Anyone else receive disapproval from partner? Or have a S/O who believes false information?

icecreamlovermfp

Hi MFP!

I’m a little discouraged and want advice, especially from those who have partners who don’t (or didn’t initially) understand the desire for weight loss or CICO.

I was on MFP before and lost 10 pounds 2 years ago. I stopped counting and I’m back up 10 pounds, so here I am again! I essentially have been losing and regaining that weight for 3 years now.

I’m 5’6 and 150 pounds, my goal weight is 135 but I’m comfortable at 140. My S/O (who is very fit and lifts regularly) just doesn’t “approve” and voices his discontent frequently. He says my body isn’t “built” to be that weight (my curves empty out) and he says that he hates my calorie counting limits our date nights and dinners together. Usually he just grunts about it but lately he’s been guilting me into going over my calorie count. Has anyone else experienced this? I understand that we control ourselves, what goes into our body’s, but he genuinely has so much misinformation he thinks I’m unreasonable. He essentially believes protein doesn’t cause weight gain, and the wild thing is that he is a DOCTOR.

So when I’m at home eating a wrap that I accounted for he says, “that’s why you’re not losing weight because you’re eating bread. If you just followed what I do and ate meat, fish and veggies we could eat normally, go to restaurants and lose weight”. And even in a world where that is true, I like eating what I eat. It’s not worth it to me to eat steak that’s infused with butter unnecessarily or potatoes that are roasted in oil when I can make the same thing at home. I cook for us (and I cook well) but he genuinely enjoys dinners out and “foodie” activities regularly. I understand I can work around it in my calorie count, but it’s not fair to me to be hungry all day to have an unnecessarily calorie laden meal with him.

Essentially he doesn’t believe in CICO and thinks I’m changing our lifestyle (eating out, going to bars, wine tastings etc frequently) for no reason. To him, he’s frustrated because it’s like I’m saying gibberish to him. I showed him MFP, I showed him things online about CICO and he just denies it.

I hate his strain on our relationship and really want to go back to my comfortable weight without starving all day to accompany him for dinner. How did you get your partner to come around?

anewell28

I also have this struggle with my family. Would definitely like to hear the advice other users have!
You aren't alone in this battle!

EllieElla2015

My ex was like this- key word ex. Granted, we didn't break up over calorie counting specifically but over his general dismissive attitude about my wants/needs/concerns.

Anyway, I know you probably know all the tricks, like dressing on side, take half home, etc so I don't think that kind of advice is helpful. What might help though is this: in the end, you have to be comfortable in your skin to fully enjoy life and all the activities you do together. If you're sitting at a restaurant and you feel bloated or a little too heavy for your liking, you won't enjoy yourself. Nobody can ever enjoy themselves when they feel like they aren't their best self and maybe you can try approaching the subject with him like that. Instead of " I want to be X pounds" try "I love that you love me, even when I don't totally love my weight but I really am just uncomfortable in my own skin and its affecting me in many aspects of my day to day life. I know you don't get CICO or why I want to lose weight, but I hope you understand the need to feel comfortable in your skin and I think this will get me there." I can somewhat understand him not seeing why you want to lose weight but any partner should prioritize you feeling comfortable in your own skin over restaurant dates.

jemhh

Are you married to this guy?

bisky

Oh hell yes I have this problem. I have tried to talk to hubby about my sugar addiction and how easy it is for me to gain weight. He is on a short deployment and I am back on my wonderful healthy diet, Eat to Live. First time on that diet was during a long deployment and I lost 40 lbs 5 years ago. I love the diet, he not so much. He wants pizza, carbs, sweets and lots of alcohol and for me to share this with him. He runs, bicycles and swims...his motto is he can exercise the weight off...sometimes he gets 20 lbs up but then he can drop it in a month......me not so much. We had a text fight tonight. He knows I am dieting while he is gone. Twice he mentions how good his pizza was. I love pizza but it hates me. The crust and red sauce gives me horrible heart burn, cheese is bad for my cholesterol not to mention the salt overload. I quit texting him tonight I was so mad.

When he is home he loves to cook me things that aren't healthy....he will bring breakfast (pancakes smothered in syrup and butter) to me in bed...he adds sugar or alcohol to my morning coffee, OH YES. It is a joke to him. I am getting mad just thinking about it. I tell him I just want an egg white vegetable scramble....then he adds tons of cream cheese to it. I have asked him to quit cooking for me because he does not help.

Okay, I am making him sounds horrible...he will go swimming with me and never critizies me, he bought me a beautiful road bike this spring and he will walk the dogs at my pace daily.....the nut job just believes you can exercise you calories off...I say a healthy diet is 80% for me.

bisky

Oh and my hubby is an anesthesiologist in the air force. I did not offer much advice...I was so cranky with my husband and the diet thing that I just vented. Lets come up with a game plan???? I think my husband will come home in 5-7 days so I want to be prepared to handle this.

mygrl4meee

My boyfriend has said i can eat fast food cause i am working out.. cant out run a bad diet. good luck. my situation seems under control at the moment.. i get upset cause he is being lazy and wanting me to get food after i worked all day.

jgnatca

Hubby believes me. He went to many of the same diabetic classes as me in support. A lot of that training stuck. The down side, he knows when I am "cheating", and he'll call me on it.

My daughter and I disagree about aspartame.

GiddyupTim

You've had conversations with him about this? Mentioning specific examples of times you have felt undermined or patronized?
If I were that guy, I would stop if I was told that what I was doing was making someone else unhappy.

klowieislyfe1

None of my boyfriends have supported my efforts to slim down in the past few years. All of them are like "shhhhh, you're fine" and keep urging us to do the same calorie-packed activities like always (restaurants, drinking, etc). My long-term ex who I lived with was obsessed with going out to eat even when we had tons of healthy food at home. I can diet left to my own devices, but it's really f-ing hard to sit across from somebody else in a restaurant and watch them eat a cheeseburger while you're hungry.

spiriteagle99

I would ditch the boyfriend. The husband is harder, but you may need to go into couples therapy. The kind of control they are exerting is not healthy for your relationship. It is your body. Your choices. They have no right to undermine your efforts to get healthy. They show tremendous lack of respect, even contempt, for your needs. No relationship can survive that for long.

Vune

My boyfriend told me I have it easy because of my metabolism. He's never been overweight, but I've been overweight twice in my adult life. He watched me weighing my food and tracking here while I lost weight (and was quite supportive!), but he can't make the connection that it was easy because I was honest and accurate about what I was eating. Like, dude, I have a kidney transplant, parathyroid disease, chronic anemia, and I take a pharmacy of medications. Give me some credit, please! He's all meat and veggies when he wants to lose, too. I derail him often with naan and sweets, though, so it must be tough living with that mindset.

kayeroze

I don’t really know the relationship dynamics between you and your boyfriend, but I think maybe you should talk to him about compromising with you. Take the focus away from losing weight and instead on an even give and take between each other. Like Friday-Sunday you’ll eat out what he wants and Monday-Thursday you’ll eat in. It’s unfair that it has to be one or the other on where and what you eat. And then maybe discuss that him constantly berating your efforts hurt your feelings because you don’t do the same to him (I assume). Mention that bodies are different or that you’re shorter/smaller and need to eat less than he does. Plus a doctor is not as knowledgeable about nutrition as a registered dietician.

JoLightensUp

I may be misinterpreting, but it seems to me the core issue is the impact your decision to lose weight is having on you going out. I suspect that all the other comments he makes might be flowing from that. My advice is based on that interpretation and so is kind of the opposite of the "dump him" advice. I hope there is something useful in it:

Give up on trying to convince him of the science. It was worth a try, but he doesn't want to know. This is an emotional issue for him.

Avoid talking with him about weight loss, CICO, food choices at restaurants. etc. Try to make your weight loss efforts as much of a "non-issue" as possible. Don't change your choices for him, but keep them to yourself. He can only see the downsides for his life at the moment and is not going to support you right now.

Don't give up on him, though. He might change, but I wouldn't try to force it. Look for support elsewhere, like MFP and your friends/family.

Decide on what you are prepared to compromise with him on. I assume that you enjoyed the restaurants, wine bars etc as well? Work out how often you would like to still do that. He wants reassurance that the good times aren't over. Give him that.

I sound like I am asking you to treat him like a child, but I think that we can all act like two-year-olds at times, insisting on our own way or being irrationally afraid of something, and, at those times, the other person in the relationship has to act like the grown-up.

When you've decided what you are prepared to do, talk to him about it. Pick your timing. Don't try to talk when he's just said, "Let's go out". Talk to him when you're both relaxed and away from those situations. Think through what you are going to say. Reassure him that you can still go out and have a good time, just not all the time and you need to just plan it more. Don't feel that you have to explain too much - otherwise you're going to go around in circles justifying yourself and your choices - but make it clear that it is important to you. Make it clear that HE and his happiness is important to you as well...I'm assuming it is!

I know the natural reaction is to get annoyed and resentful that he is being unsupportive, but if you can keep calm and "give" a little even when he is "taking", even when you feel he doesn't "deserve" it, I believe you've got more of a chance of finding a way through.

amusedmonkey

I have nothing to say except I wish you the best. Some doctors can be too set in their ways and the way they form their beliefs and opinions, because with the amount of effort their put into their education how could they ever be wrong?

Maybe approach it from an angle where his beliefs and education are no good? Like "doing it this way makes me happy, do you not want me to be happy? It would do wonders for us for me not to be stressed" or something, and then try to reach a compromise between his desire for eating out and your desire to lose weight, where you go out for foodie activities sometimes and don't other times. It's unfair for him to want to do his happy things all the time at the expense of your happiness, and it's also unfair for you to deny him these pleasures too often.

hesn92

When you lose weight he will realize he’s wrong. Also 1. I think he just prefers you at the weight you are now. In my experience, my husband always fears change and then once I change he realizes that I’m still the same person and he’s ok with it. Maybe your husband is the same way. And 2. You restricting calories shouldn’t be a burden on him. I’m still able to eat dinner with my husband and go out to eat. I don’t understand what he’s crying about honestly. Unless you all normally eat out like every single day?

My husband is similar, he’s finally gotten to the point where he just keeps his mouth shut about it. But he has also seen that calorie counting works for me. So maybe that’s why. He also has these strong opinions about working out and how lifting weights is so “stupid” and the guys who are the most ripped in this world don’t lift weights, they do push ups, and pull ups, and run, and etc. I hate it when he goes on this tangent. Im like, you don’t work out, so why the *kitten* do you have this strong of an opinion?

CTcutie

Was engaged to someone- he definitely “supported” my need to lose weight by telling me what time of day- never after 6pm, eat upon waking & every 2-3 hours, always eat fruit in the car on way to/from work, what size meal- same as he ate, or less , how many fruits&vegs: 10, NO treats allowed, CICO disbeliever, etc. Ge also believes in Dr. Oz, everything on the History channel (aliens were on Earth and we are descendants!!!!!).,, so, yeah. I’m single & looking awesome

FattieBabs

My husband loves pouring good wine down me which is very hard to resist! However, he is supportive when eating out. I usually don't have a starter and, if eating a curry as a main course, take half home. He hates low cal spray oil and, when he is cooking, I have to make sure he only puts one tbsp of olive oil in a dish for two people... He makes his own bread too so at least I know what goes into it.. so a bit of a mixed reaction here! Good luck - sometimes these men don't want you to lose weight as it is very true that you attract more interest from the opposite sex when you do lose weight and hubby doesn't like it much!

81Katz

Mine says stuff like "but you worked out today." Ok, and? Doesn't mean I can go eat a whole pizza and bucket of ice cream now...

FattieBabs

All these comments seem so familiar!

WinoGelato

Hmmm... well there's a lot of stuff going on in your post.

It's concerning that your boyfriend, a doctor, doesn't subscribe to CICO and believes that eating bread prevents you from losing weight. I'm not sure how to address that basic misinformation other than maybe go through some of the posts in the debate forum which have discussed these concepts and often include links to peer reviewed science that supports that CICO is the fundamental principle of energy balance and that there's no long term advantage to low carb diets for fat loss.

It also sounds like he enjoys a particular lifestyle that you used to actively participate in, that you are not participating in while losing weight? You are a firm believer in CICO so you know that you can still eat restaurant food and drink wine and still achieve your goals, so I'm wondering if you've taken a pretty hard line on some of this unnecessarily. If you only have 10-15 lbs to lose, then you should only have a 250 cal deficit built into your daily goal to result in 0.5 lb/week. That shouldn't require a full stop on things like restaurant meals and wine tastings. You can also more easily accommodate them if you exercise, if you bank calories for a special event that's more calorie indulgent, etc.

Also, what's your plan for maintenance? If these sort of activities are part of your lifestyle and you're cutting them out to lose weight, what happens when you've achieved your goal? Are you going to start then eating out and drinking again? What makes you think the weight won't come right back on? Wouldn't it be better to figure out how to work those in while losing, so when you reach maintenance it's not such a drastic change in the other direction?

At the end of the day if these sorts of things are important part of the way you two have fun and socialize, and you aren't interested in them anymore, then perhaps it is time to look at the relationship overall.

Francl27

Ugh. I'm sorry you're dealing with that. Another proof that doctors know nothing about nutrition.

Unfortunately, I don't have much advice... IMO it's pretty much a given that you have to change your lifestyle when you try to lose weight, and it often puts a strain on relationships.. especially as men can get away with eating much more than we do without gaining weight... But I'm a foodie too so I can understand the frustration on the other side too (just imagine what it's like for me, lol!).

I'd say, talk to him again and explain that you really want to lose those 10 lbs and eating out too much is just not going to work. Can you show him nutrition information online and what the average TDEE is? Maybe that would help? Without even mentioning CICO... just that the average steak at a restaurant is 1000 calories and that the average calorie burn for a woman is 2000. Even if he thinks that protein doesn't make you gain weight, maybe realizing that there's also a lot of fat in that steak will help... heck, I don't know.

Good luck OP.

Sharon_C

It sounds to me like the real issue is the eating out and counting calories while eating out. I get his point. He wants to have a nice night out but it's overshadowed by the calorie counting and the worry and fretting that you're going over on calories.

I felt like the same thing was happening in my life. My husband is supportive but there were so many times we didn't go for ice cream and such because it didn't fit into my calories. I realized that my calorie counting was impacting his life too much AND it was impacting our time together. I've since loosened up on it. We haunt the same restaurants so I know what dishes are low in calories and I get those. We go for ice cream now because life is too short and I'd rather spend quality time with him eating ice cream than telling him I can't eat ice cream. And guess what? It hasn't impacted my weight loss at all.

It'a all about balance. Some days you eat salad, some days you eat tacos.

As for buying into the no carb, fad diet stuff, my husband still thinks of foods as either good or bad. No amount of discussion will change his mind. It was how he grew up. His mom really messed him up when it came to how he views food. I've let it go and let him do him while I do me.

Sharon_C

Francl27 wrote: »

Ugh. just that the average steak at a restaurant is 1000 calories

OMG what restaurants do you go to where the average steak is 1000 calories??? That's one heck of a big steak!

ruqayyahsmum

My partner has said things that got to me

He told me all I needed to do to lose was to not eat and run for hours every day " cos babe marathon runners are skinny "

and he called me out on eating a salad at kfc instead of a big daddy burger and fries like him

I ended up telling him that being a 5ft 2 female trying to lose weight instead of a 6ft man trying to gain weight like him means I need less food and calories than him, that I've done my research, know what I'm doing and its not up for debate then shifted on to a topic I knew he enjoyed instead

MissyCHF

I am a widow and live alone and please myself now, my decisions, my wish, my opinion........ Me thanking my lucky stars!!!

BusyRaeNOTBusty

I'm assuming you don't want to break up over a minor issue, and that it really IS a minor issue and not a symptom of a general controlling attitude or disrespect of your opinions and desires.

Sit down when you are both in a good mood and talk it out. Tell him it's important to you that he does NOT comment on your eating or dieting AT ALL. You also need to agree not to talk to him about it. In return, agree to go out to dinner with him once a week on the weekend, and again, don't mention your diet or calories or anything during dinner (when he's not looking checking out the menu beforehand to select the healthiest option you can find and work it into our calories). You can also point out the money saved by not eating out often.

Riverwild77

He really needs to be supportive of you and try to help you realize your goals, that’s how it’s supposed to be. Only you can fix you.

H_Ock12

"it’s not fair to me to be hungry all day to have an unnecessarily calorie laden meal with him"

So how is it fair to him to try to change his lifestyle to fit your new lifestyle?

kristen8000

If my BF gave me hassle about my eating habits I'd more than likely just keep doing what I'm doing and ignore him. I know what I have to do. It's my body. It's the way I like to eat. My BF and i have lived together for 5 years. I cook meals. He eats them. He knows that if he doesn't like what I make he can make his own.

Now. I refuse to let my "diet" and activity influence our eating out, date nights, etc. I'll either play throughout the week and eat less and prepare for a restaurant meal OR I'll get a good workout in. OR I'll just say "kitten it" and eat what I want and get on board the next day.

I've lost 17lbs since July 31st, 2017 and I'm currently 4lbs lower than my goal, so it is possible.

Being where I am, and happy with the weight that I lost, I still have issues with parts of my body where fat is still "around". My BF and I disagree greatly about how to lose fat. He says I need to do sit ups to tighten my stomach, but I have fat still there - and I know that the only way to remove the fat is to cut more. So in the future, that's what I might do. Sit ups WILL tighten the muscle, yes. But with the fat still there, you won't see the muscle...I basically smile and nod and just do what I wish anyway...

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