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.

I wouldn't be doing this if he's snacking away on carbs right after you've cooked him his low carb meal. I mean if you wanted to, and cooking is your role, then you could always batch cook a couple of low carb meals and divide them up and freeze them so that when his nibs decides he wants a low carb meal, just stick one in the microwave. Or he can do it.

With a pasta dish can't you just make more of whatever you have with it and no pasta for DH. I eat only a small amount of carbs compared to DH and my 2 teens DS. We might make, for example, bolognase, pasta and some side veg for us all. I will be happy with the bolognase, lots of veg and either no pasta, or just a small amount. Everyone else can have a mix of all 3. We eat a lot of pulses and do something similar with those and it works with rice, tortillas, potatoes etc. I can choose no carb or little carb as long as it is served up before everything is mixed together.

What research have you done on this? Are you are scientist? Or maybe a doctor?

Wegovy has been used for diabetics for many years as Ozempic. It has now been licenced by NICE for weight loss in the UK. Licenced means it has been through rigorous tests. It is prescribed on the NHS for people with a BMI of over 35 with at least one weight related health issue. Obesity is linked to many cancers as well as heart disease and strokes.

He needs to put the effort in to learn to cook the meals he wants, look up recipes and menu plan. There is so much information on this online. Instagram cooks show very easily how to make these meals - its how a lot of teens are learning to cook.
He could for eg, take all the normal menus you both eat and work out how to tweak them so he has low carb.

I think as you've both been good at evenly distributing that he could do with support and encouragement.
Its quite a hard diet to do on your own without support and maybe he should join an online forum, who would have lots of recipies, tips and encouragement.

The first months of going without the sugar your body is used to can be extremely hard, you literally crave it which might be why he's failing. The diet can be quite high fat and its not recommended for people who have conditions like gall bladder or If you "low carb" but eat carbs on the side, you can put on more weight instead of losing it. And he's clearly still hungry if he's filling up with bread etc. But he can't put that at your door without trying the above first.

I've done low carb. Its very strict and the weight all goes back on as soon as you stop doing it. You have to be obsessive about it or it doesn't work. If he hasn't got much weight to lose and he's not diabetic or pre-diabetic, why doesn't he just aim for a healthier, easier diet like the Mediterranean. He could still lose weight and add in the exercise.

I have a relative who is pre diabetic and if I am cooking for them and we are having pasta for e.g.. I just put an extra saucepan on the hob and they have a very small portion of wholemeal pasta, or cauliflower "rice" or as others have said vegetable "spagetti" and a bigger portion of the sauce, which has lots of vegetables in it or I add extra vegetables to their plate, with the sauce instead of pasta. Its not that much extra trouble. But I agree with other posters that he should cook his own meals on your carb nights. Without meal planning on his part any diet is unlikely to succeed.

What do you think of the advice so far, @AhBiscuits (hmm- your username!)

Basically, there are a few options.

• He makes his own carb-free meal
• You both eat the same meal but both of you have wholewheat pasta (or lentil pasta?), small portions and lots of veg in the sauce.
• He starts doing his healthy eating seriously and not stuffing himself with crap.

You can still eat carbs on a low-carb diet. Low carb is around 50gms a day.

His pasta meal could be his only carbs of the day.

If he eats protein and veg for the other 2 meals, there's nothing wrong in having pasta (wholegrain) once a week as a small portion.

And a cooked portion for anyone is supposed to fit into the palm of your hand.

It sounds as if he's a bit adrift with healthy eating and needs to break his addiction to refined sugars.

Could he find a buddy online to support him?

Yes, the OP could do these things but... WHY?
Why should she make food she may not like (lots of people don't like brown rice or pasta) and then eat bread and butter to fill herself up, if her OH will just snack all evening anyway?
Why should someone have to hide food (sweets) from another adult? Where??

I go through periods of eating low carb and my DH does all the cooking in this house so he could probably sympathise with your post a lot, OP!

One cookbook that has really helped is The Fast 800 Keto Recipe Book by Michael Mosley. The recipes in there are so quick, easy and tasty with suggestions for carb accompaniments for those in the family who are not low carb.

@DuckbilledSplatterPuff Low carb is not always the same as the Keto diet. The Keto is high fat and practically no carbs.

It's quite possible to do low-carb and still not eat loads of fat etc.
I'm low carb all the time because at my age I can't eat a lot of carbs or the weight just piles on.

I eat carbs usually once a day (not counting root veg as carbs.)
So I'll either have them for breakfast (as porridge) or as brown rice or as potatoes/sweet potatoes.

So glad dh is more supportive when I have a few weeks low carb, same as I work round his preferences in meal planning. We cook meals and add pasta for dc. It’s not hard. I guess it depends if you like your dh and feel he’s worth the effort.

I used to have the pasta sauce over steamed broccoli or green beans rather than with pasta when we had homemade pasta sauces. Worked quite well with bolognese.

I find always having eggs in is a good option then he can always make himself an omelette on pasta days.
Other days he misses out in the rice/potato part of the meal.
Low carb is easy peasy. I think if he wants to do it he has to be responsible for planning it.

What do you think of the advice so far, @AhBiscuits(hmm- your username!)
It's a Bluey reference 😀

Thanks for your thought everyone. Like I said, I am supportive most of the time and do accommodate him. I just think that maybe on pasta days he could skip his evening carb binge and it would even out.

I didn't want to make this about Wegovy, except to say it doesn't impact him at all. He didn't even know I was on it for the first couple of months. It just reduces my appetite. He is a healthy weight but heavier than he used to be so wants to lose a bit. I piled on loads of weight when my job became permanent WFH. I'm getting there though, I have a stone still to lose.

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 can see you only got these as they were free, but seriously, it's not great is it?

If, as a family, you are trying to eat healthily, (and someone said you're on a weight loss drug) then having stuff like this in the house is really a no-no.
(And it's not great for your kids either.)

If you both want to be healthier, it takes effort from both of you.

If you know he's got an addiction to sweet stuff, try to support him and just don't buy the stuff . Change everyone's eating habits if you do the weekly food shop.

This.

I was 😮 when I got to the part about all the other, including some utter junk, carbs that he eats the rest of the time. Given that he then asks for special diet at mealtimes.

There is a "thing" some swear by of not eating carbs after a certain hour but it sounds like he eats them after the meal you've cooked, so it can't even be that.

Also wholemeal pasta is much better in terms of fibre but it is not a low carb option. 😂

If your pasta meal is just once a week AND you make it wholewheat pasta, with plenty of veg in the sauce (rather than cream and ham or whatever), he could eat it as part of his weight loss plan.

But a small portion!

It sounds as if he has a disordered eating situation going on.

No foods should be off-limits. If his food intake on pasta days was mainly protein and fruit/ veg , then he could eat the pasta with no ill effects.

What does he eat for his meals in an average day?

Does he need help to understand what is healthy and sustainable long term?

You are correct about Keto @DeliciouslyDecadent

But there are a lot of diets out there that veer towards Keto, and I wasn't clear exactly what plan the Dh was following and maybe I jumped to conclusions.

The plan I followed (admittedly popular about 10 years ago 😂) was specific that it wasn't strict Keto, but it did follow low carbs and higher fat. I gave up because as I don't eat meat it was really hard.

But I'm still trying to cut back on the carbs and sugary things for health reasons too, my DS is very keen on some of the vegan Instagram cookery and has been learning to make some really healthy dishes that we'd never have thought of otherwise (not vegans as such)

Why should she make food she may not like (lots of people don't like brown rice or pasta) and then eat bread and butter to fill herself up, if her OH will just snack all evening anyway?

????
Wholewheat rice and pasta is more filling then refined white carbs.

No one needs filling up after eating whole grains.

dietdoctor.com is a brilliant site for low carb/keto and is a great place to start for anyone needing to lose weight. Explains how to eat that way properly and has all the science behind how and why it works.

Nope. By cooking a second meal you’d be making 100x the effort he is at the moment. He skips the carb binge on pasta nights, you make small changes to serving the other nights. Win.

im trying to eat healthily. All I’ve asked of my Dh is to serve me small amounts of carbs when he’s cooking, and to ask before pouring me alcohol. The rest is on me.

No - he needs to be thinking “ah, if I forgo the crackers and sweets that day, the OP won’t have to put herself out to make a special meal, so I’ll do that”

His thinking is all backwards

So basically hes willing to do the bits where he can devolve the willpower to you i.e. be served something low carb

But hes not willing to do the bits where he needs to apply the willpower i.e. snack on low carb foods if snacks are required

In that case no, I wouldnt be willing to go to extra effort if I were you

With my DH who has a very feast for famine approach to dieting (either incredibly rigid or eating way too much unhealthy food) what he actually found helpful was less around following a specific diet and more around getting help with his thinking around food I'm general. Perhaps that would be more helpful?

My DH low carbs to control his weight sometimes. The accepted rule in our house is that I'll cook whatever I want (a balanced meal for the family), and he either has it minus the carbs or he makes himself something like an omelette. I am not a short order chef.

Actually it is in a way. DH was advised by his diabetic nurse that wholemeal carbs were a much better choice across the board. They are higher in fibre, and low GI which means that they slow down the rate at which unused carbs are stored as sugar, so they effectively reduce spikes in blood sugar - and it’s the spikes which cause the damage to internal organs.

Another tip for lowering carb intake is to cook carb rich foods such as potatoes, pasta, rice, etc, and let them cool down completely, reheating them before eating. When starchy carb rich foods are cooked and cooled their structure is reorganised to contain more resistant starch so that digestive enzymes in your gut can't break them down as easily. So some of the carb content essentially becomes fibre, meaning that again, unused carbs are slower to be stored as sugar and therefore reduce spikes in blood sugar.

If you are cooking anyway then doing a low carb version for DH shouldn't be too much of an issue. But he should not be tucking into crackers and sweets after his meal - he isn't hungry then - he's either bored or just greedy.
Maybe he needs to read Paul Mckenna's Eat yourself slim. The theory, pretty much, is that you take a packed lunch to work, say sandwiches, fruit, crisps, choc bar and a drink. So you eat your sandwiches and then put the box away. If in 30 minutes you still feel hungry you can choose something else to eat - say fruit. At that point, your brain will have registered that you have eaten and are not so hungry or if you do eat then that's it. The hunger has been satisfied - you still have the crisps, choc bar and drink for later if you want them. You are not saying to yourself you can't have them but you can eat one of them later - if you are hungry. It's recognising when you are actually hungry versus am I just being greedy (which most of us are - to be fair!)
If it's not too much hardship to the rest of the family - don't buy in the sweet stuff - even if you think it will save for later!! It won't!! I have one of those men at home too!! And he's diabetic!! If it's in the cupboard then it's fair game!! Everyone will be better for having fruit or healthy snacks -even if the preference is for chocolate. In fact, for DH and I - we don't buy in cakes etc and make our own but if we are out and fancy a coffee then a cake treat is reasonable - you don't need to deprive yourself too much.
But as other pp have said - your DH is shooting himself in the foot with snacking after eating his meals. Cut the snacking and move more and he will lose the weight without too much effort.