DP is fat. How can I support her to loose weight?

[mum2mum99]

Dp has tripled in size since I met her.
I have done my best to introduce healthy eating but she has got Nutella and other things at work.
I don't know how to breach the subject with her. I don't want to say 'you are fat', nobody wants to hear that and I am sure it would be counter-productive. I don't fancy her at the moment and I have been postponing or avoiding sex.

I think Joy is saying that the solution is not as simple as inviting the overweight partner to join in doing lots of exercise (ferchrissakes, they will know what you're doing!), it's about addressing the underlying root cause of why the person has gained so much weight to start with.

It is absolutely toe curling when people start getting all Mr Motivator and sincerely believe their overweight partners will be too thick to figure out what they're doing, or will just suddenly start an all new exercise regime after a lengthy period of self neglect because they're being 'encouraged' to.

It just isn't that simple. With significant weight loss, the greatest change is in the head, and if you sincerely love someone and want to support them on that journey, it just isn't that easy.

She overeats when she is unhappy. She has been overeating for a while now so she is probably unhappy. Counselling might help. She has to want to do it though.

If your primary problem is that her unhappiness is making her sexually unappealing you and you'd like her to hide her symptoms lose weight, then you need to end the relationship because it is not healthy.

If however you are primarily worried about her MH, you can raise it in that way: you overeat when you are unhappy, you have been overeating for months, what's going on?

Strawberry - a lot of people do look for solutions to the problem as they see it - ie, the partner is overweight, so find a way to up their calorie burn and reduce their calorie intake in a way that's not too obvious - but not think about why this problem has happend in the first place. The problem is not that the OP's DP is overweight, the problem is that that OP's DP is comfort eating.

If hte OP's DP used to be thin, then she knows how to eat healthily and/or exercise. She's done it before. That the DP comfort eats is the bit that needs addressing - since she's been with the OP, something has changed and she's feeling hte need to seek comfort in food. Diet and exercise won't work if she's still going to comfort eat, stopping her comfort eating will need either finding her a new way to find comfort when stressed, or tackle why she feels hte need to comfort eat now when she didn't before (or else she'd have been fat when she met the OP).

Something has changed. Something has gone wrong - helping her with that can be the best way to solve the problem.

You have to spend a long time in the gym to counteract the effects of say, eating a whole pack of chocolate hobnobs. You're much more likely to effect a change by asking someone why they are so stressed they are eating whole packets of biscuits and find ways to help them deal with it.

Well, given that 50% of women and 60% of men are overweight or obese, and that this is related to age, you could always leave her and try and find someone who is thinner into middle/older age?

There aren't many of those, though, statistically speaking.

I think trying to get them to be thinner, exercise more, eat different food is on a hiding to nothing, if they want to do it, they may, but it's unlikely and we also know that most people who lose weight put it back on, so significant and sustained weight loss from that starting point is highly unusual. Probably 2/3% of people can do it.

Now this thread will fill up with people saying 'but I'm thin' or 'but I did it' which may be true for them personally, but the battle of the bulge is statistically speaking mostly lost, so you can either come to terms with your partner as they are now, or leave them and find this person who is never going to put on weight and always respond when you suggest exercise/healthy diet and keep it off into old age.

Everyone else just gets on with what they have, which in the main, amongst my friends, is women and men who look nice but are a bit heavier than when younger and they and their partners would ideally like but values their partnership differently anyway, and just sees it as a part of ageing and loving them.

If you can't do that, and sexual attractiveness is very much tied up with being slimmer (as it is for some people, especially when young)- then you do have the option to get out, especially if your love life has died.

I think Joy is saying that the solution is not as simple as inviting the overweight partner to join in doing lots of exercise (ferchrissakes, they will know what you're doing!), it's about addressing the underlying root cause of why the person has gained so much weight to start with.

Well of course it isn't as simple as "lots of exercise" but that wasn't quite was I was suggesting. You can't tackle someone else's inner issues for them, or find their motivation for them or address their depression for them. What you can do (and what I wouldn't murder DH for myself) is show care for them - see if someone wants to come along when you go for a walk in the woods, or a stroll on the beach or a bike ride or whatever. It's not as though OP needs to start with a suggestion that they enter a triathlon.

The DP does sound depressed and lacking the will to prioritise herself. Fresh air and some extra vitamins would be a good start, and just not make it about weight.

Was the 'tripled in weight' thing explained BTW? I can't see it.