Help! My spouse is an enabler!

Congrats on only eating two pieces. Good portion control.
Its a tough situation, but what is he supposed to do? Eat in secret?
You should make an agreement that certain foods won't be in the house, but other than that, ots your issue, not his.

My other half eats no end of crap, and stays ridiculously skinny.
He keeps waving yummy foods in my face, i just stick with the image of his metabolism catching up with him and we having to push him around in a wheelbarrow.
It works!
Plus, refusing the food makes you feel great!

Keep going, you're doing so well.

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.

My mom does the same thing, but lately she's been eating away from me. She'll go out and have a meal and not bring anything back. I think it really comes down to have a bit more self control, and having him truly see what's best for you as well! My boyfriend was the same way. I gained 65 pounds in a year! Now im paying for it, i've lost 42 lbs so far but I have a long way to go, as I plan to lose more after that. Men tend to eat more, truth is I can't do the same. I have a completely different body. I think it's best to have a little more effort on both of you and meet in the middle. It's one of those tough irritating situations, believe me I've been there.

I suggest sit down with him and have a heart to heart. If he wants those things ask him to make a smaller portion that is right for him and prepare the planned meal for you. Then if you want take a bite or two of his but stick to your plan. If he truely supports you he will respect this. It is hard to say no to food and when it is around it calls your name.

Another thing I have been doing is distract myself from the food. I have two small children that like pizza and snacks. They are active and at their ideal weight so I do not want to not give them only healthly food. They should be able to enjoy the unhealthier stuff also. So when I make or purchase these things for them I tell myself that they need it I do not. Every once in awhile I will take a small portion of their food but overall I tell myself that it is not worth it.

I LOVE food and this is not easy I fight tempation every day. But I have been useing this method for about 45 days and I do not feel like i am missing anything. Hope this helps.

I feel your pain my wife is the same way always bringing home junk food.

Mine is the same way. He "supports" me, but doesn't have the issue himself, so brings home crap for him and our son.
I like to keep WW pizza in the fridge for myself for when they order pizza. And I hide my fiber one brownies and don't let them eat them b/c they are MY treats for when they treat themselves. I suggest that next time your husband makes a homemade pizza, get out a FF wheat pita, lite cheese and veggies and make one yourself! Keep that fun family activity, just change how you do it. You can't really expect him to change who he is if he doesn't have the same issue you have- although it would be great if the world shaped to US, the problem here IS US. We have to learn to change how we respond to temptations.

Here is exactly what I would do- he's making pizza? Make yourself your own pizza- on whole wheat pitta bread with fat free mozzarella. He wants sugary soda? Buy it for him, and buy yourself some Crystal Light or Vitamin Water Zero. He'll see the good choices your making, you'll keep seeing your results, AND you might teach him a lesson in healthy eating, all while beating your cravings ;D

If he's gonna be stubborn, you can be too- stick to your guns and show him how it's done! :devil:

I usually hide the stuff I don't want to eat somewhere that I won't see it (like on top of the fridge if it doesn't need refrigerated) & I always just forget about it. Mainly because I'm not really craving those things much but when I see them I want them.

It is really hard to resist temptation but at some point I decided I don't want to keep doing this to my body. I'm really serious this time and this is the most weight I've ever lost changing my eating habits & I am not going to ruin it.

I do eat treats but only if I have enough cals left.

I am a man, and while men can generally burn more calories than women, metabolism plays a major part in this equation of overall body fat composition. My wife is like your husband. She's never been overweight a day in her life. She's 5 months pregnant with our third child right now and she looks amazing. From behind you can't even tell she's pregnant! To top it off, she's a gourmet cook, and her favorite way to express "I love you" to me is through a meal. I am the opposite. I've struggled with carrying just a little too much body fat most of my life since high school. I've been pretty atheletic through high school and college, but I've never had a six pack. Not even close. It was not until I made a strong dedication to fitness AND nutrition with a big audacious goal of becoming a triathlete that I started to really lose the body fat. Unfortunately, I fell in love and got married to the world's best cook before I reached my ultimate fitness goals, and somewhere along the way I gave them up. I've gained over 30 lbs since then at my heaviest before I joined MFP and started training again. I struggle with the exact same things you are: homemade pizza (mine's from scratch and can feed like 8 people), homemade cookies, dinners loaded with butter & cream. I've been blaming her cooking (and the demands of our children) for my weight gain for over two years now. The truth is, this is MY problem. I've had to make time to exercise and discipline myself to control what I put in my stomach, regardless of what my wife makes or how much she makes. She's compromised with me some and has been making healthier meals, along with not leaving cookies in the house, etc, but in the end, this is my issue, not hers. I have to take responsibility for it. So do you.

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

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!

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!!

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.

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.