Help! My spouse is an enabler!

Topsking2010

Enough already. I was eating so much junk food my girlfriend did not trust me to bring home healthy foods from the grocery store. I made decision to make a lifestyle change and eat more healthy foods. My GF was very supportive and now does not bring home Oreos or chocolate chip cookies anymore. I lost 50 pounds and her support played a major role in my success.


Tell your husband that you need his support. Alot of men are insecure and want their woman to stay the same. I am leader of a local weight loss support group and I hear the same story every week from woman that are in a similar situation.

Why would a man not want his wife to be healthy?

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FairuzyAmanuzy

My husband and I are both on MFP, but i'm trying to loose weight and he's gaining it. This means he gets to eat around 4,000 calories a day while I'm at 1,500......I know it can be hard to have self control but only you are responsible for the food you put in your mouth, If I endulged in all the pasta, pizza, cookies etc that he has around the house then I would be gaining weight with him. Maybe work on compromises. Ask him to put his food in a different section, in a cabinet you don't open often, or ask him to work out with you. We have the best conversations on our walks together. When he makes dinner, he eats 2/3rd of it and I eat 1/3.... Pizza isn't bad, it's just the amount of pizza. Same with everything else. I had a slice of cake yesterday! You can't ask him to diet with you. He can certainly support you without eating the same way.,

ctprofessional

I was worried I had poted a topic in my sleep!!! First my hubby and I cut out booze, he lost 25 pounds while I gained it!!!!! He wasn't even overweight!

Anyway, I have the same problem, exact same problem.
On his pizza nights I will make something I enjoy even more(usually seafood) so even if I steal a bite from his dinner, my dinner tastes better!
He is NOT allowed to bring food into the house unless planned out the night before. That is hard for him since he isn't a planner, but allows me to adjust my calories. This keeps me from crying to him about my weight and he will do anything to keep me from crying!(I tried the angry route and got nowhere)
I am in total control of the food budget, he can come with me to the grocery, but I have the last say about everything that goes in the cart. If he wants something bad to eat then he can eat it at work, I'm a food addict, he sees that.
I wondered how we got to this point. I realized that he pushed bad food when he wanted to have drinks, so this month I put it out there that him having a beer didn't mean I had to be eating sugar or fried food!
Hope this helps!! Feel free to friend me, maybe we can support each other to getting to a healthier place both physically and mentally!

melizerd

I am probably going to sound like the bad guy here, but here it goes. I am in the same boat, my fiance is skinny, bicycles everyday and loves to drink soda and eat really unhealthily, it makes it really hard when I am trying to keep on my diet plan.

While I think you should just keep on him about certain things (especially about unhealthy things he wants, if he wants them he should buy them.), other things you are just going to have to have the willpower to say no to (don't get me wrong, I struggle myself.). While your family and friends are there to support you, it is you who has the choice whether or not to eat things. It is your choice to eat the pizza or not to eat the pizza.

This! My husband has a different metabolism than I do, he likes different foods than I do. Why should what *I* need to eat and do dictate what HE needs to eat and do.

While my husband has changed his eating habits and most of the time we eat and cook together but not all the time. I have learned that it's just not possible for a 6'4" 35 year old 190lbs man to NEED the same types of foods that a 5'7" 29 year old 169lbs woman. We're too different. So we do try and find a middle ground but it is NOT going to happen all the time.

I have learned that the only person that decides what goes in my mouth is me! If that means we make two homemade pizzas so be it, I'll make one with less cheese and super thin crust and he can drown his in cheese and meat and thick crust. He's lost 25lbs since I started too.

So you have to decide what YOU want to put in your body and not blame anyone else.

meliturtlee

My whole family are my enablers. They also joke around and they are starting to get tired of me and my health food and health comments. But it's a 2 way street. I'll stop all my comment when they stop trying to make me eat their deliciously yet unhealthy food.

I'm not married never have been, so I know it's a whole diff ball game I'm sorry and I hope you can resolve and push past this bump in the road. you can do this and you have way more willpower than you believe yourself to have. Good Luck!!

dustyhockeymom

I think this is something you are going to have to resolve within yourself not with your spouse. He is entitled to eat whatever he chooses and you have very little you can do about it, even if he was overweight. My husband needs to lose as much weight as me, but he isn't ready to start yet so there are often not good for me things around. His favorite fast food is Five Guys Hamburgers and he drinks a ton of soda. Those things are still in my life, I am just chosing not to eat them anymore. He is very supportive of me making different decisions, but probably only because I don't make my decisions become his. When I cook at home, we are eating healthier, but because of our lifestyle we eat out a lot, so then he is choosing whatever he wants and there is not attempt to eat healthy. I just make a different choice. Our son is a preteen and a superstar athlete and has to eat everything under the son to fuel himself, so there are always a variety of foods in our house, healthy and not. I only eat the healthy. Right now I know there are oreos and two different types of potato chips, but they have been here for a week and I haven't had any. It isn't really possible for someone else to dictate anyone's food choices. My husband and son are very supportive of me, but their support doesn't require them to make the same food choices I am making. It only requires me to.

bhagavatilad1

It's all willpower and portion control about the size of the palm of your hand is one serving remember that. My husband at the time always wanted to go out to eat and I had no idea about the calories except I knew deep down I was overendulging. This is the same thing you'll just have to ignore his stuff and focus on yourself think positive and its ok to eat those foods but in moderation.

shelbygeorge29

First off I don't think he's doing it out of malice, it's just that food as love is very ingrained in our culture. Sharing delicious food is primarily how relationships start, many first dates are dinner! WHen we make these changes to our diets, it is often very confusing to our partners, who we likely used to bond with over scrumptous food.

That being said, you need to start working on strengthening your discipline muscle! The more you use it, the more powerful it becomes. Unfortunately it isn't totally fair to put the whole family on a diet when you are, IMHO. Basically that's life, if you can't learn to navigate the world and say no to the delicous food around you, you will have a very, very hard time maintaining your weight loss. There are calorie laden treats everywhere we turn. It's the cold, hard, ugly fact of weight loss. This is coming from a woman who regained 80+ lbs (+ interest!) by giving in to the temptations all around me. Now that I'm back on track it doesn't even phase me to have chocolate, pizza, cheeses, bread & butter, etc. around the house. I could not have lobster tail pastries around, they are my favortie thing in the world! But ultimately I don't want to be fat anymore, so I have to make the choices which support that goal.

Yes, you can learn to mitigate the damage, if Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie is your kryptonite, it is only fair to ask the family not to have it around. Think about the treats your family likes but you could take or leave; stock up on that. Work out some sort of peace treaty woth your family. They get good stuff they enjoy, but they aren't rubbing your nose in enjoyiing what you so love.

Good luck!

sister_bear

When I started my efforts I sat my fiance down and outlined that this was MY thing, but here's how it would impact him and I laid it out for him. I wasn't buying soda, junk food, etc. any more. If he wanted them, he had to buy them and I had no problem with him doing so. This solved a big part of the problem for us because I do most of the grocery shopping. He will occasionally go buy some soda or something, but it's his and I usually don't touch it.

As for meals, for a while I was portioning my food and he was eating whatever. I wasn't cooking like I used to, so there either weren't leftovers or he never saw them because I put them in the fridge before I called him to dinner. Out of sight, out of mind.

Once I started seeing results, I'm fortunate that he jumped on the bandwagon and has enabled me to make meal decisions for the both of us. He's stopped buying soda and junk snacks, but we'll indulge a craving once in a while. Yesterday were in the grocery store and he saw the pies in the bakery and talked about pie the whole time we were in the store. We split up at some point and I went and looked at the pies. I found an individual one for 300 calories that I bought for him, so he could have pie without eating an entire full size pie. I had none and I'm okay with that. I've learned that keeping him happy makes him more agreeable with letting me make the decisions on our meals.

I guess my point is, in all things there are compromise. He may have thought he was helping you out by making a pizza for dinner and it sounds pretty sweet to me. If it was me, I would handle that by having the ingredients portioned out in the fridge so when he made the pizza it was made to my specifications. lol My man won't measure, but if I have everything pre-measured and divided up into zip locs and tupperware, he'll comply.

And kudos to you for only having two slices. I would consider that a victory, not a loss. So what if you went over your calories. If you're anything like me, in the past I would've eaten half the pizza at least...

Cookies... ah... cookies, I solved the cookie problem in our house, by keeping 100 calorie packs of cookies stocked. I can't eat most of them because of my food allergies, but I keep them for my fiance. If there's cookies at the house, he won't go buy cookies. And the individual packs keep him from eating an entire package of oreos or something. Since they're 100 calorie packs, I can easily do the math on whether or not I'm going to have any. I hardly eat sweets anymore. Most of the time when I want to eat out of boredom, I go exercise and forget about wanting to eat.

fteale

What's an "enabler"? It sounds like a good thing. Someone who enables you to do something, surely?

PalmettoparkGuy

I've learned that there I am always going to be in situations where I can fall off the wagon. Home, work, partys, everywhere. Unfortunately, it us up to me to make the decision what goes into my mouth and as much as I'd like it to be, it's nobodys responsibility or fault but mine.

azsuzi

Mine was the same way. He would make perfectly acceptable dinners - but then top everything with gravies and sauces or cook it all in butter. Then he would load my plate with 2 cups of rice or a huge baked potato!! I started scraping everything off of my plate and re-serving myself in smaller, healthier proportions - measuring everything out and taking twice the amount of veggies and less of everything else. Its taken 6 months, but he's catching on.

My son, on the other hand, makes a frozen pizza at least once a week. I just can't seem to resist taking some even if I just finished eating my own meal! So I've decided to allow myself that little treat, but never more than one small slice. I no longer make a meal of pizza, just a small treat.

So far, this is working for me. Good luck to you in finding your own compromises.

Mandalynn304

Enough already. I was eating so much junk food my girlfriend did not trust me to bring home healthy foods from the grocery store. I made decision to make a lifestyle change and eat more healthy foods. My GF was very supportive and now does not bring home Oreos or chocolate chip cookies anymore. I lost 50 pounds and her support played a major role in my success.


Tell your husband that you need his support. Alot of men are insecure and want their woman to stay the same. I am leader of a local weight loss support group and I hear the same story every week from woman that are in a similar situation.

Why would a man not want his wife to be healthy?

Top

Mandalynn304

I agree, I feel my husband wants to keep me fat due to his insecurities. He doesnt encourage or support me, makes it a little tricky

azsuzi

What's an "enabler"? It sounds like a good thing. Someone who enables you to do something, surely?

Enables you to do something, yes - but enables you to continue on your path of self-destruction. An enabler to an alcoholic makes excuses for them when they fall of the wagon thus minimizing the damage done. This enables the alcoholic to continuing making poor choices without being held accountable for their own actions.

ceeshelman

Here are a few tips for making this work: My husband's propensity for satisfying his sweet tooth and his food desires is not enabling me. My body is my issue, and yours is yours. We have to empower ourselves to take responsibility and not give up our power to the excuse of the "enabling hubby." If he is being inconsiderate by knowingly urging you to eat outside your health plan, then have a heart to heart with him to stop that as that is a relationship issue and that behavior is hurting your relationship.

1. Create a place in your pantry and your frig that are his only and ask him to keep the foods you can hardly resist in those areas. Meaning: you make a pledge to yourself not to invade his designated food space by eating things from there. This becomes an integrity issue, not a food issue. So, you can call upon your higher self to be a respectful partner to him by leaving his stuff alone. If you do take something from his space, then you need to make amends to him for violating his trust. Yep, eating his food is a violation of his space and therefore his trust.

2. Buy yourself some safe snacks and use them to satisfy your urge to splurge when he is eating stuff that is unhealthy for you to eat. Just do it in a health conscious splurging way. (Snack well 100 calorie packets of cookies, chocolate cover pretzels, whatever.) Eat two bags if you want to because 200 calories of this is better than 400 to 600 calories of that slice of cake.

3. Make a focused effort to design and keep on hand when you are SAHMing for the day good, healthy snack combos. No amount of cheating, greasy, sugary foods will satisfy your body. You have to find snacks that are health supporting and satisfying to your body not your emotions. Sample snake combos: 1) One fruit, two cheese sticks, 6 almonds, 2) Muscle mIlk protein shake, 3) one fruit, 2oz of Turkey and 6 almonds,4) One egg, 1.5 oz turkey breast deli slices, 1/3 avocado, 5) 1 tsp peanut butter, apple, 2 oz cheese.

3. Eat at three hour intervals so you are never very hungry. That way when his great pizza is coming out of the oven, cheezy good, you will only want one or two slices. I think you can have that and still lose weight if you are prudent and don't over do it in any one week. Here is a way to get the two slices down to one: Drink a big glass of sparkling water with a squeeze of lime or lemon or just a tall glass of ice water before you dig in to the pizza. By the end of the first slice, your brain's brakes may have kicked in and you will actually feel full.

Hope this helps.

fteale

What's an "enabler"? It sounds like a good thing. Someone who enables you to do something, surely?

Enables you to do something, yes - but enables you to continue on your path of self-destruction. An enabler to an alcoholic makes excuses for them when they fall of the wagon thus minimizing the damage done. This enables the alcoholic to continuing making poor choices without being held accountable for their own actions.

Thanks for the explanation. I don't really see how that applies to food exactly. Surely as an adult you help yourself portion-wise? I would go ballistic if someone tried to put food on my plate. That seems really presumptuous.