How do you deal with people cooking for you?

KIW1_P

I must be the only person to complain that their partner wants to cook for them.. but im currently really enjoying tracking what I eat and achieving my fitness goals. I'm struggling with him cooking meals and me not knowing exactly what's in them.

It makes me want to exercise more / eat less during the day so I know I'll definitely have a calorie deficit. But that seems like a pretty unhealthy way to behave.

Today I asked him for the recepie before eating, so I could get a basic idea. But he wouldn't give it to me until after we ate it because he wanted to make sure it tasted good first (I didn't tell him it was for tracking as he gets weird about it). So I just ate really really slowly so he would finish and then write the recipe whilst I was halfway through.

Am I just completely nuts? Or does anyone else struggle with this? How do you deal with tracking and eating food you haven't cooked?

Lietchi

My BF knows I track my intake. We split the cooking 50/50 and when he cooks he weighs the ingredients and takes notes. After more than 3 years, he's a bit sick of it so occasionally I help him by taking notes and he only has to weigh the food.
I'm sure he thinks I'm a bit obsessive sometimes, but it's hard to argue with 75lbs lost.

I do eat some meals that I don't cook myself: restaurants, meals when visiting friends and family... I estimate based on my logging experience, which doesn't bother me since it's only occasionally.

cmriverside

Why don't you just make your own food if it's that important? I can pretty much guesstimate the calories in most dishes - or at least close enough. I might struggle if someone else prepared one meal a day for me of homemade dishes and I was trying to lose weight, so I would prepare my own meal if I was not able to lose while eating his food.

JaysFan82

I make my gf send me the recipe if she's cooking.

penguinmama87

I think there's a lot going on here, but probably a priority for you will be communicating with him what you are doing and working together. That's going to apply whether or not you end up taking on some of the cooking. As an outsider that's not privy to your relationship dynamic, I both think it's weird that he won't share the basic recipe with you, and that you won't tell him why you want it. Someone has to be willing to move, a little (nb: you're only in charge of one of the people involved!)

I do most of the cooking in my house, but my husband cooks sometimes. He weighs ingredients for me (though sometimes I have to remind him because he's not in the habit of it.) I am old fashioned and use recipe cards and have begun writing down the weight measurements instead of just volume. He was probably skeptical when I began losing weight because it was something I had asserted I would do before and then it came to nothing, but he (wisely) kept those thoughts to himself. He did become more amenable to it when he saw that it was working, and I provided means for him to do so (like the recipe cards.)

On the occasions I have to guess it's when I eat at a friend's house or out at a restaurant. I make an educated guess. But you're right that it would be very hard to do that all the time, because my best guesses could be wildly off. You're better off just talking about it. And if he doesn't want to share the information with you, then you can either try to address his concerns (difficulty, effectiveness, etc) or agree to take on some of the cooking.

sollyn23l2

1) He knows you want the recipe for tracking. That's why he wouldn't give it to you until after you ate. He was most likely thinking you wouldn't eat it if you saw the recipe.

2) if it were me, in this situation, I would eat a reasonable amount, get the recipe, track it, the adjust my next day's eating to account for it if it put me over calories. If he does this every day, that's probably an issue the two of you need to have a very real conversation about because he's not respecting you. At all.