# Husbands weight problem



## kag123 (Feb 6, 2012)

My H has battled weight his whole life.

He is currently about 30lbs overweight. It has an affect on his energy and his health (GERD and ulcers ).

I am no supermodel for sure but I have never had trouble with weight. I guess I am just lucky.

I love to cook. I also love to bake - I don't do it often because I don't like having the treats in the house. We do not follow a specific diet but I do make a big effort to cook healthy well rounded meals, we like veggies and fruit and unprocessed foods. Actually we keep very little processed food in the house.

I think H is sexy regardless of the extra weight. However I know it bothers him. He complains about feeling crappy and tired a lot of the time. We have busy lives, literally almost no time for extra activity. We work 10 hour days and shuttle kids around and cram in housrwork and yard work and everything else between that. We both have desk jobs that keep us sedentary all day.

I have tried dieting with him at his request. I hated it. I enjoy food and cooking and the diet really put a cramp in my style and stressed me out. I also lost very little weight. It did not feel like something I could stick with.

I told H I would 100% support him if he wanted to diet alone. He doesn't want to do it alone.

We try to add activity into our lives by walking with the kids, playing family sports, etc. Our kids are preschoolers so there's still not much they can do. Our experience has been that neither of us really loses weight without intense cardio and weight lifting workouts which we just aren't finding easy to get in to the routine.

H is a binge eater and will eat 2-3 times the amount a normal person would, plus snack all day.

His health has been getting more bothersome recently. What would you do to help him?


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## in my tree (Jun 9, 2012)

When you say that you "diet" with him, what does that entail? I guess what I am getting at is that instead of dieting for a while, why not just stick with healthy, well balanced meals - more like a lifestyle change? It sounds like you guys don't need to change the type of food too much (unless you cook with a lot of fatty dairy products and/or meat), just portion sizes (for him). How about his snacks? Are they healthy? Can he pack healthy snacks at home and take them to work? 

Also can he take a walk at lunch? I have had a sedentary job before and found that sometimes the only exercise I would get would be walking at lunch time. Whatever you do, keep cooking!! It's the healthiest thing to do for yourselves.


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## Jibril (May 23, 2012)

Not a lady, so I have no idea how welcome my advice is but...

Exercise routines, in my experience, are very hard to get into without proper motivation and commitment. I tend to fall out of routines within a week or two without any motivation, personally. It sounds like you are working out with him, which is great, but you really should schedule a routine and stick with it. I dunno what you say or do to encourage him, but encouragement really helps too if the person isn't as motivated as he should be.

There are lots of exercises that a person can do without any machinery or equipment at all. Since your husband is out of shape, it's probably best that he start with basic stuff, anyway. There is a great range of exercises you can do using just your own body weight. Push-ups, squats, chair-dips, etc. You can google some good exercises easily. I love bicycle crunches myself - they work my abs hella hard, and make me sweat like a pig.

Do you dance? Does he? If he doesn't, now might be a great time to teach him. Dancing is a damned good aerobic workout, and it's something you can do together. And maybe even put a romantic spin on it, if he needs a bit more encouragement. 

The real issue is that your husband eats like a horse. He really, _really_ needs to cut-down on his calorie intake. Especially if he wolfs his food down like... a wolf. If he eats too damned fast, his stomach won't tell his brain he's stuffed himself in time, so he'll over-eat _all_ the time. If this is the case, one trick you might try is serving meals in courses. It'll force him to pace himself, and let his brain catch up with his stomach.

I've read that high-fiber foods (brown rice, oats, etc) are great for weight loss, since they require more effort to chew-through, giving your brain more time to process that "full" feeling. And it takes longer to digest, leaving you feeling full longer.

You mention veggies and fruit and such as part of your well rounded meals. Are veggies a "side" or do they make up the bulk of the meal? Because they should. I'd say _half_ of the dinner plate, at least, should be the vegetable portion. Split the other two quarters with a protein and a grain/starch.

What kind of snacks is he eating? There are lots of great and healthy snacks he can be eating, provided he has access to them. Yogurt, baby carrots, nuts, granola, dried fruit, etc. are great snacks to have around. The kiddies will love the too.

Does he eat a decent breakfast? Does he take lunch with him, or buy crap at the halal cart outside work?


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## kag123 (Feb 6, 2012)

To answer some questions - 

When I say that I dieted with him for a spell in the past - we went on weight watchers together. (Counting calories and tracking points, attending meetings, etc.) I did this right after I had my second child because I wanted to lose the baby weight - and hubby put on weight right alongside me during both of my pregnancies. I hated the diet. I think it's a great way to teach yourself a lifestyle change, but I found it frustrating to have to put so much thought into counting my points each day. With time my baby weight came off naturally without a lot of effort on my part - because I don't tend to eat that much, and never have (and I guess I have a high metabolism). I fell off the wagon and stopped following the diet, but encouraged H to stay on it, and he refused to do it if I wasnt doing it with him. Which I found, well...annoying.

The biggest annoyance that I have is that he complains constantly about his weight and how unhealthy he feels, but he won't take the initiative to change his eating habits or ramp up his exercise if I don't hold his hand and do it right alongside him. I find this frustrating. I do our grocery shopping and I make sure we are buying lots of healthy food, almost no processed food, and I cook 99% of our meals. I feel like that is about as much effort as I am willing to put into it, to be honest. The rest should be him. But what he seems to want is for me to portion his food for him, lock up all food in the house so he doesn't have access to it, and schedule workouts for him. It's not something I want to deal with, and how does that teach him self-control?

H never eats breakfast - even though I make sure we have quick breakfast foods around the house for him to take with him on the go. He drinks about 3-4 cups of coffee between the moment he wakes up and when he eats his first meal...lunch. Lunch is usually small (we do always pack lunches), a sandwich and a couple pieces of fruit for example. Then he comes home from work and snacks the entire time I am cooking dinner - eating really anything that's laying out. Then he eats dinner. By habit I leave the food on the kitchen counter and I fix everyone's plates and bring it to the table (so no big pots of food sitting in front of everyone on the dinner table for endless double helpings). He will still get up and fix himself a second plate OR he typically does the clean up and dishes after dinner and I will catch him eating right out of the pots while he's putting leftovers away. Then after we get the kids in bed, I tend to go to bed earlier than him, and he will stay up and eat again right before bed. I don't know what he eats but I think this is when he binges the most. 

As for exercise - ever since we had kids I have had literally no motivation to do any kind of hardcore workout routine, which I admit is probably awful. I have some health issues I have been battling ever since having my two kids that really zap my energy and leave me feeling like crap a lot of the time. Once I finish my work day, get home, cook dinner and clean the house and get the kids in bed for the day, I have no motivation to work out. No time to comfortably work it into my daily routine either. The only thing we do right now are things that the kids can participate in - walking the neighborhood, family basketball, kicking a soccer ball around the yard, etc. They are 2.5 and 3.5 so they can't really keep up with any hardcore cardio workout with us like running or a real game of sports. I told H that if he ever wanted to work out for real that I would take the kids and he could go do it on his own (even if it was something as simple as working out alone in the basement doing the types of things that were mentioned like push ups, etc.), but he has no interest in that. At this point I think we are doing just about the max that we can do in terms of activities that involve our kids. H needs hardcore workouts to actually lose weight.

Here's the thing - we are both intelligent and we know all of the recommended nutrition tips and exercise tips to lose weight and stay healthy. He chooses not to follow them. He wants me to hold his hand and baby him through the process which I have always been resentful of. 

The only thing I have been able to do is hold him accountable and make sure he keeps tabs on his health issues and visits the doctor regularly. He takes daily medication and I make sure he takes it. The doctor consistently tells him to lose weight everytime he goes - which I know makes him feel like crap - but he still comes home and does nothing to help himself. 

I guess I am just frustrated.


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