AIBU to try to help my wife lose weight? Somehow.

Yep that's reasonable. Diet and exercise is unlikely to get and keep her at a healthy weight, no way round that one, but it's still possible she prefers WW regardless. Have to account for preference.

OP, does your wife enjoying exercise?
If the gym isn’t for her or a game of tennis, going for a swim etc I’d suggest that on weekends, you plan a nice place to walk.
It could be for the two of you or include the kids too.
Start going to national parks or places you could easily get a nice 5km walk in.
Pack some healthy snacks for the walk, water, bananas, cereal bars..
Then when you get home, lunch could be chicken wraps or tuna sandwiches (adding in sweet corn, onions, tomatoes etc)

I’d be really positive about how nice of a walk it was, nice to spend time together and I find after a good walk, you want to refuel with healthy food.

Start this off as a weekly occurrence and maybe midweek if time allows, you could do 2 evening walks together too.

Make it enjoyable, you could go to outdoor hot tubs, walks on the beach.

If you really can’t have a conversation with your wife about her weight, you need to make changes to life that include you both.

Hopefully after a few weekends of going out walking together, she might start feeling better in herself and want to get out exercising more too.

You mention she does all the cooking too. Are the meals healthy?
If I were you and you wanted to introduce more healthy options, you do a night were you cook. Maybe a nice stir fry with loads of veggies or a roast veg wholemeal pasta with salmon or chicken breast.

I’d give yourself a timeline of 6 months to a year to see if anything changes.
Being healthy and losing weight doesn’t happen overnight and maybe your wife needs a little support to get the ball rolling.

I agree that WLI may be great for the OP's wife, especially if inflamation is an issue at all with her joints. But there's been no suggestion that she's shown any interest in using them whatsoever. If she has then I'd suggest the best thing the OP can do is support that choice, but the number of posters proposing that the best course of action is to suggest a woman they don't know, with a medical history they don't know is encouraged to go onto prescrition medication it wild.
Using mounjaro is the single best choice I've made for myself in years, but if someone had said to me, unprompted, hey we should get you some of that ozempic stuff then I think I'd have told them to fuck off.

Exactly, it is the way the OP talks about his wife with such contempt and his refusal to answer any questions about how he treats her that makes us doubt his motives. If she is comfort eating because she is overworked and not appreciated in a miserable marriage then no amount of nagging about diets and exercise is going to help. Instead, if he is serious about helping her, rather than just criticising and putting her down then he needs to look at how he treats her and what he can do to give her the time, energy and motivation to embark on the self care to look after her health.

The OP and the other posters who are talking about willpower and self discipline do not understand how eating disorders work. Just because they can control themselves around food, it doesn’t mean that it is the same for everyone. As an example, I can easily control the amount of alcohol I drink but I don’t think that means that I have more self discipline or willpower than an alcoholic. It just isn’t as difficult to do for me as it is for them.

He's said she's obese, which means she qualifies. And for WLI takers, it's not a 'when' people stop. It's an 'if'. Long term usage is perfectly feasible, as per the WHO, so we can't assume that when someone recommends WLIs they have a time limited period in mind. There's no reason to presume there's an underlying cause that needs addressing other than eating more than she burns off either, so saying it 'won't solve' is too absolute.

I wouldn't go so far as directly advising someone to do it, there's not enough information for that. Agree with you that she needs to know what's causing the pain too, as it could be something else. So those are good points.

But as DW is obese already, no getting round the fact that this comes with risks all by itself. And there's no method more likely to make and keep her not obese than ongoing WLIs.

When i was losing weight with Slimming World my DH used to do my packed salad lunches for me so i could get up a bit later. I was working nights. I didnt even have to ask him.....he just started doing it.

This is the kind of support posters are on about.

@Boomer55 i think perhaps in Scotland, NHS Scotland, has different criteria although it may depend on your region even there. But in England the criteria are BMI 40+ and 4 out of 5 specific weight related health conditions. The only other situation is if you have T2 diabetes, and your blood sugars are not well controlled by other medications, you can be offered Mounjaro for blood sugar control. It's not intended for weight loss alone though in those circumstances, and often the diabetes management HCP will want to keep the dose as low as possible whilst blood sugars are controlled.

GPs cannot offer WLI even if they think the person has health issues with their weight, unless they meet the criteria mentioned above.

The other possibility is that your friend gets WLI via a private prescription and doesn't want to make that widely known.

My friend had a BMI of 32, and she was given them. Possibly because the GP thought she had health risks. I thought it applied everywhere. 🤷‍♀️

I honestly don't understand why there is such a nasty undercurrent on this thread. I've noted numerous posters repeatedly posting to criticise the OP but offering nothing else. It's a very fair AIBU, watching someones health and well being decline and feeling powerless to help is awful, why wouldn't someone want their partner to lose weight? I think sadly this has brought out many of the sexist posters, who no doubt would be telling OP to LTB if it was a reverse.

Sorry, but I disagree. To me willpower is gritting your teeth and withstanding something that you are experiencing a powerful urge or desire for. The things I talked about have reduced my desire. Though not eliminated it entirely.

I do agree that weight loss is more in the arena of difficult than it is complicated. But I also believe that approaches which focus on calories without reference to the nature of the food are not helpful. It is very easy to overeat (consume too many calories) on UPF’s. It is much less likely if you eat mainly single ingredient foods and reduce or eliminate sugar.

When someone comes to that understanding and acts on it, then cravings become much less and so much less willpower is required.

It’s not that you don’t need to use willpower, its more that it’s not enough on its own. Some other things which have helped me

The bullet points on your list do kind of boil down to something approximating "willpower" though. Your bullet point headings: "knowledge, understanding, desperation, a shift in mindset" could all basically be synonymised with "willpower" or if you prefer, "thought-power".

I think there is a huge mega-industry around weight loss that tries to convince us all that it's very very complicated but I think op might be right that it is "difficult but technically simple".

She should also be on omeprazole then if on naproxen

I’m on it for my ankle and hips - severe arthritis

If on nurofen and buying from shops then doc needs to give stronger - co codimal is what I’m on for pain

since losing weight the pain is less tho still there as joint pain

OP YANBU to be concerned about the effects your wife's weight can have on her health.
As a registered nurse, working in a cardiac area, I see what obesity as well as other lifestyle issues has on health.
It's nothing to do with "body shaming" or whatever. Even getting a procedure done when obese can increase risks.
I say this as someone who is a bit overweight myself who is trying to do something about it, increasing exercise etc.

@Carla786

'expecting personal willpower to withstand it is unrealistic for the vast majority'

• what's the solution then? Without willpower you place your fate in the hands of food companies.

It’s not that you don’t need to use willpower, its more that it’s not enough on its own. Some other things which have helped me:

• knowledge about the metabolic effects of UPF’s increased motivation to eliminate them
• understanding the addictive nature of them (especially, for me, sugar) eventually made me willing to embrace abstinence rather than moderation
• a supportive community of others walking the same road
• the desperation which came from the impact my obesity was having on my ability to function and enjoy life
• A shift in mindset which eventually led me to see that social occasions could be enjoyed without stuffing myself with metabolic poison. Eventually, the little voice which told me to celebrate anything and everything with cake dwindled to almost nothing.

There are other sources of help as well which I have not personally had or used but others do, such as a supportive partner making changes with you, and the WLI.

I would love to see legislation to limit the availability of UPF’s and increase the cost. Coupled with public education about how bad they are, plus, you do not need to eat 15 times a day and drink sugary drinks. I would get “healthy” banned from food packaging and advertising, and enforce standards on food In schools, prisons and hospitals.

I am not against WLI. But I don’t believe they can, or should, do most of the work on this. We need to fix the food environment first and foremost, but sadly that is the thing which will probably take the longest to do.

He said she’s obese. It is none of your business her weight, and it is very good advice, and she may not stop the injections, plenty don’t, they are a life time treatment, and you need to change your diet on gnem, eat clean and healthy and in a defecit to lose weight.

if you don’t understand something it’s best to google before posting nonsense,

'expecting personal willpower to withstand it is unrealistic for the vast majority'

• what's the solution then? Without willpower you place your fate in the hands of food companies.

I can’t believe so many posters are suggesting WLI’s when we don’t actually know how overweight the wife is.

such dangerous advice. It also won’t actually solve the issues of why she is overeating and so when injections stop, weight will pile back on.

OP isn’t actually willing to do anything proactive to help his wife at this point.

I’m concerned about the mixing of naproxen and ibruprofen. Naproxen is in the aame category of drugs & they both help with inflamation which in turn will help relieve joint pain.

also people saying her weight is causing the pain, you don’t know that its not always down to weight.

so what I have learnt is this is all futile

Ew. This thread reinforces my dislike of men being on Mumsnet.

By stating the former OP assures that he will never have to follow through.

There is more than one way of approaching the suggestion that you might do the cooking, or at least some of it.

How not to do it: darling, let me take over the cooking and I’ll make sure you eat less and so lose weight.

What might work: I’m interested in trying out some new meal ideas, how’s about I take over cooking 3 nights a week….. and it would give you a break as well.

Regardless of whether she "lets" you or not, you doing the shopping or cooking is the only possible solution and will benefit your kids too.

I think you need to just go ahead and do this. Any resistance you get will be temporary and you'll just have to weather it. After a while, the whole family will get used to the new routine of Daddy doing the cooking.

You can't force her to lose weight. In fact pressure to do so can have the opposite effect.

Do you do the cooking? Get to understand healthy eating and portion size. As a rule of thumb a meal should be veg heavy, a small main protein and a slow release carb. To me portion size is the most important. My diet was generally healthy but my portion sizes were too big and I ate too much fruit.

Naproxen is most often prescribed for arthritis. Also causes fluid retention, increasing body mass.

You don't need to be obese to have arthritis.

My dad has needed his knees replaced since his 30s, never been obese.

So you admit the issue might not be caused by her weight then.

I can, and am, drawing conclusions based on the question you chose to ask. You could have said I'm concerned about my wife's mobility and/ or joint pain, how can I best help her. Instead you posted I'm concerned about my wife's weight, should I involve my child in guilting her about that.