Okay, my husband is not evil and I truly do love him, but I gotta say he is not the most supportive with my weight loss efforts. When I talk to other women trying to lose weight I find there seem to be two types of problem husbands with weight loss. One, the husbands that try to be the food police, beg, bribe, and barter with their wives to lose weight and really put a tremendous amount of guilt and pressure on them. Thankfully, my husband does not fall in that category. But then there is the other type of problem husband and that would be where mine would fall. I am surprised how many times I have heard comments since I’ve lost weight about “oh your husband must not be able to keep your hands off you now” and “wow, your husband must love the new you” or my personal fav was when someone asked me what my husband says about my weight loss. Doesn’t he say “Dang baby you look sexy?” Okay, all of those have been hard for me to hear, honestly because my husband well, looks just aren’t that important to him. He’s one of those “I love you just how you are” kind of people and I do love that quality in him — most of the time. Anyways, onto the second type of problem spouse. The one that feels safer and more secure with you overweight. That would mine. I honestly think he liked me better fat sometimes. I think men (and women too) get insecure sometimes when their spouse has any big changes. Mine does not deal with change well at all! Although he is not overweight. He’s a picky eater and just doesn’t like a lot of things that are fattening, but most of his family is significantly overweight, more so than I was. Now, what I have noticed within his family and I think as a defense mechanism for some overweight people is developing this attitude that people that care about how they look and their weight are shallow. I have fought this issue in my head off and on during my weight loss. I am not shallow because I care how I look and it’s okay to want to look my best. I guess I wanted to post this tonight because it was just on my mind. I think for me and probably other mommies you feel guilty when you put yourself as a priority. I know I do.
Anyhow, I guess what prompted this is we went out to dinner tonight. My husband loves to eat out. This has been my biggest struggle with losing weight and honestly what put a lot of the weight on me in the first place. I get guilt trips if I don’t go and I have had to become quite the vocal pain in the butt about where we go out to eat. He has gotten pretty good about dealing with my obsessiveness on what I order and where we go, but I feel like it is a good compromise since he likes to go out to eat so often. If we only went out once a month I would not be a pain and would just say the heck with it and splurge. I don’t have a problem with a once a month splurge, but when you are married to someone who wants to eat out twice a week you can be spinning your wheels on losing weight if you don’t come up with a strategy to deal with it. Mr. Temptation sure doesn’t make it easy for me. What I have done to cope with this is I have become intimitely familiar with as many restaurant’s menus as possible. I have a pretty good idea on food choices I can make without going way over on calories. I will also use my kids to my advantage too and split my meal in half with one of them. I have had to learn how to eat out and stay healthy. It is really hard. Tonight was especially hard because the menu had “food porn” on it. (I saw that term somewhere and liked it so stealing it.) Anyhow the pictures were sooooo tempting, but I had already decided I wanted to see if I could go the whole month of February without a huge splurge. I’m trying to see if I can conquer the once a month binge problem I’ve been having and plan to have a nice big splurge in March. I was quite proud of myself that I chose the lighter option. I did wind up sharing one of my kids desserts, but only had 25% of it so I think I did okay and this way I went home not feeling super deprived either.
What I have found now that I’ve been at this a while is that my husband has come around on somethings. One, I have stood my ground on what we eat at home. At first him and the kids pitched a fit when I got rid of the pop/soda and the junk in the house. I listened to whining and pouting and him bringing home junk anyways. Well, then I stopped sending him to the grocery store and started doing all the grocery shopping. I used to send him for things sometimes and without fail when I send him he will bring home junk. Guess what? You keep putting your foot down and you know what? They get over it! Now, we eat brown rice (lots of protests on that one too from hubby and the kids). We drink milk or water with dinner and water the rest of the day. We eat whole wheat pasta and oh yah the sugar cereal is gone too! I buy Cheerios, Kix, and Kashi, and a few others. I cook breakfast a lot now too. It’s taken me forever to get it. This is a family affair and the only way for this to really work is if I drag them along for the ride. Now, for those of you with spouses that aren’t all on board. They may not come completely around, but if you stand your ground they will get over it and hopefully they’ll do like mine and at least meet you half way. (Oh, and I forgot to mention my 12 year old who is overweight lost 3 1/2 pounds and grew half an inch since October and I didn’t do anything other than get rid of the junk. It’s not a huge loss, but I figure with the 1/2 inch growth it’s more and the doctor and my goal was more for him to grow into his weight so I was thrilled to see we are making progress in the right direction.)
My spouse still brings home chips and donuts and snacks. I’ve never been really overweight, but still, trying to be healthy when family wants junk is tough. We’ve fought in public at the grocery store the last two times we went. He wants chips and snacks and, well, just plain junk. Then had a fight in the cereal isle about pancake mix because he doesn’t want to try whole wheat pancakes…
It is a tough ride with family along, but definitely worth the effort to keep ourselves healthy. In the long run, hopefully my daughter wont have to take care of me as I age.
My husband loves me fat and thin – and everywhere in between! He’s always told me from the get go that losing weight is up to me and if that’s what I want to do, then he’ll help any way he can.
We like to eat out too – but I try to get the menu online and make up my mind before I go and not request a menu at the restaurant – that helps! (sometimes!) 😀
My husband is a pain. Although, I love him with all my heart. He is kind and loving when I am at my fattest. He is very vocal about how beautiful I am when I’m losing/have lost weight (although, his first ever weightloss compliment “wow! your boobs actually stick out further than your stomach!” was a bit of a… put off..). The bad part is that he encourages me to take a “break” from my diet multiple times a week. “You can’t always deprive yourself… have a beer!” “Come on, this is your FAVORITE ice cream, you have to have a bowl…” or just generally dragging me out to eat four or five times a week, ordering the most fried and fatty thing on the menu and telling me we ought to split it. Grr.