Help me argue this point with my husband

rheddmobile wrote: »

rainbowbow wrote: »

beth0277 wrote: »

4legsRbetterthan2 wrote: »

You may be correct in identifying the problem, but I am not totally convinced the problem is solely his eating out. I go through phases where I eat out alot, but have not had it effect the results I should be achieving.

Largely, I agree with what others are saying. He is an adult, and it is up to him to be honest and accurate with his diary, or not. You can't really make him do it.

If there are reasons you really feel he needs to continue to lose weight then that is something worth sitting down and discussing. But, I think trying to micromanage his intake and diary could lead to alot of tension and resentment so isn't a path I would chose.

I agree that being hard on him could cause tension which is why that isn't the path I will go. I truly want to help him. We've been married for 10 years and I love him very much and want to spend a long life with him. He's morbidly obese. When I've talked to him about it in the past and he says he wants to do it his way or doesn't want to track, I have left it alone. Now that he sees the benefit of tracking, I am just trying to help point him in the right direction. I was actually getting worried he needed to see a doctor (although he had a normal check up in May) so I am a bit relieved to see that it's probably more related to what he is eating.

This is just my 2 cents and stems from an emotional response not a technical one.

it might be helpful for him to seek professional help in this endeavor. He's significantly over-weight and his health (current and future) as well as quality of life are in significant jeopardy. I don't know anyone personally who has gotten to this level of obesity without there being some level of emotional trauma, disordered eating, etc. underlying their issue.

If you've had a serious conversation about this in the past and he understands the gravity of his choices i'm sorry to say that the likelihood that he's just going to change with your help, guidance, or pressure is pretty slim. I mean, it's not like he got to over 300 pounds because he simply didn't know what healthy food was, or what an appropriate portion size of food was, or that exercise is important for our health, etc. He also didn't get to his size simply for convenience (like because he wasn't having his meals prepared for him). Something internally is driving him to eat these foods in the quantity he's eating them.

Quite frankly I don't think he'll be successful until he has a real coming to jesus talk about his health (like some major scare) or he fixes whatever underlying problem happens to be. I'm not trying to be a debbie downer, and maybe he'll be the exception, but i've rarely seen someone succeed who didn't have the intense internal drive to make a change; let alone someone who has over 100 pounds to lose.

By all means do whatever you can to help support him, make it easier on him, try and set a good example, etc. But i wouldn't keep my hopes up about him changing just because you want him to; that's going to come down to his choices and actions.

The best advice I can give is to focus on your own health, get yourself great results, and maybe he'll finally come to the point where staying the same is more painful than making a change.

With respect, where do you live? I'm in Memphis, and the percentage of people here who know what a proper portion size looks like is vanishingly small. Most people think fried okra and coleslaw with mayo are low calorie choices because they are vegetables. There are few restaurants which offer any healthy choices of any kind. If you can't imagine how someone could get to be 300 lbs without being emotionally damaged, I'm thinking you live somewhere with a different culture than mine or the OP's. All it takes to become obese here is to go with the flow.

i've lived in the fattest cities in the united states (houston, san antonio, etc.) and i have never met someone who thought they were "doing well" by eating tons and tons of calories of food every single day for every single meal. Some confusion about what is "healthy" or a "low calorie option"? Sure. But as far as i'm concerned Ignorance can only go so far, consistently eating over your calorie needs (to the point of morbid obesity) doesn't happen by accident. This is no longer relative to the OP so i'll just leave it at that.

It is all about CICO and I can see his point of view on that. I mean im losing weight and I had cheesecake the other day for lunch. I think his problem is not accurately logging like you said.. If I eat out I try to over estimate or I build the entire meal including oils or butter. With so much to lose though he must be really over estimating, or not logging everything he is eating to be causing a stall. I'm 187 right now, and if I eat out a few times a week and even if im not 100% on with accuracy at resturants I still lose.

However, I think you packing him lunches would be the best idea, because as other posted have said you get to eat more, and feel fuller. The low calorie dinner I made the other night, I couldn't even eat a serving of.

I like the idea of the 5 day challenge, do you think he would go for something like that? My husband was arguing with me last night that the almonds we bought were X amount of calories for the serving of 1/4 a cup (he doesnt need to lose weight, so he can eat all the almonds his heart desires) and I said that 1/4 of a cup will not be the same amount as the grams on the package. After about 5 minutes of going back and forth I grabbed the scale and we weighed them. and yup, the measuring cup was only 3/4 of the way full. My point is he didnt believe me until he saw it himself, your husband might be the same way and this challenge is a great way to make him see you might be right.

Eating out & estimating: nothing wrong with it, assuming you are happy with your results.

If he's stopped losing and is NOT ok with that, then doing what he's been doing is not going to get him different results. While I will not disparage his choice in foods, I will say that eating food prepared by others (whether it be family/friends/restaurant) when you don't know what exactly or how much of it ends up on your plate, you are giving up control and thus encouraging inaccuracy.

Of course, there is nothing for you to do here other than perhaps point out that a common first step to fix 'why am I not losing weight' is to improve one's logging accuracy. But beyond that, its up to him.

I agree with most previous posters about letting your husband mange his own weight loss. Yes, be supportive and offer advice if he asks for it, but ultimately this is something that he will have to come to a realization about himself. Offering him strategies to increase the accuracy of his logging may backfire if he's being resistant to the idea of 'diet' to begin with. What you MAY be able to do, however, is to reframe the way that he thinks about diet and logging. This might sound a bit passive aggressive, but bear with me.

The first step is for YOU to demonstrate how inaccurate logging can affect loss in your own diet (fair warning - this may take a few weeks). I'm not suggesting that you sabotage your own efforts or anything, but I suggest an experiment. Get takeout from a place that posts nutrition data. Go home. Before eating YOUR portion of the meal, weigh it - if it doesn't match up to what the nutrition data is supposed to say for serving size, audibly express your annoyance about how difficult it is to get accurate calories counts from restaurants (in general). Do this several times if you can, repeating from different places. Get the same version of a meal from different places so that you can compare how different one is from the other. Again, audibly express annoyance about YOUR OWN meal - don't mention his. Include packaged food and ready meals, if necessary. The point is to get him thinking about how difficult it is to accurately track restaurant nutrition without you having to say anything directly about his own habits.

Browse the threads, look for articles that talk about accurate logging and restaurant foods. Talk about them IN CONTEXT OF YOUR OWN EFFORTS to lose to a friend or family member where he might overhear. Leave a webpage open of a forum discussion when he might be tempted to read it himself. Find a documentary or new show that mentions calorie inconsistency in restaurant foods. Add it to your queue.

Keep doing these things until he brings up the topic himself and then be prepared to engage in a calm discussion about how to improve his efforts. Things not to do: Don't try to do all of these things within a week or so. Be subtle. This isn't about 'dropping hints'. This is about presenting the information to him in a way that may sink in without you having to directly confront his logging (which sounds like it hasn't gone well in the past). This process may take weeks or a month. Be patient. What you're doing here is demonstrating through your own behavior that the things he takes for granted as truth (namely, the calories in a restaurant meal) are NOT true, but he has to come to this conclusion on his own.

When he does finally ask for help/advice, reign in any desire to "be right". Be calm and unbiased, and approach this with love. You want to help him without derailing his efforts. Speaking from experience as someone who is contrarian by nature, it's easy to make an unhealthy choice if someone is telling me that I have to do x, y, or z. If I see them doing x, y, or z, however and I see that it's working, I can come around to that way of thinking as long as I do it at my own pace. Be patient and let him come around at his own pace, as you demonstrate the point. Best of luck.

DamieBird wrote: »

I agree with most previous posters about letting your husband mange his own weight loss. Yes, be supportive and offer advice if he asks for it, but ultimately this is something that he will have to come to a realization about himself. Offering him strategies to increase the accuracy of his logging may backfire if he's being resistant to the idea of 'diet' to begin with. What you MAY be able to do, however, is to reframe the way that he thinks about diet and logging. This might sound a bit passive aggressive, but bear with me.

The first step is for YOU to demonstrate how inaccurate logging can affect loss in your own diet (fair warning - this may take a few weeks). I'm not suggesting that you sabotage your own efforts or anything, but I suggest an experiment. Get takeout from a place that posts nutrition data. Go home. Before eating YOUR portion of the meal, weigh it - if it doesn't match up to what the nutrition data is supposed to say for serving size, audibly express your annoyance about how difficult it is to get accurate calories counts from restaurants (in general). Do this several times if you can, repeating from different places. Get the same version of a meal from different places so that you can compare how different one is from the other. Again, audibly express annoyance about YOUR OWN meal - don't mention his. Include packaged food and ready meals, if necessary. The point is to get him thinking about how difficult it is to accurately track restaurant nutrition without you having to say anything directly about his own habits.

Browse the threads, look for articles that talk about accurate logging and restaurant foods. Talk about them IN CONTEXT OF YOUR OWN EFFORTS to lose to a friend or family member where he might overhear. Leave a webpage open of a forum discussion when he might be tempted to read it himself. Find a documentary or new show that mentions calorie inconsistency in restaurant foods. Add it to your queue.

Keep doing these things until he brings up the topic himself and then be prepared to engage in a calm discussion about how to improve his efforts. Things not to do: Don't try to do all of these things within a week or so. Be subtle. This isn't about 'dropping hints'. This is about presenting the information to him in a way that may sink in without you having to directly confront his logging (which sounds like it hasn't gone well in the past). This process may take weeks or a month. Be patient. What you're doing here is demonstrating through your own behavior that the things he takes for granted as truth (namely, the calories in a restaurant meal) are NOT true, but he has to come to this conclusion on his own.

When he does finally ask for help/advice, reign in any desire to "be right". Be calm and unbiased, and approach this with love. You want to help him without derailing his efforts. Speaking from experience as someone who is contrarian by nature, it's easy to make an unhealthy choice if someone is telling me that I have to do x, y, or z. If I see them doing x, y, or z, however and I see that it's working, I can come around to that way of thinking as long as I do it at my own pace. Be patient and let him come around at his own pace, as you demonstrate the point. Best of luck.

I know its well meaning but don't do this...he'll see through it in a blink and get very annoyed. I would. We've all made variations of the same point. He's logging inaccurately...I'll bet my house he already knows...now leave him alone to sort it out.

beth0277 wrote: »

AliceDark wrote: »

Something feels a little bit off here. If he started at 318 and has been losing a little more than a pound a week over 14 weeks, he's really not creating that much of a deficit relative to his total intake*. Eating out for lunch could be causing him to eat through his deficit, but there should be other places in his intake where he can compensate. Does his calorie target indicate that he should be losing more quickly than a pound per week? I'm wondering if there are other inaccuracies in his logging that he may not be aware of.

*Note that I'm not saying there's anything at all wrong with losing slowly, just that he should have sufficient room in his diet to continue to lose at that rate, especially if he's incorporating exercise.

The loss rate seems slow to me which is why I looked at his diary today with the intention of maybe asking him to see a doc to check his thyroid, etc. According to his fitbit, which I know can be inaccurate, he is burning close to 3800-4000 calories many days and only eating 2,000. I've even encouraged him to maybe up his calories eaten to see if that helps, though I didn't realize he was eating out so much. It seems with a 2,000 calorie/day deficit, though I'm sure it's closer to 1,500 with inaccurate tracking, he should be losing at least 2 pounds a week. He has had some weeks where he loses well but then some where he doesn't budge for several weeks in a row. I think when he is "on" he does well.

I talked to him and he agreed that he hadn't been doing as well as he could but felt like he was tracking accurately and expressed his frustration with his work schedule. In his line of work, he may be out in meetings 2-3 days a week. Those days, the employees go out to lunch. Normally somewhere fast but occasionally sit down type places. He said he does his best on those days but I'm wondering if maybe he tracks a bit higher on those days it will be helpful. So say he has to go to Wendy's and has a burger, track at 1.25 burgers or something to make up for the difference in true calories?

I understand his frustration with that because it would be hard but I'm not sure what the best advice in that situation is.

The most likely source of discrepancy(if he's using correct or nearly correct entries) is drinks... especially refills. and side condiments(ketchup or bbq sauce on fries or steak sauce on steak, etc) That stuff can quickly add up to 1200 or 1500 calories.

It used to drive me insane that hubby would pick up croissants from Tim Horton's (with the requisite markup) instead of buying bulk in the store and freezing them. I made a point of picking up said croissants and mentioning how much money we were saving by having them on hand all the time. After a while he dropped that habit.

I think if you offer to figure out lunch ideas ahead of time it might work. Like, instead of telling him what to STOP doing, offer support on what NEW things you can try (like having a tasty low-cal lunch ready to go).

noirelb wrote: »

But with clean eating and lots of water, ....

What does that mean in your context?

DamieBird wrote: »

When he does finally ask for help/advice, reign in any desire to "be right".

This is a fantastic post. But the quoted part is a nugget that could be lost on many. My wife is right about almost everything. I applaud her for it but it can annoy me greatly too. This is not a rational point of view for me. I love the fact that she is right about so many things - I married a very intelligent woman, far above what I deserve. However, even if she convinces me of something, ultimately it's that something that I'm interested in, not that she was right about it.

To the OP, you are right about this. And when you discuss this stuff with your husband, if you convince him with facts and persuasion, it won't matter that you were right. What will matter is that he is convinced.

beth0277 wrote: »

The town that he works in doesn't offer much other than fast food or sit down home-style type places. Fast food is probably the lesser of the two evils, calorie wise. They do sometimes go to chain sit downs but there are only 2 in town so not too often.

I doubt the validity of a lot of fast food nutritional information. I know some people have lost significant amounts of weight consistently eating fast food 2-3x a week, but I find when I eat fast food more than 2x a week my rate of loss stalls.

I would recommend him overestimating the calories in things when he eats out and cutting back on the days he doesn't eat out to compensate as well. He could also work in more activity those days to try to cover any inaccuracy in logging.

But that's if he really wants advice.

I do like the "make lunch" idea. Yeah it's extra work and yeah he should be able to make his own but in practice... *my* husband would rather stay fat than put in the work to make his own lunches. I know because we tried this.

I am not willing to sit on my butt and watch him become diabetic like his father did and suffer all sorts of needless ailments because he buys junk out of machines or greasy takeout at lunch. If you love someone the last thing you want to do is watch them fall apart. I think some people mistake this care for controlling but we know different.

So I make husband's lunch every day. Not boring and tasteless, but stuff he likes. If he gets tired of a particular fruit or vegetable I'll switch it up, and type of sandwich, etc. Or if tired of sandwiches I can make a healthy curry or stir fry and pack that up. Many options. If you know his taste in food and whether he craves variety then you know what to put in there. For example: Husband started bringing back uneaten bananas. OK, I get it. Stop the bananas for now. Send strawberries. Then grapes. Tired of sandwiches, roll up healthy things in a medium size tortilla.

And, of course, there is the huge money savings! I know Husband has mentioned it's very nice that he has enough calories left for a nice dinner and even a moderate night time snack because I keep the lunch calories reasonable.