Is this enough food?

[Babysafari]

This is what me and dh had for dinner. A whole baked potato each with butter, grated cheese, 1/2 a tin of beans each and 1/2 a tub of coleslaw plus 1/2 a bag of scampi each.

Dh is still starving but is very overweight and wants to cut back. He'd usually have a whole bag of scampi to himself.

Before anyone tells me off I know it's not the healthiest meal but it has to be something quick and easy on Mondays and it was what I fancied.

I couldnt eat half that! Thats alot of food. Drink water before eating as thirst and hungry can sometimes be mixed up.

I've just had a discussion along similar lines with my mum about my dad's diet.

Basically you can't make him something he doesn't want to do. It has to come from him.
What you can do is look at your diet and add LOADS of vegetables to his evening meal. Reduce the sugar. Reduce the very high fats foods.
Don't tell him it's a 'diet'. Just do it and see how it goes.
If he chooses to eat crap at work, it's his responsibility. You can only do so much.
One thing that could work better is talking about energy. If he is doing such long hours, I suspect he is tired and is using food to keep him going too (crips, chocolate etc etc). He might be more open into looking at diet as a way to get more energy rather than loosing weight.
He might want to look at other lifestyle changes (eg time he is going to bed) to help too.

Thank you for all the suggestions I'm taking it all on board.

I was in the habit of doing a salad with everything I'll start doing it again.

Unfortunately dh doesn't like boiled egg, nuts, raw veg, fruit, all the things I'd snack on for weight loss.

He's a big meat eater, loves red meat, not keen on chicken. He does like most veg if cooked.

His favourite meals are toad in the hole and cottage pie.

Now we're not small eaters (although not overweight) but that's an insane amount of food!

We'd eat that between 3 of us, without the coleslaw (1/2 a tub of coleslaw in one sitting is a huge amount!) and just a sprinkling of cheese.

"Is this enough food?"

Hell yes, and then some!

Butter and cheese are pretty much just slabs of fat. They aren't especially filling so just cutting those out would significantly reduce the calories in that meal. Try a small amount of low fat spread on the potato instead if the bean 'juice' isn't enough. A large side salad with raw veg like carrots and cabbage will help to fill him up rather than mayo-laden coleslaw. Tuna or grilled chicken rather than scampi, though not loads as the baked beans are already a good source of protein.

There's lots of ways to cut the calories without eating like a sparrow. He can still have big portions to fill himself up, just healthier foods.

I also agree that a large glass of water 20 minutes before eating will help reduce appetite, especially if he's dehydrated.

I know a man who lost a huge amount of weight with slimming world. He was 20st and is now 13st - incredible!! A real blokey bloke too, not the kind you'd expect to do sw. Worth having a look at their website for inspiration and maybe suggest it again?

I would go with the potato and a small bit of coleslaw because I like it the other stuff would be to much for me.

You know it's a decently large amount of food you are not starving anybody. He just needs to learn it

I snack on popcorn, ice cream, Ben and Jerry's. But I make sure I have enough calories left to cover these things. I never snack on fruit and veg. That's just yucky.

Some people can't snack on a diet I could stick to a diet where I didn't snack. The biggest misconception I've found about dieting is that there is only one way to do it if you look you can find people who have lost weight eating mcdonalds or pizza everyday as long as they are eating less in calories than they are eating they are losing. Yes you have to work out what's really important to you (eg large portion vs what's in the portion) but the diet that is most likely to work for you is the one that has as much of the food you like and love in it as possible. I can't think I've given up anything entirely.

I couldn't keep to a diet where I didn't snack not could

My DH is pretty tall and we both have fairly big appetites but are quite slim (both have fast metabolism). We would both probably eat that minus the scampi, or have a salad instead of the coleslaw perhaps. We might follow it up with something sweet, a few biscuits, some fruit, a beer - but probably not seconds.

I think you're absolutely right - your DH isn't starving, he's just got into the habit of eating shitloads and instead of eating to satisfied is eating to stuffed. And actually that's not so much of a problem if you are stuffing yourself on vegetables. But with cheese and scampi and bacon baguettes he's going to feel crap.

Personally I'd say no calorie counting or slimming world stuff, but he HAS to eat 5 portions of veg (not incl potatoes) per day as a challenge for a month. Just to help him fill up on better stuff.

I had a health scare the other day and it really shook me up, made me think I need to be healthier for my kids and our future. It's the only thing that's really made me feel motivated to make changes to my lifestyle tbh. Maybe you need to find a way to scare him??

Is money a motivating factor - could you do with saving? As it could be a great excuse for him to take a packed lunch or not buy snacks on the road. Maybe you could work out what he spends on crisps, choc etc in a month, it's probably a shocking amount.

Sounds like a lot to me. If I was having a jacket potato I'd have a fairly smallish one with some butter and cheese and about a 1/4 tin of beans and I'd be stuffed. I don't tend to eat big meals though as I'm more of a grazer

Can you do some research to show how him what he's eating - particularly snacking on - is making him feel hungry all the time.

Have a look at leptin, insulin and ghrelin and see how a high carb diet gives 'sugar spikes' which in turn makes you hungry. People just do not realise how much of ordinary food the body will treat as sugar.
the Wheatbelly blog has a lot of info about this and explains it much better than I can.

I'll use 'turn to sugar' in this list, it's a lot more complicated than that, but it gets the idea across about the type of foods you eat and shows the effect they have on your body. I used to eat food similar to this.

e.g. breakfast weetabix and jam on toast. The cereal and bread will also turn to sugar as well as the jam. There's nothing here to prevent hunger after an initial sugar high mistaken for satiety as a full tum. Soon hunger pangs start.
snack biscuits = wheatflour turns to sugar, there's also fat and likely not a good one e.g. palm oil, again no protein. Up goes the spike and soon there's a crash, hungry again.
lunch sandwiches and crisps. the bread and crisps turn to sugar. you're beginning to see the pattern now, up and then down...
snack cake = wheatflour which turns to sugar plus more sugar. way up and quite quickly down again and starving hungry.
main meal potatoes/rice/pasta with meat or fish in a sauce, dessert. Carbs turn to sugar as do most desserts stuffed full so huge sugar rush followed by a steep plummet.
snack chocolate = there you go, sugar and fat. high again, then it depends if he can go to bed before yet more hunger pangs start, or if he decides to try something for supper before bed.

Do you see how all day he'll be yo-yo ing from initial sugar highs to sharp crashes, rinse and repeat all day. Basically it doesn't matter how many times he tries to feel full eating that type of thing, it won't work for long. About an hour to an hour and a half later, he'll be ravenous.

If he changes to a much more low carb, adequate protein and high fat diet he won't feel hungry because he'll no longer be creating those yoyo sugar spikes.

Have a look at the aforementioned Wheatbelly blog for recipes and Michael Mosely's latest one thebloodsugardiet.com/

Oh gosh I feel a bit ugh now. Honestly there was a time is have had potato cheese and beans with nothing else. We do like scampi but we do only have it a few times a year because it's so expensive. Another reason why I can't stand dh eating a whole bag of it!

I need to keep in mind too much food but also the wrong types of food.

Blankmind what would you eat in a typical day?

I do keep hearing bad things about simple carbs and foods like white potato, pasta, cereal and bread.

I low carb but even when i didnt i wouldnt have eaten half that and i really am quite overweight. That is a tonne of carbs, massive insulin spike thats prob why he feels hungry later. The best thing about low carbing is that i dont get hungry anymore. Low carbing makes me feel better so even if the benefit wasnt weightloss i would still do it. Low carb bootcampon here is half way through but there is a tonne of info there and everyone is really helpful and nice. The food is AMAZING as well.

I can sympathise OP. I recently cut our portions in half. DH agrees that he was eating ridiculous amounts of food, but he still has a moan about how hungry he is all the time. He is losing weight though.

I however, have cut out more than he has. I no longer eat anything like crisps/sweets/cake and totally cut out fizzy juice. I haven't lost a thing. Really getting fucked off with it tbh. But I digress.

If it were me I would make prawn marie rose to have with the baked potato, plus a side salad.

(My DH wouldn't eat baked potatoes/prawns/mayo/salad.)

To be honest he was hungry before he'd even put his plate in the dishwasher. He does that with every meal we eat, before he's even eaten the last bit he start looking to see if there's seconds.

I was stuffed and I'm still stuffed now. Dh is snoring his head off so he couldn't have really been that hungry.

I'll echo Blankmind's posts re: insulin spikes caused by carbs. Glycaemic Index of foods can be really confusing.

For example, baked potatoes (a staple of dieters everywhere!) have a very high GI. Boiled potatoes have a low GI. They will contain the same amount of calories per 100g but their affect on the body will be very different.

So less sugar, less simple carbs. More protein and veg.

Does he drink enough water?

What would you replace the baked spud with? If we were having chicken and salad?

I guess the spaghetti with the spag bol is the same.

Another thing is if he eats quickly then he will still feel hungry even though he's eaten a lot. It takes around 20 minutes for the feeling of being satiated to register. If he's wolfing down food and not chewing properly then that's not helping.

Eat slowly, chew more and you may find this is enough for him to end the meal feeling full.

As a fat person myself, I feel very well qualified to offer advice (if only I'd sodding do it myself!).

Either, start by keeping the same volume of food but changing the types of food to healthier versions and veg/ protein vs carbs/ fats

Or, tackle the portion size. Which means he has to be willing to stick it out until his stomach has shrunk a bit so he feels fuller with less food.

Personally, I start losing weight after being poorly or doing some kind of horrid cleanse thingy as its so much easier to eat less when your body expects less. Not quite sure how to engineer a helpful stomach bug for your dh though

Probably not although we don't have sugary drinks so it's water or nothing.

What would you replace the baked spud with? If we were having chicken and salad?

Boiled new potatoes would be better. I'm guessing he's not a beans/pulses kind of guy (e.g. lentils)?