Husband's food addiction

[Gemimapuddlestuck]

Having grown up with a sister with a serious food addiction, I can see that DH is also addicted to high salt/high sugar food. When we met he was slightly over weight, nothing at all off putting and a few months into our relationship, I discovered that He had recently lost around 5 stone, mainly due to stress at work and not eating properly. His mother was very negative about his weight loss privately to me and told me it would not last, I thought it was mean of her to say this.

We married etc and had a son and the weight creeped back on. He had almost pretended to opt for and like healthy foods for the first couple of years together and then he became comfortable and relaxed his healthier eating.

7 years on, he basically eats stodgy carbohydrates and not a lot else and has piled a lot of weight back on. Having been slim when I met DH and always have been, I'm embarrassed that this has also affected me and I have also ballooned in weight for the first time in my life. I find myself eating biscuits before DH gets the chance to find them and devour them all, I hide food from him so that I get the chance to eat some before he consumes the lot. Things like chocolate and biscuits. I don't buy a lot of these things, but have always had things in just incase I 'fancy' them, however they're often gone before I get the chance, so I find myself scoffing regardless as DH will eat and eat and eat them until theyre all gone.
I genuinely feel his own unhealthy relationship with food has rubbed off on me. I am concerned for my son who will see Daddy fill his plate with stodgy carbs and not much else when we eat out. He always orders chips. I really try to model better eating with my meals, I eat lots of fruit and vegetables particularly with my son, but I feel I'm fighting a losing battle when DH models such different behaviour.

How can I prevent DH's unhealthy relationship with food from impacting on us all? I cook healthy meals but he will cook himself extra garlic bread or extra potatoes to go with it. I will make salad for lunch but he will come home with a shop bought chunky loaf on the side. And if DH has it, DS also wants it. And, there's also the temptation for me! What can I do to improve this?

Have a look at slimming world. They offer a eating plan with a huge amount of healthy free foods you can eat. They then offer syns for treats like chocolate, crisps etc. You could start making these meals or get him to join with you for moral support. It’s a fantastic healthy eating plan.

This is who he is and he might never change, all you can do establish where you're red line is and communicate to him where that is.

Focus on setting a good example for your son yourself and just because he can't see you scoffing a packet of biscuits, it doesn't mean that he isn't aware of the consequences of that behaviour.

Thanks all. I think me overhauling our whole lifestyle is what is required. With or without DH's participation. I think it's so very hard not to be influenced by your partner though, whether it be alcohol/food or even exercise. I look back at previous boyfriends, one of which was very athletic, I took up running and the gym when we were together. DH does absolutely no exercise and eats dreadfully and slowly but surely, I've succumbed to very similar, although I do more exercise as I'm the only one who walks the dog. I think some of us are very easily influenced by other friends/family members, not an excuse but, I think an obvious reason as to why bad habits develop in the first place.

I think it's so very hard not to be influenced by your partner though, whether it be alcohol/food or even exercise.
Exactly, so instead of allowing yourself to be influenced by your DH unhealthy lifestyle why not challenge yourself to become a healthy influence to your DC? Hopefully your DH will also be influenced by any changes you make.

Tell your husband TODAY that you are resolved to change your life. You will no longer be an accomplice to him eating himself to death. If he wants to stuff his face with garbage, he will have to buy that garbage for himself. Tell him his weight and his attitude are ruining your marriage, because it's true. He can decide to change or not, but you are getting yourself in order, with or without him.

^^All this.

You're right, Gemima. Now that you see clearly how you are being influenced, you have a chance to break free of that influence and improve things for all of you, or at least for DS and yourself.

My husband isn’t great around food either. I either live with the overweight him or the obsessed working out hours every day him. I’m never influenced to change habits for myself though. Bingeing on biscuits simply so your husband can’t is the part of this I find hard to understand. Yes my husband will demolish anything sweet that enters the house so I have a secret shoebox in the bottom of my wardrobe full of my own treats that I want to last in the house for more than 2 days. To see my husband one day demolish a treasured bar of Green and Blacks in 30 seconds without barely tasting it made something inside me die a little.

Well, if it’s so easy to be influenced by a partner’s lifestyle - test out your theory. Live the way you think you should live and see if it rubs off on him.

Unfortunately, that’s literally all you can do. You can control yourself and (for the most part) your kid/s, and that’s about it.

It’s a very good point that if a partner’s influence is so powerful, then surely you can take the role of the influential one for a bit?

Stop buying junk, swap the white carbs for wholemeal, start cooking with veggies and pulses, start going to the gym or out for a run once a week. By your own logic, that should begin to solve the problem as he will begin to follow suit.

I think your excuses for why you've allowed yourself to be influenced are very poor. Or at least not taking responsibility for this. It's all about the blame here. Are you saying you are so weak?

Then turn this around. If you were influenced by an ex re exercise, then go back to that and see it if rubs off on Dh and dc.

I am a disgusting person when it comes to biscuits or snacks... I will sit and eat them all in one go! Or 'just have two' and then go back for another two, and then three, and then a couple more...

Therefore, I do not purchase anything sweet (apart from fruit) as part of the weekly shop. Obviously I can still access to them in other ways, but they are not in the cupboard calling my name of an evening.

oh OP, you're the food addict.

Yes he is too but that's not the point. Your behaviour is classic for an addict: you look for someone to blame. You're saying 'if it weren't for him I'd be fine'. No you wouldn't. Because you're an addict.

Get the beam out of your own eye first.

thus speaks a food addict - in recovery. There are quite a few food recovery groups you could [both] join. But you'd have to take responsibility for your own addiction and stop palming it off on him/someone else.

(You might also like to have a look at codependence re your susceptibility to your partners' behaviours. If you are at all dragging your feet on your addiction/s, bear in mind your ds has two addict parents, both not in recovery, one blaming the other to avoid taking responsibility (ie you) - the chances of your ds developing addictive behaviours are high. The best thing YOU can do for your boy is model recovery.)

Forget your husband. Get into recovery yourself. 12 step does it for me.

As you’ve stated yourself OP, all you can really do is take control of what you eat yourself (and what DC gets) and make it difficult for your DP to get the white carbs at home.

Don’t buy the chocolate / white bread / white pasta etc. I would even suggest you ask your partner not to bring it home and tell him you’ll chuck anything like that if it goes in the cupboard.

Ask him whether he really wants to set his son up with the same relationship with food that he’s acquired. Make it about your DC and not criticism of his weight though.

If it’s difficult for him to find crap in the house, he’ll eat less of it. You won’t stop him grazing when he’s out or at work, but he’ll have to make more of an effort to get hold of it.

I find this all so much easier now that we don’t live very close to shops anymore.

No treats in shopping
No treat cereal - just porridge/weetabix
If we want a cake - we bake it
Small amount of bread available - freeze some?
Cook at least 3 veg with meals
No crisps or biscuits in shopping

The other thing I do now is that if I have a treat, I skip a bit of my next meal.

We aren’t perfect and I have BMI of approx 26, but at least now I am maintaining/losing a little weight and not getting bigger.

I don't think eating bread and potatoes is "modelling bad behaviour"

I am from a culture where food is carb heavy, and eat lots of carbs, as do DH and DC . Nothing wrong with carbs, yes I know the fashion.is for low carb, but you can be fit and healthy eating porridge, bread, potatoes etc regularly.

Just eat "normal" with your DC and let your DH get on with his own way of eating.

You cannot control what another adult eats. Just stop buying junk (biscuits etc) and let him buy his own

My ex’s binging on any treats in the house (thus depriving the rest of the family) always made a bit of me die inside. I came to realise it was part of a bigger issue in our marriage - his selfishness and sense of entitlement over the children and myself. It wasn’t just about the treats ‘disappearing’. It was the fact that he was creaming off the special things from an extremely tight food budget, the leaving of empty packets in place so I thought the food was still there, never occurring to him to bring something nice home for the family to share in lieu of all the Christmas chocolates he snaffled. The thing that got me most was there was other food available in the house if he needed topping up but it wasn’t good enough for him. He would eat a whole packet of biscuits rather than make some toast. It seems so trivial to separate over a chocolate bar but it was an example of his thoughtless, selfish, entitled behaviour that pervaded other areas of family life.

I think you need to take personal responsibility for your own eating habits and not blame your husband.

This. I couldn't even get past the rest of your post once I saw you blaming him for your^ weight gain.

Anew - you see, I just think that’s a disordered relationship with food

Yep. Same here. Albeit I am slim/healthy as is DD. No sweets, cake biscuits come in unless for special occasions. When they do he eats everything.
He stood in the kitchen and ate a whole box of chocolate fingers. Box in hand, close to his face. I give up saying anything and just think. "Greedy pig."
He goes to the shop to buy junk if I don't buy it. Very hard to educate DD that junk is an occasional snack.
Then he moans about his weight. I simply tell him that a diet of coke and crap will do that and I cook adequate food and there's fruit or toast as snack.
Look after your own eating OP.

..make it difficult for your DP to get the white carbs at home.

Don’t buy the chocolate / white bread / white pasta etc. I would even suggest you ask your partner not to bring it home and tell him you’ll chuck anything like that if it goes in the cupboard.

Ask him whether he really wants to set his son up with the same relationship with food that he’s acquired.

If it’s difficult for him to find crap in the house, he’ll eat less of it.

If your DH is a food addict it will make very little difference whether or not you allow white carbs/crap in the house. A food addict will find a way to get to that stuff. Believe me, we are very canny and tenacious. re no point putting it in the bin because a food addict will get it out again. A food addict will eat off the floor, off the ground, from a stinking bin.

Shaming him that he'll only make his son an addict won't work either. (and if his son is genetically in line to inherit addiction then he just will. The best his parents can do is model recovery).