Losing weight with husband - help!

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  • RoxieDawn
    RoxieDawn Posts: 15,488 Member
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    Gosh I guess I lucked out. For starters I set out to find a way to control my eating over a year ago and came here and started calorie counting. He then decided he wanted to loose weight (I lost 15 he lost 55 pounds) and we did it together. I have an account here, he does not. But I count his calorie I guess for him.

    We go to the store together, I cook, he cleans the dishes. I pack his lunches (he gets a bag of groceries already portioned out (weighed and measured) for him to store in the fridge at work on every Monday, and he is notoris for eating exactly what was packed and nothing more,, sometimes he will tell me he was not in the mood for X...

    We eat dinner together every night which we agree in the morning what we are having. I cook 80% of the time and he will grill on weekends..

    I guess it is the harmony that we have and gosh do we eat very very very differently than we did over a year ago..

    I won't say it was easy in the beginning because at first it was just me wanting to loose a few pounds to us making life time changes. We are both FOODIE's big time, but we just do it so much differently now than we did before.

    Give it some time and try to get creative with making food the enjoyable part of the day with each other and not a chore. Make it something you can try to compromise or the only route is to have different eating schedules and even different food, which does not help the budget on food very much...
  • FitEqualsSmile
    FitEqualsSmile Posts: 160 Member
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    I totally agree with everything jennamae102 says above. This saved me when my kids where younger but want to add this. Stop making different meals for your kids, unless this is medically driven, if they are picky/selective eaters they can have PB&J as an alternative.
  • mish26
    mish26 Posts: 60 Member
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    I think you're making this really hard on yourself. I'd be pretty upset if I had to cook three different meals too! You need to find some meals for everyone to eat, even if a few adjustments have to be made. I have a kid with food allergies, and there some meals I have to modify a bit for him, but for the most part we all eat the same thing. If the kids don't like it? Well that's too darn bad for them. You've made yourself into a short order cook. Stop that! It's only going to get worse as your kids get older. I have one really picky kid (the same one with allergies) and I get how frustrating that can be, but it's not going to get better if you keep catering to them.
  • mtnstar
    mtnstar Posts: 125 Member
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    Lilredcat, I feel ya! I have three kids ( 9,5,3) , and it is so frustrating to feel like a short order cook. It's helped me to make a menu at the beginning of the week, with input from everyone on the shopping list. I make sure there is something on the menu that each kid likes for the meal, and they are required to take a "no thank you bite" of things they don't like. If my husband isn't satisfied with the portion/food choice, he has the option to make himself something additional. We do a lot of southwestern taco and burrito style foods, so each person can have some choices of what goes into his or her meal (ie - beans or fish, cheese or not, etc). I've instituted a policy called zero complaint tolerance. If a child complains, his/her meal is taken, and he/she is excused to his/her room for the evening. This might sound a little harsh, but I had to stand up for myself because like you, I found myself crying in the kitchen. I also resented my family for being ungrateful for the food we are fortunate to have. Mealtime is much less stressful now.
  • carmkizzle
    carmkizzle Posts: 211 Member
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    mtnstar wrote: »
    Lilredcat, I feel ya! I have three kids ( 9,5,3) , and it is so frustrating to feel like a short order cook. It's helped me to make a menu at the beginning of the week, with input from everyone on the shopping list. I make sure there is something on the menu that each kid likes for the meal, and they are required to take a "no thank you bite" of things they don't like. If my husband isn't satisfied with the portion/food choice, he has the option to make himself something additional. We do a lot of southwestern taco and burrito style foods, so each person can have some choices of what goes into his or her meal (ie - beans or fish, cheese or not, etc). I've instituted a policy called zero complaint tolerance. If a child complains, his/her meal is taken, and he/she is excused to his/her room for the evening. This might sound a little harsh, but I had to stand up for myself because like you, I found myself crying in the kitchen. I also resented my family for being ungrateful for the food we are fortunate to have. Mealtime is much less stressful now.

    Good for you! Doesn't sound harsh to me at all, just no non-sense. :)
  • mish26
    mish26 Posts: 60 Member
    edited February 2016
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    mtnstar wrote: »
    Lilredcat, I feel ya! I have three kids ( 9,5,3) , and it is so frustrating to feel like a short order cook. It's helped me to make a menu at the beginning of the week, with input from everyone on the shopping list. I make sure there is something on the menu that each kid likes for the meal, and they are required to take a "no thank you bite" of things they don't like. If my husband isn't satisfied with the portion/food choice, he has the option to make himself something additional. We do a lot of southwestern taco and burrito style foods, so each person can have some choices of what goes into his or her meal (ie - beans or fish, cheese or not, etc). I've instituted a policy called zero complaint tolerance. If a child complains, his/her meal is taken, and he/she is excused to his/her room for the evening. This might sound a little harsh, but I had to stand up for myself because like you, I found myself crying in the kitchen. I also resented my family for being ungrateful for the food we are fortunate to have. Mealtime is much less stressful now.

    Your strategy is awesome! My kids help menu plan as well. At least one night per week each person is really happy! We also do a lot of southwestern style foods so people have choices. For example, when we have tacos I usually make it into a taco salad with no shell, my husband and youngest have soft tacos, and my oldest makes sort of a burrito bowl with rice. I don't make the rice, he does if he wants it. Other nights we have burrito bowls with lots of toppings, but since my youngest doesn't like rice he puts his in a tortilla, which we always have on hand.
  • samgamgee
    samgamgee Posts: 398 Member
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    My OH gets around 1900 a day and I get 1390. We like to eat big dinners together, so he'll have his lunch at work and then have a large dinner that I'll make at home. I'll make sure I get in enough steps to be set to Lightly Active, and only eat dinner (with an afternoon snack if I've been working out). I'm lucky that I'm not bothered about breakfast or lunch, or it might be more of a struggle for us to eat the same dinners.
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    I'm just going to add a few thoughts.

    I'm thinking a big salad in the fridge would be good to fill in the corners if hubby isn't satisfied with dinner. Canned beans are good, too. That's what my hubby pulls out if he isn't thrilled with dinner. No complaints, just break open the beans.

    The two of us manage our diets by taking different portions.

    My girlfriend, who raised her four children plus foster children with dietary issues, makes it all look so smooth. The last time I visited, she served her grandson's favourite dinner (his birthday) which the family calls "Yellow Dinner". It is a child-pleasing blend of chicken fingers, corn, and baked potato wedgies.

    I think you need a breakfast. Serve yourself breakfast. Your dinner will be smaller.

    If you break down each meal in to a protein, veggies, and starchy carb, you can mix and match to suit the various family members. Your plate will have more veggies.

    Spaghetti (carb) with meat balls in tomato sauce(protein) and a leafy side salad.
    Ham (protein) with potato salad (carb) and green beans.
    Chicken breasts (protein) with light alfredo sauce, served with fettucini noodles (carb) and asparagus (corn for the kids).
    Black Bean Chili (protein) with corn chips (carb) and avocado dip.
    Flank Steak (protein) with light Caesar salad and garlic bread (carb).
  • Sarahb29
    Sarahb29 Posts: 952 Member
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    Everyone's given you good advice so far. I'll add that if you include the kids and let them pick a healthy recipe, help you cook it they will be more inclined to eat it. Try to find at least one thing everyone can agree on, like a big salad, and then have different proteins/carbs/veggies for everyone else to choose from.
  • Lilredcat
    Lilredcat Posts: 9 Member
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    Thanks for all the suggestions. You make it sound easier than I thought - at least with feeding the adults. The selective eating for my kids IS medically driven. They're both autistic and some foods are painful for them to see/smell/feel (like casserole looks like vomit for instance) so its that too - which makes many of the things I could make for hubby and I offensive to the kids. Like crockpot stuff - the kids hate the smells and mushy look. Good luck on the tasting part....
  • Annr
    Annr Posts: 2,765 Member
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    My husband has his page on this place as I do. We log different foods, and if its a meal that is for my son and husband, I make it his responsibility to know a decent portion. He said he does look at foods and mentally portions better, which this site makes you accountable in doing. For kids and their own likes, medical issues, well that is when you play "line cook". I eat items that I like, so sometimes its like a restaurant. It's my choice, so its doable. Like tonight, I am fixing chicken fried rice because my husband son like that, but for me I am having a different heartier rice, spinach, mushrooms and a portion of pacific cod. I will drink my Mint Tea while I fix theirs, and do mine. Life isn't predictable. :-)
  • quietandmildspirit
    quietandmildspirit Posts: 19 Member
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    My husband and I are dieting together. I make spaguetti with lots of veggies and chicken. I make noodles on the side for him. When I serve it, I give him all the olives and most of the chicken and I eat mine without noodles. All dishes I deal with accordingly. My pizza same ingredients accept mine is on a tortilla with lighter cheese and his is on a normal pizza dough. I pre-cook meals. Half-day on Wensday and half-day on Sunday. Freeze half of everything. Make about for or five different dinner-lunch meals at same time. Also, on Wensday make my quinoa and oatmeal with fruit, freeze half of it. Make my own granola on Sunday, enough for the week. I work every day but Sundays and Mondays, my house cleaning day. Right now I'm on my stationary bike writing this. Have to keep moving.

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