Remi Bader and Her Father Address Their 'Strained' Relationship in a Candid Sitdown

Yahoo

22-04-2025

Remi Bader is reflecting on her past alongside her dad, Gary Bader.
In a recent video shared on TikTok and Instagram, the 30-year-old influencer sat beside her father to discuss their relationship as she dealt with her weight through the years amid her health journey.
The video was made for transparency, despite what her followers may perceive from her content shared online. "I don't want people to think that we're this perfect, laughing, smiling family," she began in the clip uploaded on Sunday, April 20.
Bader, who revealed last month that she underwent bariatric surgery to lose weight in December 2023, reemphasized in the post that she put "a lot" of her "boundaries up" when it came to sharing things on the internet in recent years.
Related: Remi Bader Says She's Finally Feeling Like Her 'Self Again' After Publicly Revealing Weight Loss Surgery
"The past few days my dad and I have been discussing if this was something we'd both be comfortable enough sharing publicly," Bader's caption for the video read.
"I think it's definitely a lot, but hopefully sharing some of this can be relatable to what some other people are going through or have gone through with their parents or a family member and struggles they're navigating with them," it concluded.
In "part one" of the video, Bader — who was sitting alongside her dad throughout the eight-minute clip — said they had "not gotten along as well" and "not been as close" since COVID.
"A lot of that is build up of things you said to me in regards to my weight and eating and all these things since I've been little," she shared beside her father. However, she said he might not have thought of his words as "bad" or "harmful" at the time.
"I think as women grow up... and then you start getting those things from men, or friends or mean people or people online over the years and you start connecting that back to your childhood," she said.
Bader recalled the COVID era as a specific time they "weren't getting along" since they were all "forced to live together" during the lockdown. While she said her dad remembered it as "happy, amazing time," she recalls "struggling" due to comments made about food.
Sitting beside each other in the clip, the father-daughter duo then began to recall specific memories and instances that were triggers for Bader.
"I remember you coming in from the garage and being like, 'Now I have to freaking hide my chips and put everything in the garage so you don't have to eat them because you can't control yourself,'" she recalled her dad saying to her.
Related: Remi Bader Breaks Silence on Weight Loss as She Reveals She Had Bariatric Surgery
Bader revealed that "not last Christmas, but the Christmas before" she set her boundaries and stopped talking to her dad for seven months. She remembered going through her "worst time" at that point, including physical "pain" from her back.
Gary agreed with Bader's recollection of his memory of the COVID times. "My memories are amazingly great," he admits of that period, adding, "And I don't remember some of the things that Remi brought up that were negative."
Upon returning to "normalcy" coming out of the pandemic, Gary said he started to get "stressed" in different ways by both personal and professional factors.
"It became an issue for me. My relationship with Remi was strained, and my relationship in my marriage was a little bit strained, and I decided to go see what I could do to go help myself," he shared.
Related: Remi Bader Addresses Rumors About Her Weight Loss Surgery in Bikini-Clad Video
Gary revealed that he attended Onsite therapy in Tennessee for five days of "intensive therapy," where he worked with a therapist to "dig back" into his "past life, current life and issues." It involved six hours of individual therapy and two hours of group therapy a day.
"It was probably one of the most amazing things I had ever done in my life," he admitted.
One of the "main things" he got out of the intensive therapy was that his words "in the moment" could have a "two minute meaning" to him, but could "strike a chord" with someone like his daughter.
"I think that daughters have certain sensitivity to their fathers saying it even more so than their mother's saying it... I think it has more of a negative impact if the father says it," he put forth.
Bader used a few full-circle moments as examples that have happened with men in relationships, noting that they'd say hurtful comments that would take her back to those specific times in her childhood.
"Like, my own dad was saying that to me... now how am I supposed to feel," she said.
Related: Remi Bader Claps Back at Critics Who Say She Took the 'Easy Way Out' with Weight Loss Surgery
Towards the end of the video, Bader continued to open up more about her relationship with her parents in response to questions her followers have messaged her about their dynamic.
"I think that it's a two-way street, so this isn't all the blame on you," Bader told her dad. "I felt like I was doing the work on it for a while, so I felt like you needed to be doing something in order for us to then work on it together.
To conclude the video, Bader let her followers know that they are only seeing a "glimpse" of her life on social media, not the full picture behind the scenes.
Related: Remi Bader Breaks Silence on Weight Loss as She Reveals She Had Bariatric Surgery
Since publicly revealing to Self in March that she underwent weight loss surgery, Bader has been open about the mixed response she has received in the months that followed. Nearly one month later, the fashion influencer revealed that she's starting to feel like herself again.
"Everyone in my dms saying 'she's back!!!' is making me so happy because I feel that fully and the past few days i've been really feeling like freaky silly self again," Bader wrote over a selfie posted on April 16.
The message was in response to a slew of comments Bader received from followers on her latest Instagram on April 10, which saw her return to her traditional try-on hauls.
"Sorry if that sounds lame af," she continued, adding. "Not really sorry at all."
Read the original article on People