How to diet when your SO is not???
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How does everyone else deal with this?
Do you have recipes or certain snacks/meals to share with one another? Do you sit in seperate rooms? Do you go exercise whilst they munch ahead?
Neither my dh nor dd need to lose weight. Dh will always need more calories than me to maintain his healthy weight. Dd needs a different amount of calories too. I don't have to eat exactly what they eat nor do they need to eat the same as me.
Our breakfast and lunch are not always eaten together or the same thing. We eat dinner together.
After dinner, people disperse to various places in the house. We don't sit together all night watching TV and eating. I do exercise in the evening usually but not to avoid people snacking in front of me.
I often have popcorn for an evening snack. Dh will eat some of my popcorn sometimes or eat a bowl of ice cream or chips
It hasn't been a big deal most days. I haven't changed my diet much. I have food I love every day. I eat portion sizes that are appropriate for my goal or eat something I like that fits my goal better. Sometimes just seeing the calorie count of 7 chips makes them less attractive than a big bowl of popcorn or a sandwich.
The day I made chocolate chip cookies and dh brought home caramel apples as a surprise was challenging but I chose cookies. There will be other days for caramel apples. I changed my thinking from "Food is here. Must eat it." just because it was there to "these things are not rare and I can plan to have them tomorrow or next week if I want".
We only eat out once a week for lunch and I choose what I want in advance. We grocery shop once a week and I make the list. I plan and prepare meals. I pre-log my food for the day. Most days things go as planned.
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I pack my own breakfast and lunch and prepare my own snacks. Mrs Jruzer makes family dinner and we all eat it, more or less food depending on each person's predilections. Pretty simple.0
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I certainly understand the struggle!
My boyfriend is on a bulking plan, so we are literally at the opposite ends of the spectrum food-wise and goal-wise. He requires the extra calories and I most certainly don't - so we tend to make our own dinners and eat our own foods *together* if that makes sense. We both respect eachothers individual lifestyle and I really think that's the only way to succeed with it. Respect the fact that your boyfriend is going to indulge and in turn, he needs to respect that you need to be that little bit more 'strict'. I know it can be tempting to lean toward doing what he is doing- and it's totally fine to do that on occasion - but make sure you are logging those times and try and allow it into your daily calorie's. It can be done, you may need to tweak other meals here and there - but there is no reason why you can't both share a pizza together!
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You have to make the decision to stick to your guns... but there's no reason why you can't have a piece of pizza or a cookie too.
My husband is obese and hasn't done much to change his diet at all in the 2.5 years I've been on MFP (ok he tried for a few months, lost 10 pounds, gained it all back). He snacks on ice cream, cheese, crackers, cookies, chocolate, basically anything, at night when he watches TV. But I don't have to eat that stuff, and he doesn't have to eat my snacks. We don't share snacks anyway because I log everything I eat, so I get my own.
I make the same dinner for everyone (most nights), but that includes anything from meatloaf to burgers to pizza sometimes. I ask him what he wants, and if he actually wants something, I'll make it, I'll just make a lighter version of it, and I'll have a smaller portion. I just weigh my portion and make sure it fits in my calories and try to have something delicious at every meal so I'm less tempted to eat 'junk' after. I very rarely have snacks after dinner and no, we don't sit in different rooms. He eats right next to me while we watch TV.
I usually don't exercise when he's home, but I'd just hop on the exercise bike while we watch TV and he snacks... not a problem at all.
Bottom line is that you have to make the choice for yourself to lose weight and be healthier. I've lost 80 pounds, and I have kids too and a lot of snacks and treats and 'junk' food in the house at all times. You just got to want it hard enough.
No kids here,but this works for us. I like to make a nice main dish,then have a low carb veggie & green salad.DH might have 2 helpings of main dish & small sides. Mine is the opposite.Works pretty good.0 -
Accurately weigh and log your food and stick to your calorie goal.
You have 4 basic choices (and any combination and possibly others). 1) make something that you want that fits your calorie goals 2) eat what he is eating but in small enough portions that it fits your calorie goals 3) just don't eat it 4) eat what he is eating and lose weight slower.
I lost 30lb while my wife lost nothing. I ate what I wanted (just had a home made chicken wing pizza for lunch), but I made it fit. It doesn't matter what she makes for dinner, I'll weigh out ~500-800 calories of it and eat it. If she makes something complicated (like a stir fry where you can't easily weigh individual items), then I either use a generic entry or sometimes she'll weigh the components for me. Since she is now on the MFP plan she does a much better job of weighing everything when she makes dinner, but prior to that I did fine with estimations.
Basically, just experiment to see what works for your situation, but there is a solution, you just have to want it enough.0 -
My husband doesn't subscribe to my healthy lifestyle, either, and that's okay.
For dinner, I cook healthy food in sensible portion sizes for me AND my husband, every night. Some nights he eats it, some nights he doesn't. If he doesn't want what I cook, he knows he must pick something up for himself on the way home from work. In that case, I pack the rest of what I cooked for lunch the next day.
Also, I do all the grocery shopping, so I control what snacks come into the house. It's pretty easy to just not buy calorie dense foods.
He can still have his junk foods, just encourage him to buy them in single serving sizes if he eats them around you, or encourage him to have them when you're not together. If he cares about you and your healthy goals, he should have no problem doing those things to help you out.0 -
My SO is the one who encouraged me to lose weight. He has been talking about "dieting" for sometime now but has been insisting we do something drastic like paleo or eat noting but salad and chicken, which I know I would fail at because I need variety. I basically told him if he wants to prepare / cook, go ahead, but otherwise we'll eat what I prepare since I do all the cooking. He's been pretty good about being supportive, but often eggs me on to eat unhealthy things - like when I worked out specifically so I could have a deep fried snickers at the fair and he was all lets have ice cream and this giant elephant ear too.It doesn't bother me that he's eating them, I just find myself overly tempted to join him, and have occasionally broke my meal plan and felt guilty for sharing a pizza when it's too late to cook or having a triple chocolate cookie.
I understand this. I caved and bought a pizza for lunch, ate two slices and brought the rest home to eat gradually over the weekend, and instead he ate 5 slices after we had a good dinner while talking about how delicious it was I needed to order from them more often. It was delicious. Thanks for reminding me. I'd appreciate it if you stopped eating it directly if front of me where I can smell it. I wound up having one as well, after I had told myself I wouldn't.
It's all about will power. It'll get easier as it goes along. At least I hope so!
Ugh. That's a drag, Cbnorris. You have my sincere sympathies.
I provision for DH +3 teens. They all eat more than me. The teens are pretty reasonable about snack food (more moderate & health conscious as they get older). I buy what they request (increasingly they buy their own) and I stay out of theirs. I buy my own and stick to that. DH complains that I don't buy enough junk food to nosh while watching football all day Sunday. He doesn't want it enough to buy it himself, or even to put it on the list, so we just tolerate his complaints. Football season snack food is tempting when others are eating a lot of it, but honestly, football season beer/wine is more tempting. We all have our demons I guess.
Meals seem easier to manage than snack food. Like others, I cook one meal & everyone portions as they prefer. I often sub spinach for the rice or pasta I serve everyone else. Once in a blue moon we'll make or buy pizza, and I have some but fill up on vegetables and treat the pizza as a accompaniment vs. main course.
You can do it. It just takes a little persistence/tenacity on your part to form new habits, and maybe a little acclimation for your SO, too.0 -
He eats what he eats and I eat what I eat. For the most part we eat the same meals but different portions. I eat more meat, he eats more of the carb-y side dish. Snack-wise, he's more apt to eat something like fried mozzarella or fast food than I am but it doesn't bother or affect me at all.
No, I don't leave the room when he snacks. I'm usually reading a book in the same room where he is snacking while playing his farm simulator on PS4.0 -
But it is so unfair, isn't it? Only after coming to MFP I understood why my husband gets to stay skinny and I don't. If I ever reach my goal weight, I will only be allowed 1450 kcals at maintenance! So unfair! I do plan to let this go after my eightieth birthday though, so it is not 1450 kcals a day for life.
LOL! You remind me of my MIL - -she IS going to be 80 in a few weeks, and says she's totally done with worrying about what or how much she eats. She's an extremely healthy, active 80 yo, so I doubt she's going to start pigging out. But I wouldn't blame her if she did!
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My husband is gluten and dairy free. The kids (almost 6 and 7) and I aren't, per se. So some meals are made for all of us and other days, he's on his own. Some snacks are his alone, some are the kids and some are mine. Others we all can (and do) eat.
His eating habits have taken a big step down the last few months. As a general rule, I assume he's aware he's eating unhealthy/badly and don't comment. I mentioned it last weekend, yeah, he's aware of what he's doing. I made a couple of suggestions, which he was receptive to and that was the end of that topic.
He's not trying to sabotage me, which is the important thing. I'm doing great on that by myself, she said wryly.0 -
i eat less than my husband. we (generally) eat the same thing. if i make something he doesnt want- he makes something for himself. and vice versa.
hes not trying to lose weight - you are. its more about how much you eat and not WHAT0 -
I share all my meals with my lean OH (unless I want to eat something he doesn't like, then I cook 2 different meals, but it's very rare) and simply give him bigger portions/supplement my smaller ones with salad. That's the only real trick. He has a very high metabolism and eats treats every day otherwise he loses weight. That's the hardest for me. I try to have fruit instead, of low fat treats.0
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I do almost all the cooking and grocery shopping for us (me, DH, 16 yo son, and over the summer 19 yo son). The teens don't really need to diet, though the 19 yo has noticed that he put on a little weight his freshman year at college, so he is at least being more aware of what he eats. DH could stand to lose some weight, but no matter what he (and the kids) will always need more food than me. I cook one dinner and we each eat however much we want. I did joke to DH that he might be losing a little weight without trying since I wasn't snacking as much or buying as much sweet stuff. I think he has seen my success and decided to cut back a little. Though he hasn't stated that he is trying to lose weight.0
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Ugh - this one was a bit hard for me. My husband wasn't on board for the longest time...something like 6 months before he started trying to log food intake, etc.
There were things I had to do like make my own "snack box" with protein bars, and portioned out pretzels, etc. and put it where I wouldn't catch sight of things he liked but weren't food journal friendly for me.
I also had to make the decision that I was doing this whether the SO was doing it or not. I told him of the things I needed him to "hide" from me so I wouldn't be tempted....and would rather not even know it was in the house.
It took about 7 months and I had lost at least 50 pounds before he started logging his food and increasing his activity. He said he couldn't believe that what he was having that he "thought" was reasonably healthy and it SO was not healthy at all.
My husband is on the skinner side....could use to lose about 20 pounds (maybe). I remember there were nights when my food journal was "full" and didn't feel like I could have popcorn and he really wanted it. Sometimes I said I really couldn't have it, and moped about it. Other times I just gave in and had it anyway. It's taken a long time, but I'm now to the point where I don't care if he has it or not. I'm going to have something with more protein. Right now that just "sounds" better to me.
Once I started looking at a "protein first" point of view - it has helped me a lot.0 -
I honestly found it easier to make completely separate meals.0
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Pretty much what others have said. I do most of the cooking, except weekends when we might just have a "do your own thing" night, lol. But even though I don't eat much of things like rice or potatoes I do cook them, and he eats that and I eat the meat and vegetables and a few potatoes or a small portion of rice. We don't do desserts much although he has a favorite Portuguese cake thing that he buys for himself and has on the weekends. I'm not tempted by that because it's not chocolate. I mean, why eat cake if it's not chocolate?? lol
When I make a big salad I put all the veggies in it and then set out cheese, beans, nuts, and tomatoes (I don't add the tomatoes because it makes the lettuce soggy). I might add some beans to mine and my husband adds everything to his.
We do eat pizza but it's usually never unplanned so I take that into account when I plan my breakfast and lunch on pizza days... I might have just an egg white omelet with veggies for breakfast, and a salad for lunch, and make sure to take a good walk that day, then I have a lot of calories left for pizza.
My husband makes us a gin and tonic every evening in the summer. He makes his with regular tonic and mine with diet tonic.
Those are some of the things we do so that I can stick to my calories. I have to say though that when I mentioned to him the "diet" advice of half your plate with veggies, and the other half for everything else he started doing that too. lol. Not sure he's lost weight (he doesn't really need to lose much) but he's eating healthier.
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I bought my boyfriend m&m's for dessert tonight. I bought myself something to make a low calorie frozen sludge. I made my dinner, he made his. If we do eat the same meal, I try to eat a proper portion. Then once in awhile I'll go out and stuff myself with him and it's fun.0
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I struggled with this a lot when I was on a very strict 12 week cut, adhering to specified foods and portions with 100% compliance. My husband did NOT join me on the plan, and in fact complained at times that "eating with you is no fun anymore" because I had to take tupperware with me when we went out, or only ordered salads without dressing.
Living with a SO who isn't eating what you're eating, or who doesn't really support you in your dieting strategy can be a hurdle, but it's not going to stop you unless you let it. Tell the SO what your needs are, ask for their support, but know it's really got to come from within you, and you CAN do it on your own.0 -
I see you are shooting for low GI and limited saturated fat. I think you can do this by making sure there are lots of alternate snacks for you. Things like rice cakes and popcorn. He needs to eat-nearly constantly-if he hopes to gain.
My hubby has his snack shelf and I have mine.
We had different ideas tonight on how to prepare the eggs. He didn't want me adding all these veggies. So I cooked up the extras, put them in a separate bowl and we served ourselves. Funny thing is, he ended up taking more tomatoes, since they were so handy.0 -
As far as shared activities where snacking might be involved . . . I find ways to keep my hands busy. When we watch shows or movies together, I'm typically knitting or sewing or involved in some sort of project that doesn't mix well with casual munching. (Who wants chip powder on their yarn?) My boyfriend will also keep his snacks out of my easy reach or eyesight if asked. (For example: If I'm sitting on his left, the snacks are on his right, blocked from view by his body.)0
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I always do the shopping myself anyway, he can't stand when I'm stood waiting for the discount fruit or forget something and go back, so I just meet him on the way back from work (neither of us have a car so it's pretty difficult to carry loads back).
I did have a moment last night where I broke down and admitted that although I've been eating healthier and had started the Couch to 5K running plan, I didn't feel like I was losing weight and that I can't see or feel the changes he can see. I know it's early days to see a difference but if I'm losing anything, running is turning it straight back into muscle (noted by how thick my calves are getting).
As I'm a student and he's an apprentice we don't have much money to "buy diet foods" although 80% of our food money goes on fresh vegetables, fruit and meat, he's said to wait for my student loan installment for this term and his pay and we'll go and sign up to our community centre gym and that he'll help me through it. Not only that but he's going to push me and use the safe we've got to keep his snacks in for when I go to bed at a weekend.
In terms of keeping my hands busy, he's going to buy me some craft supplies such as wool so I can start making Christmas baubles as this is our first Christmas together.0 -
My husband is twice my weight. He's also 9 inches taller and very different builds. We only eat our evening meal together as he's out at work before I have breakfast with the kids. This is part of the reason that I save about half my calories for my evening meal and evening snacks. I don't mind light breakfast and lunch but need to have a big filling (but healthy) tea.
Also - exercise is key. So important.
I'm not dieting though. I'm just noting everything I eat and adjusting portions so I'm not pigging out on left over pasta or snacking on crazy stuff like bowls of cereal. Or having a mug of tea in the evening rather than half a bottle of wine.
You can still eat pizza. You can still eat that triple chocolate thing.0 -
But it is so unfair, isn't it? Only after coming to MFP I understood why my husband gets to stay skinny and I don't. If I ever reach my goal weight, I will only be allowed 1450 kcals at maintenance! So unfair! I do plan to let this go after my eightieth birthday though, so it is not 1450 kcals a day for life.
LOL! You remind me of my MIL - -she IS going to be 80 in a few weeks, and says she's totally done with worrying about what or how much she eats. She's an extremely healthy, active 80 yo, so I doubt she's going to start pigging out. But I wouldn't blame her if she did!
I'll probably eat healthy when I turn 80, but at 90 all bets are off...it's gonna be ice cream for breakfast, lunch & dinner!
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Here's what I do - I make myself a hot cup of herbal tea and slowly sip on it while watching tv so I feel like I'm "eating"/"consuming" something without any added calories. Or keep low calorie popcorn available that you can pop and eat when he's junking away.0
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OH!!! For couch snacking, I abstain and paint my nails instead. Keeps the focus on, hands busy, and definitely stops the hand-in-the-bag action.0
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My SO and I are in a very similar situation to you by the sounds of things. We've been living together in our own place for 6 months now, 4 of which I've been using MFP. He is also considered slightly underweight and struggles to gain. I just buy different things and it doesn't bother me. My choices are my choices; I don't inflict my low calorie diet on him because he's not the one that's overweight. We do share some snacks- things like popcorn is good as its relatively low cal and easy to snack on- but I'll weigh my portion out and give him the rest of the sharing bag.
Most other times we tend to have our own snacks, his higher and mine lower cal (or smaller portion sizes). We even have separate bread/cheese/mayo each as mine is low cal and his is 'normal', just because of preference haha.
Things like meals- I make alterations for each of us. Sometimes we'll eat the same things in the same portion sizes, sometimes we'll eat the same things and I'll have a smaller portion, and sometimes I'll make something (say grilled chicken) and I'll have a mix of veg with it, while my SO will have gravy, chips, beans etc alongside it to bump up the cals a little 0 -
I take matters into my own hands... I plan the meals. I think of things that I can have comfortably and if that isn't enough for him, I'll make a side dish that I won't even touch.
Even starting at just having smaller portions of the items your partner has is worth it. You can't look at it as depriving yourself, either!0 -
My husband and I are not on the same game plan. He can have all the junk food he wants he actually has his own cupboard. He no longer tries to sabotage my dieting. It's a give and take and after a while the foods that tempt you won't be as appealing.0
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It's easy, because I'm not dieting. I'm making a lifestyle change and actively choosing to eat less. This has not affected her at all, because I still eat exactly the same things I used to eat. I just eat less of them.0
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Luckily my SO is also athletic and health-conscious (more so than me at times), and we go through phases of eating well at night or not-so-well. But what makes it work to some extent is that I don't eat a lot during the day (a bar for breakfast and salad for lunch) while he eats a more typical sandwichy-type lunch and drinks sweet tea and things like that (not to excess, but I rarely drink them). I find that saving most of my calories for dinner is what works for me. If I was on really short rations at night as a rule I think that would be hard (alone or with him).
Even if I cook, I just weigh/measure out my portion and he has what he wants. I find that doing "components" works well (we do a lot of chicken/rice/shredded LF cheese/avocado/salsa -- things like that) because I can measure out what I can manage on that particular night.0
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