’t think that the folks who describe themselves as “bloating up” after meals are disproportionately hipsters.
I’m going to go against the grain here and say that your b.f. damn well should have said something. His mother came to your defense after all. Why shouldn’t he?
My Chinese mother-in-law used to have a habit of patting my wife’s belly/butt and telling her that she’s getting fat. And for context, my wife is 5’8", 125lbs (or approximately 0.41 WalMart shoppers). I made it VERY clear to her that this was not acceptable, and I did not appreciate her trying to give my stick-thin wife more of a complex than she already has. Soooo she started calling her fat in Cantonese thinking I wouldn’t pick up on what are now the only 2 Cantonese words I know (fai mui … “fat girl”) Yeah… I put a stop to that too.
Bottom line is if your man won’t go to bat for you, then he’s probably not a keeper. And yes, that goes both ways. If I didn’t think my wife would be my ally in all things, then I never would’ve married her.
Honestly, I haven’t. The idea of having to literally unzip your pants after a meal just sounds inconceivable to me, even after I’ve eaten too much.
I mean, I assume you’re telling the truth and you DO bloat, and other people presumably do because I’ve heard of this before, but no, it does not happen to me.
Then consider yourself lucky. I had a friend back in high school that ultimately had to drop out of school because of his IBS. Sometimes his belly would swell up for no apparent reason, and his gut would start making crazy loud noises. And he’d just dash out of classrooms without even asking. All the teachers knew that he had a free pass to the shitters whenever he wanted because the alternative was a shit puddle in their classroom. I wouldn’t wish that shit (literally) on anyone.
I’m gonna stick up for the mom. Behaviour of the daughter was marginally inappropriate (nothing to worry about), but in front of the boyfriends parents, that’s a mistake. Mom has taken it on the chin, and redirected attention from her daughters behaviour to her own behaviour. Now, instead of going home and saying “that girl is clueless”, they’re going home and saying “That girl is clueless, but look at her mother! No wonder! The girl’s got my sympathy, and if you get her away from her mother, maybe she’ll turn out all right.”
Sometimes physical accidents happen. I would have untucked the blouse before unzipping, or rushed to the ladies’ room. Having said that, your mom’s remark was awful. Somehow most of us do not have the presence of mind to tell our blood relatives to f*** off, no matter how much that may be warranted.
To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, your adjusting your clothing would neither have broken my arm nor picked my pocket. Your mom earned a mildly sharp reproach in private afterwards, stressing the point that you spoke respectfully to her in private afterwards, and she aimed to humiliate you in public.
As for your boyfriend, I admit I would not have been sure how to react to spring to your defense; I might have viewed it as intermural betwen you and your mom. The first image that came to my mind when thinking of how I would have come to your defense was a sign saying, “ACHTUNG! MINEN!”
Mom was totally out of line – in fact, I’d say that borders on cruel.
However, opening one’s pants like that isn’t appropriate to do in public. There is absolutely no reason why laurieb could not have simply excused herself to the restroom to do so, and then untucked her blouse. No reason whatsoever.
OP, if you’re frequently so bloated you need to unzip your pants after most meals, you really need to reconsider what size pants you’re buying. This happens so frequently that you don’t have the luxury to base the size on when you’re not bloated.
Yeah lots of people don’t know what bloating is. Me included.
Was that the opinion of a doctor? If not, you need to go see one, figure out what the problem is, and start acting accordingly. Or if it was a doctor’s opinion, you need to start taking their recommendations seriously, because I’m pretty sure they didn’t tell you, “You have Irritable Bowel Syndrome - you should go out and eat whatever you want, and as much as you want, all the time.” The people I’ve known who had digestive issues - gluten intolerance, celiac disease, Crohn’s Disease, food allergies, lactose intolerance - (not to mention stress-related problems and auto-immune problems, of which Crohn’s may or may not be an example) tend to prefer making a slight adjustment to their diet rather than eating things that hurt them, and suffering symptoms permanently forever. Certainly they don’t “eat way too much” like you do in almost every one of your SDMB posts. Or hey look at it this way, if you ate the right things and avoided the bad ones, you might be able to eat MORE than you do now, yet feel LESS full and bloated. (Not that you should necessarily do that.)
Just by “merely” going to the Mexican place, you’re eating corn (no good for Crohn’s), or wheat (no good for celiacs), cheese & sour cream (might contain enough lactose to be a problem for the lactose intolerant), beans (the musical fruit), tomatoes (surprisingly common food allergy), and hanging out with your mom (clearly a piece of work, a source of stress and the cause of your prior eating disorder if not your current one as well).
Depending on what your problem is, that will determine what to do about it. But you can’t just go on eating any damn thing. Well you can, if you want to have this bloating problem forever. But it might just be a simple dietary adjustment. And whatever the new diet turns out to be, I guarantee that eating that way is very much a solved problem, experienced by millions before you, including authors and cooks who wrote down what to do and how to cook for it, and whose books you can buy.
You asked “what do you think?” That’s what I think. Actually I would recommend moving to a place where your mother has to travel 6 or more hours to see you, just to see if that has any positive effect. Then see a doctor in the new town. Anyone who’s in their 30s and constantly talking about “my mother, my mother” is looking backward. Teenagers say “my mother, my mother.” Soon as you hit the 20s you should be talking more like “my classes, my major, my thesis” or maybe “my job, my manager” and perhaps “my boyfriend” (good work there… unless he’s someone you just settled for. Being with him is certainly a product of your current state of mind, and is therefore in my eyes, immediately suspect. But I don’t know, maybe you lucked out. In your story he’s just a piece of furniture in the Mexican restaurant where you went to eat with your mom. I’m being too negative perhaps. He knows the value of silence? I dunno, it’s your story. This is the end of the Boyfriend Tangent.)
AAAAANYWAY. Older than that, like 30, and you should be saying more like “my career, my career” or hell why not “my hang-gliding rig” or more conventionally, “my house” or “my kids” etc. Notice that it’s “My kids,” not “My mother.” Your attention should roll forward like the generations. You shouldn’t have this much room or attention for your mother in your life; you’re supposed to be too busy for that. Harry Chapin: “Cat’s In The Cradle.” Does the son hang around and get into a long-term co-dependent relationship with the dad? No, he’s too busy. He succeeds in pulling away. What he’d really like dad is to borrow the car keys, see you later can I have them please? That’s in the teens. In what are probably his 30s he has “moved away” and his “new job” is a hassle and “the kids” have the flu. Granted it’s a dude song, but the child is pulling away from the parent.
It’s the inevitable way things go. From the moment they leave the womb it’s a gradual detachment process. First they don’t need your womb itself, then they don’t need your milk, then they don’t need your help to get across a room, and on and on. I’m a dad myself and I feel a little sad and useless, because my kid is grown and barely has time for me anymore. But that’s because, thank goodness, she’s got her own life now, and is engaged in it. If she were hanging around all the time I’d be pleased to see her but also wondering why she wasn’t busier. And probably stinging from all the ugly things she thought about herself in dissatisfaction and ennui, and then turned outward to make it about me and said something crappy to me about it. Like your mom does. F**k your mom.
Anyway, go to a doctor for starters. If you run into a brick wall (that you put there to stop yourself from dealing with this) such as, I dunno, “I can’t afford a doctor visit,” I want you to crash through that, save up the money from 6 to 8 dinners out at restaurants, scrape together that co-pay and go to the doctor like a grown-up. Your mom is holding you back. She might not even know she’s doing it, but in a way, it’s her job. It’s her protective instinct that’s gone past its shelf life, that’s all. Or it could be something darker that has more to do with HER problems, in which case the effects on you are worse and she’ll unfortunately hang on more ferociously. But either way, it’s your job to break away. We all have to do it. And if you can’t break away, you don’t deserve the rewards of breaking away.
That’s how I see it; it’s not a pants problem. Also for the record, nobody in the restaurant gives a crap whether your pants are unbuttoned except those actually watching, which is the people at your own table or maaaaybe the next one, if they for some reason are gawking around instead of gettin’ busy with their food and their conversation-partners.
Well, dang, that about covered it. I’m gonna start consulting Brawndo with Electrolytes about my own life problems! 
The difference, of course, is that your mother in law seems quite wrong and laurieb’s mom kind of has a point. It is pretty gauche to undo your pants at a restaurant, especially in front of your boyfriend’s parents for god’s sake. From that link set Leaffan posted, she has gained 20 pounds over the last couple of years. The idea that an adult with such finicky bowels seems to put so little thought into their diet is baffling to me.