AIBU to think my DH is overreacting about my eating habits?

To answer your original question, no, your H is not overreacting. If anything, you are under reacting. This is not a “habit”, it’s extreme disordered eating and you should seek professional help before you do real damage to your health and relationship.

Good luck.

I can see why your husband isn’t happy. I imagine he’s hurt by your lies. He’s probably been worried about you and why you could possibly be gaining so much weight when eating a reasonable diet. He may have been going without treats himself to make it easier for you at home. Not to mention all the money you’ve wasted on over eating junk.

you’ve got yourself into very bad habits OP. You may need some counselling to help you get through it and unpick the reasons you do this and try and put a stop to it. How hard would you find it to drive straight home rather than stopping in a takeaway? You say you don’t over eat at home and so I assume you don’t have loads of junk in the house. You have to go out of your way to get the food. Could you not? Maybe tell your husband the time you’ll be home or let him have your location so he can see where you are. The guilt of him finding out might help keep you accountable. Once you have broken the cycle of doing this it’ll get easier.

I have had times when I have slipped into habits similar to this and I have gained weight. But because I had to go out of my way to get the bad stuff and I didn’t just buy loads to have at home it was easier to make myself stop. It takes effort and will power but you can drive past. The thoughts will fill your head but just go home and do something else. Now I’ve lost weight and got into fitness and grabbing a cheeky between meals mcdonnalds doesn’t cross my mind, well that’s a lie, it does, it can be a bit of a fantasy but I don’t need to follow through with it if that makes sense.

From someone who has a history of an eating disorder, the fact you have hidden your binges is a sign of an eating disorder. It’s hard to stop your pattern of behaviour you will be stunk in a loop, feeling rubbish of your weight gain and guilty because you know the reason why, you then try and comfort yourself by bingeing. Only way to break it is to stop the fast food and hiding it. It’s not going to easy but the more times you drive past that fast food place on errands the stronger you will feel. I will never be fully recovered from anorexia BUT I know when I’m slipping down that slippery slope again and it’s becoming a problem once again when I start lying and hiding the fact I skip meals. Stop the secrecy take ownership and apologise to hubby and ask for help. Honesty is the key to recovery xx

Then you maybe in the 3 percent who don’t regain it all. Good luck.

We need to drink to survive as well as eat; we don’t need to drink alcohol and we don’t need to eat takeaway or cake.

your argument simply doesn’t work.

Also op I found a tiny square of very dark chocolate takes away cravings. Start at 70% then work up to 90% or 100%. A bar last me a month now and I rarely eat any milk chocolate now. But eat it mindfully (don’t do anything else while eating it).

All the Noom stuff is pretty obvious tbh and I’ve not learnt anything new I’ve just made a habit to do it 90%/95% of the time. (100% for the first two months).

The book by Van Tullekan about UPF helped too.

The 7k I’ve lost is over 10% of my body weight (to give perspective). I’ve lost another 0.5 this past couple of weeks but am now at the point where I need to be careful it doesn’t thin my face too much but I’m happy with the results.

I feel completely embarrassed and wish I'd never been as honest with him as I was

I think you really need to explore this. He is upset that you have lied by omission. Your reaction is to say you’ wish I’d never been as honest with him as I was’.

You are secretly eating. Lying by omission and then regretting being honest.

This needs exploring in my opinion.

Noom worked for me. I had a small amount to lose (7kg ish) as my weight had crept up. Lost in in 100 days and it stayed off. The first week you are hungry but log and weigh every thing you eat, do the tasks, accept you are going to be hungry for around a month. I only eat lunch and dinner - so I fast from 6pm to 12 the next day. I still weigh myself daily. Stopped all drinks but water, red bush, coffee, camomile tea and Yerba mate.

Sweet potatoes and veg helped me in the first month as they are filling.

If you try Noom you must really commit to it and it gets easier.

But explore your reaction to chose lies over truth - someone else would say I feel completely embarrassed and I wish I’d been honest and not lied to my husband about my problem. I hide food and I’ve been caught and I’m embarrassed I’m a secret eater.

I totally agree you can eat what you want - but if you believe that why hide it in the first place and complain you are gaining weight.

I have seen lies by omission ending marriages, it can become an awful habit.

I used have a car eating habit - when I was bored or lonely; after a stressful day at work; when I was hungry; whatever. Most days I would buy 3 chocolate bars, sometimes cake and biscuits too, from a petrol station. After the second bar I'd had enough but would eat the rest with little enjoyment. All those calories and sugar rotting my teeth.

My wake up moment came only when I was paying for my 3 bars at the petrol station and noticed a work colleague in the other queue. Felt I'd been caught; so embarrassed although it wasn't actually crime of the century it made me feel shamed. I weaned myself off, mainly by just not stopping at the petrol station to buy the chocolate etc; just kept going in the direction of home and the desire would pass.

Make peace with your husband. Take the blame out of it and tell him how best he can support you.

I think this is a reverse

It's a hard one. I wouldn't want my husband to be upset about what I eat or don't eat either. If you were not overweight, would it be an issue? Would he care then, if you were a skinny car-eater? My car looks like this a lot (classic messy girls car with a nice clean house ahaha) but I'm not overweight so my husband doesn't give two shits what I eat. I understand the part about you not disclosing this as the reason for your weight gain but surely as an intelligent man he must know the reason you have gained so much weight is that you are eating too much? It doesn't sound like a binge eating disorder tbh unless you are ordering like $50 worth of takeaway at a time, it's just bad eating habits and you love junkfood and have become addicted to the dopamine hit of it.

My husband used to be fat and that was because when he stopped drinking alcohol he replaced it with a six pack of donuts every night as a 'reward'. I told him I didn't think it was healthy but at the end of the day it's his body and his diet and I couldn't do anything about it. If he had been secretly hiding the donuts from me it wouldn't have changed how I felt, but I would have been worried that he didn't think he could trust me. Maybe this is why he is upset?

I don't think it's fair you are being kind of 'punished' like this because you are overweight. Like I said if you were slim I doubt he would have an issue. Is he overweight? He needs to get over it as you've told him now and maybe now he knows you guys can work together to help you lose weight.

He is right to care about things that are high on his priority list - your health, your teeth, your wasting of family funds, your eating crap often in front of the children and mostly your lying.

Quit take away food and take a swig of water instead.

Walk and get addicted to some exercise and being healthy enough to parent your children into adulthood.

Why on earth would you advise the OP to try taking drugs to lose weighed when she can at least try to lose it naturally? Also, as far as Slimming world is concerned you take from it what works for you. I reached my target in early December and I am still at my target weight. I have no intention of regaining the weight and found the support at Slimming World to be very useful.

Wake up calls do not help people to get better.

Shaming people does not make them get better.

Whilst you have lied / not been open and honest, surely the posters and your husband realise that this is due to disordered eating and not because @LPLJS95 has set out to deceive and lie to her husband?

I would hope that my husband would show some insight into why I had been secretive about something like this, as opposed to making it about him and his feelings.

I would also be sad and worried if my partner was going through what you are OP. I would not want to make you feel shame or guilt - you already feel this way anyway without other people piling on.

You have nothing to be ashamed of OP - I am a binge eater and know in my heart that I have an eating disorder. I can totally empathise with you. You deserve to feel better about yourself.

I think that if her husband had found a stash of empty alcohol bottles that she hadn't had time to hide, the responses would be giving her the same wake up call.

Please ignore the mean comments, OP. You have an eating disorder. All EDs are serious (my own DD was hospitalised numerous times with serious anorexia and I've struggled with bulimia myself). Please do check out thé eating disorder charity Beat https://share.google/nxg56SVxt3fpc2SBR . They offer all' sorts of info and online courses. I've also benefitted massively from weight loss jabs and anti-depressants. Do DM me if you want to discuss. Wishing you all the best

Please ignore the snarky comments! You’ve taken the hard first step of acknowledging your disordered eating, on here and to your husband, and that’s very brave. It’s not an easy thing to understand until you’ve been through it, so some people won’t give the sympathy and support that you deserve, but there is help out there and you can get back on track. I’m sure your husband was shocked and upset because he wants the best for you, given you’ve said he’s always been supportive. Wishing you all the best as you move forwards

Just wanted to ask really if you are eating in secret and throwing away evidence etc, iis there is a particular trigger for you, and are you are trying to compensate for something emotionally difficult through food?

You'll get through this and come out healthier, but you just need to find your motivation. You deserve to be healthy and live a long and happy life, just like everyone else.

This is such a good thoughtful post OP. And 100% right. Your DHs reaction is an absolute wake up call. I really hope you can find the strength to tackle this. It sounds as though he really cares and hopefully will support you.

I really dislike when people compare alcoholism to eating disorders. We NEED food to survive, we do not need alcohol to survive. Hormonal changes in women through menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and menopause can wreck havoc with many women's eating habits and weight.

In terms of you asking if I would tell her to stay or leave, I don't know why you are jumping to asking me that, as I was not saying the same thing in my post to her. I was suggesting she ask him to support her, that's entirely different from suggesting she ask him to stay and not leave her.

He doesn’t have a right to know what you are eating, however, to engage in conversations with him about how you can possibly be gaining weight is disingenuous.

that being said, if you were my partner I would try to have empathy. I would imagine your dishonesty comes from a feeling of shame. Maybe take this opportunity to have dome honest conversations with him (or someone else) about your eating habits.

As someone who had extremely disordered eating in their teens and 20s, this would really concern me because secret eating is one of the signs of an eating disorder.

I’d really recommend you seek professional support to better understand what might be driving your eating habits and weight gain. Beat eating disorders have some great resources on their website if you’re not comfortable speaking to your GP yet.

You are upset at the moment that your guilty secret has been found out but I wonder if you subconsciously made your tracks more obvious so that things could be brought out into the open. Once your husband’s shock and hurt begin to subside, it will be time to have a deep conversation and make plans for the future together. You never to be a team in this. Your weight is so high now that you will find it very difficult to lose on your own, especially with such a large emotional factor coming in to play. I think you need to see your doctor as a first step and explain everything to him/her as you have written it here. It would be good if you could be referred to a nutritionist and a psychologist or counsellor as l think you have a lot of underlying and deep-seated issues. WLI may well be suggested and l think l would take up the offer in your position. I also think you have been very brave to open up here.

Yes, I’d probably cut him some slack. None of us can say for sure but…He’s probably been worrying about you because he couldn’t figure out what was going wrong to make you that BMI, and now he’s clearer about what’s happening for you, he’s wondering why you felt you couldn’t confide in him perhaps?

And what are you going to do? You could do the Zoe app if you don’t fancy WLI or standard diets. I found that I craved those kinds of foods when my blood sugar plummeted, so eating slow release energy foods really helped.

OP I think you need to cut DH some slack. He's had a heck of a shock on many levels - a combination of the amount you've been eating, the fact that you've lied to him (telling him you don't know why you've put so much weight on when you do), possibly the cost, concern about your health. I think you need to give him some time to process what he's just learned. You've known for a long time what you were doing, he's only just found out.

Let the dust settle and then talk again.