To refuse to cook low carb meals for DH

[AhBiscuits]

I do the cooking. We're both happy with this arrangement, DH does more than his share of other household chores.

From time to time DH will decide he needs to go on a health kick. He's not overweight but still wants to lose a few lbs. He'll ask me to give him smaller portions and ask me to give him no carbs. Often this is fine and I can just give him more meat and vegetables, but once or twice a week I might make a pasta dish and there really isn't a low carb option. I'd have to make him something else. I would do this except that every evening, without fail, he will snack on bread and butter, crackers or sweets. I bought a giant bag of fizzy gummy worms last week and he has eaten all of them over the course of a week. I'm not putting myself out making a special meal, even though cooking is my chore, for him to just eat loads of carbs anyway. He says at least he would be having fewer if he wasn't having them at dinner too. I just think it's a waste of time, eat proper dinners and stop eating loads of shit in the evening.

So?
Many do and they are the ones mostly used in 'low sugar 'and 'diet' foods.

the low-carb ready meals suggested above could be a solution

Buy him a lettuce!!!

From time to time DH will decide he needs to go on a health kick. He's not overweight but still wants to lose a few lbs.

How do you explain this?

It seems a contradiction.

Maybe he isn't over BMI 25 but still feels too fat.
Is that it?

If you are using drugs to lose weight, have you thought about BOTH of you joining forces in healthy eating?

You both should try to eat healthily for life- not you on drugs and him on a 'health kick'.

Healthy eating isn't a punishment- it can actually be enjoyable!

Yes, this is what would annoy me. Why should I have to find another couple of meal options to avoid pasta (and pasta is a quick, easy, and for the most part well liked tea option) all because he wants to eat sweets and bread every night? If he stopped doing that AND THEN said please can you support me by trying to cook lower carb meals, I’d do it, but I wouldn’t do it before he’d tried to make changes for himself. Just like I wouldn’t expect my partner to cook me elaborate and difficult meals to appeal to my dietary whims so I could eat treat foods all night.

I also wouldn’t have bought the Lidl sweets - even to save them. It’s just sabotage. No one can resist sweets and chocolate in the cupboard.

Surely he just needs to sort himself out on the days he wants to low-carb - he can chop salad stuff up, can't he? My DP does 5:2 twice a week and I just let him crack on making whatever he wants. We still sit at the table together, if that's what you're concerned about.

YABU to buy the gummy worms, so many better choices of sweet thing - but YANBU re the cooking

He should make his own healthy dinner if it is something different to what the rest of the house is having.

I would just cook your meals as normal but be kind and appreciate your DH is watching his weight and factor this into your meal plans. Don’t plate up food but serve in bowls and let him sort his own portion sizes. If you must have the pasta bakes, then a salmon fillet cooks in minutes in the oven for your DH along with a Mediterranean type salad. Or chicken fillet instead of the salmon.

I'm not saying you should do this for him as it is easy enough for him to do for himself, but on nights you're having pasta depending on the dish you are making he could pop a tray of Mediterranean veg in the oven to have with the pasta sauce (all the supermarkets do them pre-prepped if you want zero effort) or get a julienne peeler like this to make speedy courgetti

OXO Good Grips Julienne Prep Peeler, Black https://amzn.eu/d/flU6Hdf

OP - if you want some sweets to store in the cupboard, I’d recommend M and S Percy Pigs! Dont know what they’ve done to them since the last time I had some, but goodness, they’re horrible now. That’ll stop DH eating them! 😀

I don’t see why it should be such hard work , if you agreed with cooking 100% then you by bit help him . Takes 3 minutes to make omelet or a small minute steak and salad .

I second this

Of course you shouldn’t make extra effort to cook something different, just for him to sabotage it with biscuits or gummy worms.

I do most of the cooking and I have a similar problem with DH who has type 2 diabetes. His blood sugar is under decent control most of the time, but it really annoys me when he goes snacking on things he knows will cause a spike, when I’m doing my best to watch carbs and sugars. It’s not difficult to do and I’ve benefited from a low carb diet, but it does seem a waste of time on the occasions when he loses control. I can only suggest doing as I have done recently - stop buying carb laden treats, hide the bread and leave out plenty of fruit and healthy options. Either than or tell him to cook for himself because he has no respect for the effort you’re making on his behalf.

So a moussaka 😁

I agree that any effort is ridiculous if he stuff all the carbs later anyway. What you could do though if keep some sauce back if it's that sort of pasta dish and he can cook cabbage, courgettes etc to have instead of pasta.

We're the same. Because of DH all our meals are low carb by default and if anyone wants carbs we do them separately. I do a lot of the cooking and it's a pain in the backside sometimes as it's not just the "obvious" carbs like pasta that need to be avoided.

But we're all used to cooking low carb now and have got workarounds to make it easier. Plus DH has been off medication for years now with bloods in the non-diabetic range so it is worth the effort.

But if DH didn't have T2 and was wanting special low carb meals while still scoffing sweets, I wouldn't be impressed!

He's being an arse about the snacking on sweets/bread and blaming it on you, but you're being a bit of an arse too by refusing to cook the food he wants to eat. Can't you cook some meals where the carbs can be omitted/changed if he wants (e.g. rice that could be swapped for cauliflower rice/potatoes as a side that could be left out) rather than insisting on cooking what suits you?

Not really the point if he’s regularly sabotaging OP’s efforts by snacking on carb laden things.

Indeed - a pasta meal is far better for him than a pile of pure sugar!

When I was low carbing I would grill a chicken breast and have the pasta sauce on that, that's pretty quick and easy.

Reminds me of my ex’s attempts to be healthy. He was always looking for healthy food as if eating it actively made him lose weight. So cereal for breakfast and sandwich for lunch and eating a ton of celery and fruit in between. Sweets and biscuits and beer didn’t count because he was eating healthily!

I would say that dieting is mostly about what you DON’T eat but he didn’t want to hear it.

It is hard work though. If i'm thrown off my low carb streak, it's hard enough motivating myself to keep cooking low carb meals for myself let alone cooking low carb meals for some twat wolfing down bread, crackers and bags of sugary sweets.

As someone who also does all the cooking (am totally fine with this as we also have other roles split so he does more), and also has a DH who can go on weird health kicks but then ALSO sabotage himself with ridiculous snacking... I feel your pain.

I figured out a compromise solution for these moments. So, for example, in your pasta example, I would still cook the pasta sauce. I absolutely would NOT make him an entirely separate meal but I WOULD throw a bunch of veggies like cauliflower/brocooli/courgette/ carrots or whatever into a pot to boil lightly for him to eat as the base of his pasta sauce. Nothing that took more than an additional 3 minutes for me but allowed him to get the low carb option he wanted.

It was his obsession with low fat that nearly broke us though. He'd have a meltdown if I added a teaspoon of oil to a pan while making spaghetti bolognaise, even though I'd already sweated the onions in water to reduce the fat but needed a bit of oil for actual frying....