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Sweets1954
Posts: 507 Member
In an effort to lose weight and to control my diabetes I am making an effort to eat more healthy. I do fairly well during the day but dinnertime is becoming a struggle. My husband is retired and has taken over the cooking in the evenings when I work. I do appreciate coming home to a ready meal but he fries everything. I have tried to explain about carbs and that I am avoiding lots of pasta, fried foods, especially fried potatoes and fried breaded meats but it doesn't seem to get through to him. He will only eat corn, green beans, or peas so I try to have celery, carrots, radishes, and cucumbers on hand that I can eat raw and try to have salad in order to get some variety. The same with fruit, he rarely eats fruit and then only an apple or an orange. Many things I don't get since I am the only one that eats it, avocados for example, and they go bad before I can get it eaten. Any suggestions on what I can do to get his support. He is totally against me losing weight, he thinks I will look "like a stick!"
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Have you tried explaining to your husband the complications which are likely if you do not get your blood glucose under control. There's lots of information on the net which he can read up on. One of the most important factors in determining success is the support we get from our nearest and dearest. Eating more healthily will benefit your husband as well as you.0
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I have told him that I need to control the amount of carbs I eat to keep my bg in control. He has known many people in his family and friends who have had complications of diabetes. He is still of the mind set that you get diabetes because you eat a lot of candy or sugary foods. I have tried to explain to him that "sugar" diabetes is a misnomer but then he accuses me of "telling him what to do. He had absolutely NO interest in eating healthy.0
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It can be difficult! My SO eats whatever he wants all day long and is skinny with no health problems. I would say he is semi-supportive. I'm currently starting to lower my carbs to less than 50 a day. It's difficult with goodies around. I cook dinner most nights but he went on a rant last week about he's tired of eating healthy meals for dinner. He wants mashed potatoes, anything fried, rice, rolls, etc. I don't really have any suggestions but I do feel your pain!0
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@Sweets 1954. There's a common mindset, supported by cut and paste journalism that diabetes is a self inflicted condition caused by obesity. It's a classic chicken and egg situation. Our inability to process carbs means that we become fat storage machines and inevitably become overweight and then obese. Our inability to process carbs can be genitic or can be caused by a virus attacking our immune system. One of the best ways to gain blood glucose control is to manage the amount of carbs we consume. Only you can decide what you eat. You could scrape off the breadcrumbs from your meats. You can leave the potatoes uneaten. In short you can fit your eating around the foods on your table. You can still eat the like of steak but have a salad instead of starch rich food. Some people have success with calorie reduction while many others have success with a carb reduced higher fat way of eating. Have a look at the Low Carb support group or the Keto Group. There is an overwhelming body of evidence showing that much of the dietary advice given over recent years is questionable. I hope you're able to resolve your problem in an amicable way. In the final analysis, as diabetics we have no option but to control our blood sugars if we want to avoid the serious complications which will result from uncontrolled blood glucose. If you do nothing else look at some of the stuff on line from people like Prof Tim Noakes and others.0
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Hi Sweets! When I switched to a low carb lifestyle one of the things I didn't think about was the impact it was going to have on my friends, family, coworkers, and most importantly my spouse. He ended up feeling a little abandoned. Overeating on the weekends was our thing, he looked forward to it all week and suddenly I changed the rules on him. He understood it was important to me, but he wasn't ready to make the change, and that was totally OK. We all have to get there on our own time. We had a lot of nights where we had to make two meals. I would keep chicken or tuna salad in the fridge to throw over some romaine when I got home (too tired to cook anything elaborate). Or we'd make meat sauce and I would have it over my miracle noodles while he had his regular pasta. Over time he started to get interested in the things I was eating and the separate meal nights became less and less. It was really important not to force it. Instead I just focused on me for once and the rest fell in to place.
He would say the same things about me not having to lose weight, even though I clearly needed to. It comes from a place of love. He just wanted me to be happy no matter what my size. So when I got those comments like "don't lose too much or you'll go out like a candle" I would just smile and carry on because I knew it was coming from a good place.
He's now lost 10 pounds simply because we've been eating out less and he is having a few healthier meals throughout the week. Go figure!0 -
Oh, and a good low carb recipe that he might like since he enjoys fried foods is French Onion chicken. So simple: dip the chicken breasts in some egg yolk, and then instead of flour/breading use crumbled French Fried onions and bake. I swear it takes just like fried chicken and it is my favorite low carb staple!0
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It would be so much easier if he would let me do more of the cooking. He will eat most of what I fix, I just have to adjust the veggies used to suit his taste or disguise them so he doesn't know they are there. With him taking over the cooking and me taking smaller portions we end up with a refrigerator full of leftovers that I try to use on the weekend or end up turning into science experiments that end up in the trash. He will eat several slices of toast or two bagels in the morning when he wakes up then nothing until I come home in the evening, then complains that he's starving around 9:30 at night. It's very frustrating.0
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Take him to a couple of diabetic education classes. Get him involved in cooking for you not for himself. I know when I first was diagnosed my wife was looking at the meals I was preparing with skepticism. Next thing you know she lost 35 pounds. Amazingly she is complaining that I need to get back on the wagon..... I think she may have put a few ponds back on and expects me to help her out again. I know I have been eating way to many carbs lately and I really do need to get back on track.0
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I think you are on the right track. Prepare your own meals, and/or eat little of what he prepares. I think at some point he will either understand or get angry that you aren't eating what he is cooking. At this point, is a good one to re-explain to him WHY you are doing it, and that if he cannot changes the way he prepares meals, you will have to continue to not enjoy his cooking.
I don't think you will be able to "convince" him, he is going to have to convince himself, by your actions.0 -
I have a feeling until he has another health crisis, he is not going to change. I just continue doing what I'm doing and cut back on the things he makes that aren't good for me. I am keeping a lot of salad fixings to add to what he makes so I'm not starving myself in the evenings.0
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I was in a similar situation some years ago. My doctor told me, "Just refuse to eat with him. You don't have to eat what he serves." She was right.0
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I still eat with him but I really control my portions. If he serves up the meal and I think it's too much, I put some of it back, especially the potatoes and pasta. If he makes tacos or burritos I will eat the filling with more lettuce and make a salad out of it, tortillas have way to many calories and carbs for me.
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Sweets, I understand your frustration. One way is to keep your way of eating separately. Another way is to get him into eating clean. Even if he does not have T2D...eating all fried foods will damage his health too. Good luck!0
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You might also try to explain to your husband that controlling your blood sugar through a healthy diet is not just a matter of losing weight but also essential to avoiding the complications of diabetes, like blindness, amputations, and so on. Such complications aren't inevitable, but only if the diabetes is carefully managed. Here's a summary of the things that can happen if he continues to sabotage your efforts to control your diet. You might ask him to read it.
https://www.virginiamason.org/Complications
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