AIBU over DHs increasingly unhealthy lifestyle

[Namey32]

I am prepared to be told that IABU but would like some opinions as ultimately I'd like DH to live a long and healthy life with me, the DC and hopefully the DGC in time. However I accept that ultimately it's not up to me to 1. Parent my husband 2. Pester him to be more healthily, also he is not an unhealthy weight/shape and I may also be being swayed by MIL and SILs extremely healthy lifestyle - think clean eating, running etc.

DH has been smoking since we met, although has been 'giving up' at various points. He had some success for 2 weeks over Christmas once. He's tried all sorts of vapes etc but doesn't have much self control. He was asked by the midwife to give up when I was pregnant with DC1 but nothing happened there. I don't have high hopes for this time either (I'm pregnant with DC2).
To be fair to him, he doesn't smoke in the house or around me or DC and will go in the garden or along the road or smokes outside work. I can smell on him though, but I suppose that's neither here nor there.

His eating habits are getting worse. He's not a fan of 'healthy' food and left to his own devices would always opt for the junk food. He doesn't eat fruit and only eats veg in/with whatever I serve for dinner. He doesn't eat breakfast but for example will have a packet of biscuits mid morning. If I don't make him a packed lunch for work, he will go to the shop and buy a packet of sausage rolls (and something else - chocolate/sweets/biscuits etc) which is then lunch. He works shifts so often isn't home for tea. Sometimes I do cook properly and leave his in the fridge and he may well eat it, but then other times (at least once a week) will have a takeaway with the people at work.

My other concern is his energy drink intake - I'm very sure there are several being consumed per day. He tells me he only has one, but his car is full of empty cans - definitely more than 7 per day. Ultimately they're just caffeine and sweetener surely? His nod to 'healthy' is the 0 sugar ones.

He also does no exercise. All he does really is whatever walking we do at the weekend - that sometime is a long country walk but can just be pushing the pram to the park and around town.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting him to live on greenery and water. We do enjoy a chippy tea together at the weekend and we'll have a drink and some cake or chocolate or something in front of the TV at the weekend when DC is in bed but for DH it seems beyond a 'treat'.

I do try to keep him on the better choices e.g. at the weekend when we're both around I'll ask him what cereal he wants while I'm doing mine and DCs so all he needs to do is eat it, but AIBU in if I don't want to cook that night and me and DC have beans on toast for example, expecting him to have something other than a pack of doughnuts for tea? (He does not consider something on toast to be adequate dinner for him - but a pack of cookies or similar is fine).
AIBU in wanting DH to be a bit healthier without me having to patent him In the way I do with our toddler? Should I just leave him to it and accept that he's not going to be in a physical condition to travel the world in retirement as we had planned?? (We're early 30s now).

And I have a DD. I will attempt to be better for her. And will get her to try all sorts..

But you've known his habits for long enough..?

My Dh isn't as fond of the healthy food as I'd like, so I compromise: I make him a pack lunch every day - ham salad rolls for example - he would never choose the salad but will eat a lettuce leaf and a tomato in a roll he hasn't had to prepare. I also send a flask of tea or coffee or a bottle of frozen water in the summer - keeps the lunch cool as it thaws - as a regular alternative to canned drink. For food I cook from scratch and when DD was tiny, her tea when back from nursery was the leftover portion from the meal I'd cooked the night before warmed up, thus leaving me longer to prep that night's meal. Some days I'd cook a double amount of cottage pie or fish pie or lasagne, and this I'd freeze in portions (2 and one or two small ones) so as to always have a ready meal /child meal in stock. Likewise if peeling veg, potatoes etc for today, tomorrows take no extra time to do with them and are popped in water in a saucepan in the fridge. Saves masses of time for little extra effort.

YANBU

Similar, but to a lesser extent with my DH, now we have a 6 month old DS I keep reminding him we need to mirror what we want for him. So that means not pushing veg and fruit round our plates but enjoying them with gusto! It’s a really poor example to set if nothing else. Not to mention it’s not doing him any good.

The other thing you can do, OP, is buy a pressure cooker which speeds up food preparation. I had a crock pot for steel cut oats when our children were young. Cinnamon and chopped nuts could be added, or fruit/raisins, anything really. It’s set up and prepared at night, ready when you’re first up in the morning.

@Ariela

I do exactly the same. DS has his tea while I prep our own. I normally have two “left over” meals in the fridge and a few portions in the freezer.

Hi OP just wanted to say I get it, my DH is not as bad with the smoking and energy drinks, but also has a really unhealthy diet at the mo and works long hours. He eats hardly anything all day and binges on rubbish in the evenings.

I have started just cooking really simple stuff and if he eats it he eats it, same stuff as the DCs with plenty of veggies...but he will go eat crisps and cheese on toast etc and beer / wine instead.

I'm just trying to let go of feeling it is my responsibility and focusing on the DC and my habits instead. Because that is what it is a habit.

I wonder if just keeping good habits myself and helping the DC also they might change as well, but they need to do that themselves. They need to anyway.

It is very frustrating though

I would say that you aren't best qualified to determine what a healthy lifestyle or diet is if you think cereal is an acceptable breakfast for anyone, child or adult.

This is such wankery shite - does anyone really believe that unless you're having kale shakes for breakfast you cant tell your husband that 7 energy drinks a day and a packet of biscuits for dinner is unhealthy?!

OP ignore the holier than thou posters - yes you could also improve some things about the food you have at home, but you definitely have the right to express concerns to your DH about his eating habits without being Home & Country's cook of the month.

Thanks @madcatladyforever,this gives me some focus. I will highlight these.

Batch cook! Once a month I spend a day or two batch cooking snacks, lunches and dinners for the month - I look up healthy recipes, make everything from scratch, use recipes which have an abundance of vegetables, beans, lentils, etc, and don’t use anything processed or premade. It’s REALLY easy and ensures you get healthy meals every day. I try to have 4 veggie meals for everyone 1 meat meal, and I’ve found some really delicious substitutes - sweet potato chili instead of meat chili, for example - just as delicious but a bit healthier with loads of added veg. If he’s got a fridge and microwave at work he can take these lunches to work. You can also bake delicious healthy snacks - stuff like oatmeal and blueberry bars which literally contain nothing bad, not even sugar, and can be freezed too and grabbed each morning to replace the mid morning biscuits! You can find loads of healthy baking recipes and yeah, it’s really easy to find stuff that can be frozen so you can just batch cook loads in advance if you don’t have time to make fresh. I KNOW you shouldn’t have to parent your husband and you’re right about that. But maybe batch cooking might be a quick and easy way for you to kick start his healthy lifestyle - it’s just really convenient and easy and maybe in time he will start to take more responsibility for his own health but at the moment it sounds like he needs a nudge in the right direction. I think a lot of unhealthy eating is just laziness or hanger... like when you get so hungry but you can’t be bothered to cook because you’re too hungry to cook! Or maybe start to get hangry and need to eat NOW - so maybe this would help?

Energy drinks are really worrying and really awful - my dad is addicted to them so I know how you feel. He’s changed to a sugar free one but that’s the closest I’ve come to making him cut them out. I’m worried because of the increased risk of heart attack and prostate cancer in men who drink energy drinks. Can you encourage him to take a big flask of proper coffee each day? The same caffeine hit but much less dangerous.

As for smoking... a baby is at risk when around a parent who smokes even if that parent doesn’t smoke around them. There’s an increased risk of SIDs in babies who have a parent who smokes (even outside of the house). That should really be enough info the kick him into quitting as smoking with a young baby is really irresponsible. Does he know this? Could you go with him to the doctor for some help quitting - lozenges or patches for example? From what I’ve seen vaping carries its own risks so probably be better to try something else.

Maybe going to a doctor for advice with him would help too - if you tell a doctor about his lifestyle and ask the doctor to explain the risks then it might scare him into wanting to make changes and some people do need to be scared into it. Between smoking, lack of exercise, junk/processed foods, and energy drinks, his risk of cancer and heart disease must be incredibly high and maybe hearing this from a doctor would kick his arse into gear.

Get him a health check up, the works. That should be enough to scare him into changing.

There isn't really anything you can do, it's up to him. My husband was similar until a health crisis at which point he stopped smoking, lost 40kgs over the following year, started batch cooking and taking healthy food to work instead of takeaway and now takes regular exercise.

I tease him that he now voluntarily eats salad and I used to moan regularly before he lost all that weight that he wouldn't include vegetables in dinners when he cooked.

I'm sad to say but he would never have changed until that point when it all became real. But I'm really proud that he's done it and continues to.

@thanks funonthebeach20, winterlife and ariela - some good ideas here. I need to be strict with myself and back into the mindset of meal prep everyday and getting the slow cooker back out.

How come it's all up to the OP to cook and prep stuff for another able bodied adult?! She works full time as well!

This is such wankery shite - does anyone really believe that unless you're having kale shakes for breakfast you cant tell your husband that 7 energy drinks a day and a packet of biscuits for dinner is unhealthy?! i agree! There's nothing wrong with cereal for breakfast. Avoid the sugar laden stuff.

OP, he eats a really childish diet. I'm afraid that would really irritate me. Cans of drink, packets of biscuits and sausage rolls. Smoking. Urgh.

Painauchoc - he should be batch cooking for himself.

You're not unreasonable to want him to change but completely to try to force him, chivy him, use pressure on him or anything like that. He's an adult. He's always been like this but now you don't like it.

The horror stories are yet another way of trying to control someone, via shame.

His lifestyle is not 'increasingly unhealthy', it's always been, this may, or may not cause him problems, it's not 100% guaranteed any more than anything in this life is.

You look after yourself and police yourself and leave him to do the same.

FFS. Leave him alone. Better a happy partner than a nagging, whining, lifestye-bore orthorexic who demands you cook 'healthy' (ie expensive, difficult and faddy) meals all the time and tells you off every time you want a biscuit or a glass of wine.

Remember that we are all going to die of something, at some point so we might as well enjoy life while we have it.

He isn't going to change if he doesn't want to and all these doom and gloom stories of him dropping dead at 50 will mean nothing to him! I'm 50 and have been smoking all my adult life, like to drink too much on occasion and my diet isn't always the best (although I detest energy drinks). And no I'm not paying the price yet, that's not to say I won't at some stage but in the past year I've seen 2 "healthy" friends die, one from cancer, the other from a heart attack. So I roll the dice and take my chances. If your DH feels the same then it doesn't matter what you say to him, it's not going to have an impact. I'm not "defending" my lifestyle, I know it's unhealthy, but I'm just giving you the viewpoint that your DH might have. If that's what you have to battle against then it's tough.

I would probably try and tackle one thing at a time, slowly. Trying to get him to change everything at once is going to be too much, for both of you.

And just nope to doing the batch cooking, and cooking and skivvying after an adult when you're working FT, too. Just no. At any rate he won't eat it anyway. Jesus wept.

DH smokes and is in his 40s. I don't like it, but I used to smoke, too, we met when we were smokers. I leave him to it because he's a grown up and if and when he wants to quit, he will. I used to drink when we met, never much but sometimes at weekends, whereas he's never been much of a drinker and has been teetotal for about 10 years now, but he never chivied me, niggled me, told me horror stories, tried to 'get me to the GP', etc. he left me to it. I quit because I got hangovers whenever I drank and also got gallstones and GERD in my 40s and just thought, fuck this.

You absolutely can’t force another adult to change their lifestyle, it’s totally up to them, you can’t be that fed up with him because presumably you are still having sex if you are expecting another child with him? Maybe you should have thought about more seriously before having another baby?

“I would say that you aren't best qualified to determine what a healthy lifestyle or diet is if you think cereal is an acceptable breakfast for anyone, child or adult.”

Do you realise how stupid you sound?

OP, smoking is absolutely the worst thing here. He’s an adult, he can do what he likes but I wouldn’t let up on the smoking. That’ll shorten his life. The rest of the stuff, who knows. He may get a small medical shock that pushes him along (for my dad it was a mini stroke at 40)

I wasn’t suggesting OP cooks specifically for her DH, but herself and her child. The husband can eat it if he wishes, or fuck off by himself and have his biscuits. I do think he should be setting an example for the DC though. It’s not just about him.

@CheshireChat it isn’t fair. However if you love someone you do these things in hopes he will take his health seriously. Plus once the children are older, it will establish good eating habits in them, and I assume OP is cooking for the children.

My adult son eating nutritious food, rather than buying junk food, is why I made his lunch, something he was perfectly capable of doing on his own.

The thing is, you’re not exactly in a position to moan at him. You say you can’t be bothered to cook sometimes, you drink and eat cake and chocolate in front of the telly and you get food from the chippy and feed the kids beans on toast.

Oh fgs. OP says they sometimes ear cake/chocolate and have a chippy at the weekend. There’s nothing wrong with beans on toast.

Eat, not ear.