To tell husband he is fat

[Howtosaythis]

Husband is very obese, having gained about 5 stone in the last decade (he's now 40). I am extremely worried about his health. He has a taste for very processed food, meat, beer, and fizzy drinks. He avoids fresh food and vegetables (if I serve them for dinner he will eat a mouthful then go make himself a ham sandwich) and flat-out refuses to exercise.

He has a family history of poor health. His mother has been pre-diabetic for many years and horrifyingly we're starting to see the impact of it and she is not well. We're all distraught. Going back several generations on his mother's side, a lot of family members have died of cancer, and I'm sure this puts my husband at higher risk.

He won't talk about it. He wants to change and sometimes I can see him trying to diet by replacing meals with cans of Coke (I wish I was joking). He loses a couple of kilos here and there but it's never sustained.

What can I do to help him? I'm silently beside myself thinking that he is taking himself to an early grave.

This is so sad 😞

If you have children, I hope you have really good life insurance in place. A friend of ours lost her DH about your age for similar issues and the money meant she could spend a year really looking after her young children. Not as good as having him here, but a darn sight better than losing him AND not being able to pay the bills 😞

I think some people are being unnecessary distracted by the mention of fat. Even if OP doesn’t use the word fat - fine, but it doesn’t necessarily follow she shouldn’t raise the main issue which is the fact he is on self destruct and slowly ruining his health.

It’s her husband and father of her kids , his extremely poor diet will have ramifications on their entire family if gets very sick or dies. It doesn’t make sense to just stand and watch it. Especially as it’s already impacted the children.

She can’t force him to make changes and there’s only so much you can do in these situation, but she at least needs to have a go at bringing everything to the discussion table, while he is sticking his head in the sand.

I was on the same path and I turned it around just out of a desire to be healthy for myself and respect the body I’m in.

If his addiction is so extreme to the point he is ignoring the impact on his wife and especially his children and what it means for their future, I really feel she must keep on urging him to seek some sort of professional help. Because -unless we assume he’s just purely selfish - it must be that he suffers from disordering eating likely rooted in emotional issues. This needs urgent attention.

OP you’ve mentioned he won’t usually go for a walk with the children. does it also impact how much he contributes towards household duties?

I've been in your situation - constant worry about DH and the potential consequences of his poor diet, obese weight and no exercise. We had many conversations and I did both gentle encouragement to downright pleading to get healthier. He always said he would sort it. I'm afraid the only thing that finally saw him take action was the thing I was dreading in the first place - a cancer diagnosis.
The prognosis is generally good but my advice would be not to stress yourself out with worry and pleading for change. They have to realise themselves. Plus stress is not good for your own health!

@dingdongdoo89 I'm so sorry to hear this. I hope everything works out okay.

We are well insured so that's something I don't have to worry about

It sounds like he has very poor eating habits cemented in, perhaps owing to his unhealthy upbringing and what he considers normal food, ie, processed, fatty shite.
I don't think there's any magic set of words that are going to make him motivated to lose weight. You can't hope to change his mindset by persuading, cajoling, beseeching or educating him.

Thanks everyone for your messages and support. I've been thinking about it all a lot and I've decided I'm going to have a calm chat to him about health/ family implications of his choices (NO mention of fat or physical appearance), and then suggest the book/podcasts/change one thing approach (as suggested by PPs 💛) and maybe a chat to a nutritionist. In fact, might suggest he works on his sleep first as he's often up very late watching films and only having four or five hours sleep must have a detrimental effect on him.

His upbringing was very healthy... no snacks, all food healthy and cooked from scratch, only fruit for pudding, no telly... in fact, as I type this, I wonder if this is where it all came from... he binges exactly on the stuff he wasn't allowed as a child.

Could well be. Apologies to have presumed otherwise...I took your comments about his family poor health to be connected to weight and a rubbish diet. I was wrong.

My second paragraph still stands though. I lost a significant amount of weight a few years ago and I know from personal experience, it has to come from within.
If anyone (husband, friend, whoever) had suggested a chat to a nutritionist I would have dismissed it and felt nagged and ashamed.
As it was, I did it without any nutritionist, diet club, regime, plan, diet products or celebrity endorsement. It is simple stuff after all.

My husband drinks a lot and it's hard to discuss with him. I had some success with the line that if I ever stop bringing up the massively unhealthy things he is doing, it will be because I have mentally checked out/given up on him (I'm not constantly haranguing him btw). It is very hard to maintain a sense of worry about an adult who is effectively self-sabotaging - after a while one does just give up in despair and grow a callus over feelings.

He seems to have grasped that wife who cares is better than wife who doesn't and did make some effort to improve. May be worth a shot?

I don't think you need to tell him he's fat! But not unreasonable to worry about the rest.

I think it's something you have to do together so that it's not just your DH 'on a diet'. You could chat to him and say you're concerned about his diet but you have a proposal and would like to suggest some simple household changes you can make together. So even if you're happy with your own weight you can still go on a 'health kick' together by reducing whatever you need to and then upping your exercise.

Also, a game changer for me when it comes to exercise was a VR headset. I get really bored going for walks etc but honestly 30 minutes playing tennis or smashing giant blocks on VR is such a good workout. They're not cheap but for me it was worth the investment.

Sounds like a great plan OP and btw yes - poor sleep can definitely have a massive impact on your diet/weight.It was one of the main reasons that I put on 2 stone (and I’m only 5ft 3) during the pandemic when I was sleeping on average 4 hours a night.

When you’re sleep deprived it’s common to crave sugary, high fat food and misread tired signals in your body for hunger pangs. Part of the reason I had poor sleep was because I was too sedentary during the day as I started WFH and I’d often eat sugary foods late at night which kept me awake ,then I’d wake up in the morning tired and just eat crap the whole day, so it was all a bit of a vicious circle. I was consuming about twice my daily calorie allowance .

I still WFH but make sure I do some form of exercise most days (walking counts) and avoid sugary foods late at night and my sleep is way better overall which means I’m not quite as hungry all the time.

Being sleep deprived can also slow down your metabolism too. Good article explaining it a bit more https://sleepcenterinfo.com/blog/5-shocking-ways-sleep-deprivation-or-insomnia-affects-your-body/