Overweight partner...he obviously doesn't care?

[Sarahisthename]

My DH is overweight, BMI 30 or more . He knows I want him to lose weight. Occasionally he tries ... Maybe eats less for s couple of days ... Goes to the gym a couple of days. But really no real effort. Excuses sometimes such as stressful work , but usually just says yeah I will but doesn't. He knows how I feel. He could if he wanted but chooses not to. This is the only thing I ask of him. He does work hard (as do I). We have children, he's hands on, but I feel it's such a bad example to set them.
He likes me to make the effort to please him in the way I look (clothes /make up etc) when I make comparisons he says it's easy for me to wear something- much harder to lose weight . I feel so bitter sometimes .

Once again it's not about trying to steer him away from unhealthy food and towards exercise. You need to try to get him thinking about why he's more comfortable in his current pattern of behaviour and size? Why he's putting this above being healthy?

Focussing only on diet, exercise and size isn't the way forward.

You can carry on on lamenting and judging him with others who think like you, or you can try to find out his issues and understand them enough to help him to challenge his behaviour. For many of us, professional help on that is the answer rather than focussing on diet and exercise. That's why people tend to get into endless cycles of losing and regaining the same weight over and over, they are missing having dealt with their causes and think they've cracked it because they've only addressed the symptoms.

I would stop mentioning it, but I would do everything I could to stop it having a negative effect on me.
No sex if I don't find him attractive, separate bedrooms if he snores, only cook and shop for healthy food. Make sure I have time for exercise etc.

Tbh I would find myself totally incompatible with someone who didn't prioritize health

Lead by example and don't waste time trying to change him, he's turning into a defiant child imo

Losing weight is incredibly difficult, and I don't think it is possible unless the person themselves want to do it. If they are doing it for someone else, it will be so much harder to do. We all know that motivated people have trouble doing it.

No help here! I think what you need to do is want him to want to do it.

Op has taken an unfair battering here. Op of course you want to stil be sexually attracted to your husband. That doesn't make you shallow. It's a basic part of being human. And as for all the people saying overeating is an emotional thing & losing weight is hard; not for everyone it's not! Some people are just greedy and its that simple. And some people find it a doddle to lose weight. As your husband he should want to look good for you. But what you do about that I don't know.

It does seem a very odd double standard that if a man tells a woman she has gotten fat it is a terrible, abusive thing, but if a woman says her man has gotten fat, she is the awful one.

I'm with you OP, I wouldn't support my husband if he chose to rocket up and over into morbid obesity and I wouldn't expect him to support me either. It's especially galling he expects you to 'look nice' but doesn't think his sexist rule applies to him.

I would and have said the same on threads the other way around, and even that thread where a woman lost 10st. Making massive, massive body changes can affect your relationship, they're not bad people for struggling to take it in.

Some extremely harsh comments on here OP. If you don't find him attractive at this weight it's outside of your control. You can still love somebody but not find them sexually attractive. I wouldn't find my partner attractive if he was very overweight, and vice versa.

As a father your OH also has a responsibility to his children to live as healthily as possible. My own father had a heart attack young (early 40s), I spent my childhood petrified he was going to drop dead, yet he continued to smoke, drink and over eat. I grew to despise the fact that he didn't love me enough to make these changes which would give him the best chance of seeing me grow up.

Neither of you are coming out of this sounding good. Sorry. You should be able to dress as you see fit and his weight is his choice.

Saukko how is that a double standard? In both cases you're saying that the person telling the other person they're fat is in the wrong?

Except that the OP specifically said her main worry was that she was worried about his health and in particular heart attack. Not issues with libido.
She also said he didn't really try when he has tried, lost some weight and then put it back on again. Which tells me this guy isn't finding it easy at all. And he is/has tried with very limited success.

There are plenty of things that the OP can do. The first is to stop making it a shaming issue (look at you, you have a BMI of 30. You have to loose weight for me p, even if you don't really see the point of it).
The second is adopt a healthy life style as a family. So no pork pies in the fridge, no biscuits, no chocolate. For everyone. Go out as a family for a walk, go and play football with the dcs. Doing some exercise doesn't mean going to the gym. You can easily integrate that with spending time with your dcs.
That would be good for everyone, removes the shame and the finger pointing and MIGHT help him to loose weight and feel better in himself.
At the very least, the whole family will be healthier.

In our society your spouse is usually your lover and the only person you are "allowed" to have sex with. If that person alters their appearance to become less sexually attractive then that is detrimental to the relationship. My husband and I don't fancy fat people. If one of us put on weight it would have an effect on our marriage. That's not being shallow it's accepting the large part physical attraction plays in a sexual relationship, especially if you want it to be a sexually exclusive relationship.
You can't make someone else lose weight though. They have to want to put the effort in.

I get it OP, I'm in the same situation.

I used to be overweight but I lost weight and have maintained a healthy BMI for years. I didn't have any emotional reasons for being fat, I'm just greedy. What I lost, he gained.

I agree with the PP who said they are attracted to motivation and energy. So am I, it just took finding my own to realise it.

I love him and will always love him but I'm definitely not really attracted to him now. He knows that deep down I think although still hasn't been motivated to change and remains 5st overweight.

Still, new year, new health kick. Let's see what it brings this time.

My dh is odd, on this score. Incredibly motivated and committed, dedicated, naturally happy, glass half full person. This applies to all areas of life - his work, studying, how he treats people, generally. Just not to weight. Is an absolute mystery to me.

I can relate to this too, OP.

My husband's BMI is over 30, he does no exercise (he proudly told me yesterday that his Fitbit reached 4,000 steps!!!) and he doesn't seem to care about what he eats. If he nips out to the shop to buy bread he'll come back with biscuits, chocolate, crisps and fizzy drinks - so it's not as simple as you not buying unhealthy foods. His DF died in his 50s, massively overweight, of a combination of heart disease and diabetes. I don't feel attracted to DH because when I look at him I see potential illness, laziness and a general 'don't care' attitude. No sex life here.

I've always had issues with eating disorders so I find it a huge struggle to have biscuits in the house (currently munching on some now as they are here and I can't resist I never buy them because I know it's best they stay out of the house, but he bought 4 packs on Monday). But I'm not overweight because I do watch what I eat most of the time and I don't consider 4k steps a day to be sufficient exercise.

OP, does your DH have health/life insurance? It sounds terrible but when I start to worry about his health I think about the insurance and it reassures me that when he dies (because it is a 'when') DS and I will be ok.

You have nothing but sympathy from me, OP.

Leave him to it and make sure he has life insurance!

My DH is in the same weight range and has about 5stone to lose. Due to health issues and medication this is a struggle, he can't exercise other than walking and swimming due to long term injury, his diet is medically required and is very healthy but his medication makes him put in weight. It's a constant struggle to the point where he has given up until one of the above factors gives. I don't blame him. Yes he is larger than he was when we met, so am I, but I love him and would rather have a larger DH than not have him at all.

You say you keep up your appearance in a way your DH likes, do you like this look? My DH would love me to have the short red hair I had when we met. I have long dark hair now because I prefer it. He would love me to wear more dresses, I am running around after a toddler all day, I wear jeans.

Do what you want. You can't make him want to lose weight. He will get there eventually or you will leave him because you can no longer be with someone you aren't attracted to. Kids or not, that's no excuse not to leave if you aren't happy.

Disordered eating, rather than the odd holiday blow-out, tends to be a symptom rather than a cause. Maybe he is unhappy, unfulfilled, irritable, restless or discontented.

I think that the OP has been given a hard time by some people. What I do find interesting is that if she'd said that the symptom was that her DH had taken to drinking an excessive amount and was an alcoholic, the answer would probably be to leave him to sort himself out. Yet food and drink addiction can be similar in terms of root causes, even if the effects are very different.

God it really pisses me off that people are giving you a hard time - I am guessing it is because they are overweight.

I would hate this and can understand why you dislike it too. Not sure what I can add to help though . I am quite a bit heavier than when we married but then so is my DH, neither of us like it on ourselves and are doing something about it together.

Impossible to only have healthy food in the house ... He's a grown up and can go shopping and buy whatever he wants. Would love to do family fitness activities... But really a walk is the most he will do. I see that one of our DCs may have potential to have a weight problem, a lack of stopping when full, loves to eat junk, and for the sake of our DC I've asked him to stop buying so much crap... Don't mind treats but massive cookies / muffins after school then pudding after dinner ... It's not good.
Yes we have life insurance... One blessing I suppose !

But you u can do a Whole day out at a NT trust thing and walk. You just don't say you are walking iyswim.
You can go and visit a town, go down the canal whatever activity that includes walking and going out of the house rather than staying at home.

And yes he can buy things. He can also put them aside, somewhere the dcs can't see them, have access to them and make a plan about the dcs rather than him. You can up massively the vegs intake in the your meals.
It won't stop him eating pork pies of he wants to. But it will still be beneficial compare to doing nothing. And it will give good habits to your dcs.

loubi I suspect that those who are saying he is just lazy and there is no rEason why he can't have never had to loose weight. Just see the post of a PP who did loose a lot of weight and how it massively affected her MH, in a negative way for example.

Yeah... Would love to be more active together but we don't have much time off together due to work... Normally only one of us with the kids. That can't change due to jobs for the forseable future .
For the poster that asked if the kids comment. One of our DCs did say that daddy has a fat tummy. I didn't tell DC off for this as I think it's right they see it as fat rather than normal. He was cross because he considered it rude - which I guess it was ....and I wouldn't want them to remark on others appearance

Oh and ignore the nasty 'I think your husband should leave you' comments. They are probably fatties themselves, also in denial!

Comments like this really remind me of how much MN has changed recently. It's somehow acceptable to be derogatory to a whole chunk of society and minimise a very complex issue that they share down to the simplest form. It shows an astounding lack of empathy when slim people can't see the complexities of weight problems simply because they haven't had to live through it themselves.

Sarah, I'm still on p4, but after reading your post at 11.06am today I'm now convinced that we're actually married to the same man, lol (not that it's really funny). It's also never the right time for him to do something about it, too busy, too stressed, too cold, too expensive, etc. Whatever option/idea I come up with, he has a reason why it won't work.

I cook fairly healthy stuff; all of the meals we eat are cooked from scratch. For the past few years I've given him reduced portion sizes so that they're now an appropriate size. He also eats very quickly. Breakfast is toast or cereal.

I try not to keep much snacky stuff in the house and I often made him a nice packed lunch for work, which he always forgot to take, so I don't bother so much now as I was ending up throwing it away. It's the crap he buys outside of the home and secretly eating in the kitchen that causes the problem.

Eg, he'll come in and I'll say dinner will be ready in 10 mins then I'll turn around to see him making himself 2 rounds of sandwiches because he's too starving to wait 10 mins!!!!

.....or he missed lunch so he'll have it now whilst he waits for dinner!!! Then he'll eat dinner, have pudding and then be hungry later so he'll eat again at 10pm or later.

I've managed to keep my weight off but he's always bringing sweet treats home for me. He knows I find it hard to say no and I keep asking him not to do it but he still does it. It almost like he wants us to be fat together again even though he knows how unhappy I was. His bmi is around 44- 47. Mine was 46 and it's now 27.

Gruffalo
I don't agree with that comment that was made but people have been projecting their own weight issues all over this thread.