Is there any way to motivate the missus to lose weight? Running out of ideas...

duchy

Georgiegirl256 wrote: »

until I realised that no, I didn't actually need them, and I gave up by going cold turkey. Anyone can do it be it with cigarettes, food or whatever....it's always a choice.

Food is a bit of an exception though...... alcohol, cigarettes, booze you can keep away from and abstain completely .......food not so much

Georgiegirl256

duchy wrote: »

Food is a bit of an exception though...... alcohol, cigarettes, booze you can keep away from and abstain completely .......food not so much

Agreed, but my point was about junk food....that, you can keep away from. To eat chocolate, crisps, pizza etc is purely a choice, no one forces someone to eat them and nor do you need them to exist. Some people were saying 'but we DON'T have a choice'....erm, yes you do! Everything's a choice. Granted, it might be harder for some people than others, but a lot of the time it seems to be excuses.

I was the same with cigarettes for a long time, 'I need them', 'I can't do without them', all excuses. Yes, you need food, but the type of food you put into your mouth is all down to he individual.

No one made me eat those Monster Munch crisps the other night, but I wanted to....crisps are my weakness.

74jax

Georgiegirl256 wrote: »

No one made me eat those Monster Munch crisps the other night, but I wanted to....crisps are my weakness.

Pickled onion? 😃

Georgiegirl256

74jax wrote: »

Pickled onion? 😃

Of course! Closely followed by roast beef! The hot ones have been left, they are my 'when there's no other crisps left, they'll do' crisps! .

Person_one

FBaby wrote: »

And yet I have heard it so many times, said to me or to other slim people, I have stopped trying to justify that it isn't luck because the more I do, the more I get the 'yes, but you must have a fast metabolism, or you have good genes', or whatever else that clearly couldn't possibly have anything to do with regularly monitoring what I eat.

Just sitting here on the computer and I get the urge to munch on something unhealthy

I never had that kind of comment when I was what you would consider 'slim'. I got compliments, but never called 'lucky'.

I wouldn't have minded though, while it was never easy to maintain that low weight I was lucky. I was lucky that I was in good health with no thyroid problems or chronic illnesses or lipoedema or mental illness or eating disorder that made it even harder. I was lucky that I had been brought up to enjoy a wide range of foods and not allowed to be fussy and end up with a restricted diet because of that. I was lucky that I could afford to buy really nice fresh ingredients and that I wasn't going through anything too traumatic at that time in my life.

I've since realised that there's more to life than being slim, that it's no use at all as a measure of a person's worth, that a life spent counting calories or carbs is a life wasted, and I've been a happy, healthy and non-hungry size 14 for a while now. We're under so much pressure to obsess over our weight and our eating habits (and other people's) that opting out of the whole circus has been lovely.

Mojisola

duchy wrote: »

Food is a bit of an exception though...... alcohol, cigarettes, booze you can keep away from and abstain completely .......food not so much

Georgiegirl256 wrote: »

Agreed, but my point was about junk food....that, you can keep away from. To eat chocolate, crisps, pizza etc is purely a choice, no one forces someone to eat them and nor do you need them to exist.

That's a bit like telling an alcoholic not to drink spirits but to make good choices and drink lower alcohol drinks or a drug addict that weed is alright but stay away from the dangerous stuff.

paulineb_2

Sugar and salt is addictive. Fast food is addictive and it's everywhere. I live a medium sized town that has around 7 chip shops and maybe 20 takeaways. That's just in the town centre. No, no one forces people to eat junk but in the same way people get addicted to other substances, some people are addicted to food. I naturally crave carbs. White pasta, not potatoes but stuff like French sticks, not the white sliced stuff, crisps, pasties, stuff that has the nutritional value of not very much.

I rarely eat any of it, but removing stuff that you want to eat and can't, isn't easy. And if someone has a sugar craving, I'd imagine it's tough going.

What doesn't help is eating food that we think is healthy and isn't, drinks as well. You'll get people who drink a litre of fruit juice thinking its healthy.

I try and eat well, but over the years I had an extremely poor relationship with food. And myself.

Changing that if you have the motivation isn't that bad. It's getting to the change. There's a cycle of addiction and change by prochaska and di climente, I may have spelled that wrongly, you can relate that to food as well as alcohol and drugs.

daisiegg

Some people are lucky to find it easy to stay slim. My sister, for example. She has a completely different body type to me (boyish - from my dad's side of the family whereas I am a rotund hourglass from my mum's side!) and she finds it much easier to stay very slim. Why? She doesn't like food. She is incredibly fussy and eats a really restricted diet. She sees food as an inconvenience. If they ever invented a pill you could take once a day to cover your nutritional and calorific requirements and not have to eat, she would be first in line. So yes, she is thin (actually sometimes too thin particularly at times of stress) and has no trouble staying that way.

On the other hand, I think she is unlucky that she misses out on such a great part of life as enjoyment of food and drink. She doesn't cook or bake for pleasure,she'd rather not eat out - it is always a chore for her trying to find something on the menu and then she doesn't enjoy it anyway. So yes, she is lucky to have no trouble being thin, but I think also unlucky to miss out on something that can be a source of great pleasure and enjoyment to loads of people. I guess it swings both ways. Not really sure how healthy she is either, when dinner is often half a bowl of cereal. Thin does not necessarily mean healthy.

System

paulineb wrote: »

I actually personally never look at another person and say oh aren't they lucky to be whatever size. Because I don't know what it's taken for them to get there.

I try not to do this, even though I know for a fact my very slim sister eats crap and doesn't generally exercise. She could quite happily eat a whole Maccy ds and then a share box and not even break a sweat, whereas I just have to look at the stuff to put the pounds on!

That said I know she does have insecurities though, and it annoys me when she gets crap off people for being skinny, it's just as bad as people giving me crap for being fat

Big_Tree

To the OP, you should have pretended you where trying to get your husband to lose weight, you would have received much more support.