My DH eats erratically. Sometimes he’ll have a massive breakfast; two eggs, two slices of extra thick back bacon, three chipolatas and black pudding, which is about 900 calories - and he’ll make the same for me even though there’s no way I should be eating as much food as him. He gets a lot of steps in walking to and from the train station (at least 90 minutes per day) and does 10k runs a few times a week plus he’s muscular, whereas I work from home and struggle to fit exercise into my week. Other days he’ll skip breakfast and lunch because he has rushed out to catch his train in the morning and he never has lunch at work. Then, on those evenings, he’s naturally still hungry after dinner so he’ll make himself some chicken wings or fry up a couple of bratwurst or some chorizo. Everyone else in the family hates it; the DCs say they get hungry when they smell food cooking at bedtime. I’ve found myself sitting watching tv with him, trying to hold my nose because he's eating Chinese takeaway and I’ve already had three meals that day, trying to eat sensibly.
Then there’s alcohol. On Sunday, he had half a bottle of wine, a strawberry daiquiri, a Tom Collins and a mojito which is about 900 calories and at least 11 units of alcohol. Every time he made a cocktail he asked me whether I wanted one but then he made a big deal about me starting the bottle of wine without him but I only had one glass while I was making the Sunday roast dinner - while he was at the pub where he probably had a couple of pints of beer, he would definitely have had at least one on top of the wine and cocktails! I had another glass and a half of wine with my dinner and a Tom Collins with him in the evening and I feel like that was a lot for me. I only drink alcohol on Fridays and Sundays whereas he sometimes has a glass of wine or a beer on weekdays so he has a much higher alcohol tolerance than me.
I know I’m the only one that’s responsible for what I eat and drink but I do feel that his eating and drinking has an impact on me. He lost about a stone in weight when he started running again after a long recovery from injury and he clearly burns a lot more calories than me every day - the man never sits still! So he isn’t trying to lose weight whereas I gained a lot of weight when I started progesterone for HRT and it’s been an absolute bugger to try and shift the weight. It’s all very well to have weight loss goals and try to calorie count but it’s so hard when DH has gone and got a Chinese takeaway after he’s had his dinner!
Does anyone else have a similar experience and what did you do? I can hardly stop him eating if he hasn’t had breakfast and lunch but it is hard for me to sit drinking herbal tea at night while he’s chowing down on something delicious. And he does put pressure on me to eat with him because he doesn’t always want to cook something just for himself. The same with the cocktails, he doesn’t always ask me, sometimes he just hands me a drink and it’s really hard to go and pour it down the sink because I didn’t want it.