You could say that eating carbage makes you very unhappy and spoils the pleasure of the occasion. Tell her she should do what makes her happy but let you decide what make YOU happy.

ok... story time....

My first marriage was a disaster. I was trying to lose weight and my spouse would purposefully sabatoge me. Take me to my favorite all you can eat places, or order pizza and have it waiting when I got home, and money was tight so I couldnt NOT eat it. I started low carbing and his destructive behaviour continued. I would go off to please him. Well 100 pounds later (yes 100 pounds GAINED) and other circumstances at hand I got up the courage to leave him. Only then could I look back and realize the reason he kept trying to make me eat was he was afraid if I lost weight I wouldnt want him anymore, or that I would be attractive and someone better would steal me away.

Now reguardless that the marriage didnt work thats not the point, the point is you need to find out your wife's motivation for trying to get you to fail. Maybe she is scared you will leave her if you lose weight. I think counceling is a great idea. Maybe having someone objective looking from the outside in can help solve the problem. But if you truely love your wife, you need to so this WOL 100% because you being around for 75 more years is a lot more use to her and shows her you love her more then you cheating once in a while to "please" her.

I am lucky. I am now happily married to husband number 2 who is the most supportive person I could ever hope for. He has gotten to the point he even reads the carb count on his chocolate bars and says "wow! 67 carbs thats more then you eat in 3 days" and continues to eat it anyways, but he only eats that stuff out of the house (mostly at work etc) because I have trouble with will power so no NON lc foods stay at home.

Good luck to you I'm sure if you just talk it out with your wife maybe have her read the book your following she will understand and come to terms with things.

Wow, that would make it hard. Someone else in these forums had a solution to this situation. What happened to her when she cheated and had lots of carbs was she got sick on the table. I would imagine if that happened to you once or twice when you ate carb rich food that your wife would let you stick to your diet. (hint hint) I know gross huh? but I dont have a resonable answer to your problem other than prayer

Joe

Other than this small anoyance, we don't have many issues, it's a happy marrage, and she is really level headed for the most part. I don't think she wants to sabatage me or anything like that, or at least I hope not.
I honestly think there are places and things she really enjoys that are tied to carbs and emotion. LIke sharing pizza with someone you love at a favorite restraunt from her childhood, or having hotdogs and hamburgers with buns at a memorial day cookout. Low Carb eating limits our choices when we go out, and for the most part, she's okay with that, but every once in a while, when she is in the mood, she asks from me this indulgence.

I sense its an emotional attachment to the event and the feelings the event give her. She never just comes out and says, your eating pizza on a tuesday tonight. It's usually a holiday, or maybe we are on a date for the night (yes were hokey and still do that, LOL, though our 10 year old son thinks were wierd) and she wants to have popcorn at the thearter and go for an icecream with me later.

The problem I have is I am a sugar holic, so to speak, when I have sugar I crave food sweets like a bear, I can't stop, there is no rhyme or reason, I can't explain it, Not even when I'm stuffed full. This takes several days to overcome. If she wants to indulge on friday, My Saturday is gone too, by Sunday I will start to get the best of it, and Monday the cravings will be fading, but so won't any ground I claimed that week.
I almost don't want to start again, but I always make myself do it.

There is no good answer to this, you have to take the good and the bad in marrage, I have hope that as LC foods are introduced, and are picked up by restraunts (seems to be the craze) it will get easier and easier.

Till then, I will have to fudge it the best I can


Hmmm now if Bettuccii's would just get a low carb pizza crust

(her favorite place)

I, of course, am not married, so I can't give any sage advice. You've already decided what you feel you have to do. I had to give up a lot to get this far, and it meant having some tough decisions to make as far as "eating buddies" went. I realize this is WAY different than a spouse. I just expect that those who love me want to see me healthy.

<shrug> If taking the good and the bad in marriage means struggling harder than I already AM to try to avoid the health risks of obesity just to indulge my spouse's unaddressed emotional food issues, I guess I'll stay single.

Dave,

Maybe I'm out of line here, but are you planning to have children? What will the children be eating?

It may seem like a simple way out by going with the flow, but marriage can get complicated fast!

My wife is AGAINST LCing almost totally. She lost her weight on a high-protein / low-fat diet and can maintain by doing it that way.

We are currently at logger-heads over our kids eating. We agree on getting rid of the sugars and "junk" foods, but she does not like the idea of low-carbing for the kids. We agree to disagree. Wow. I said it. It took us about 5 years of being married (we are now at 19 years) to realize that we DON"T agree on EVERYTHING and realizing we don't have to. We don't try to control each other; we did earlier in our marriage.

Food is so tied to social activites and emotions that it's a tough habit to break.

I sense that there may be other issues regarding "control" in what you are speaking of. Maybe she is afraid about losing you if you lose faster than her. This could be totally subconcious and she may not realize it.

I went into anger management counselling after trying to get out of it - anger was only a SYMPTOM. There were many underlying problems and issues I had to resolve to get on with my life.

My point is that you have taken time to seek advice; it troubles you. I agree that some exploratory counselling would benefit both of you.

Realizing and accepting a problem is the first step in the journey to mend it. I am not going to sugar coat this and say it's easy; it was not and I still remember how resistant I was because going to counselling. People who need couselling are "weak" minded and can't handle their own problems; I thought.

Good counselling provides you with tools to recognize and deal with problems ON YOUR OWN.

I had my counselling in 1994, ten years ago. I think I had about 4-5 individual sessions and finally about 5-6 group sessions with other men. I still use the methods to try and isolate behaviour in myself that I see and don't like. I don't sweep things under the carpet any more.

You have shown that you really care for and love your wife. Marriage takes work and the work never stops. Sometimes it makes you weary, but the results are worth it! My wife is often asked about us and our marriage and her reply is - we are happily married because we have SHORT memories!

Very true!

Take care,

Tom.

Justdave: I'm not exactly sure why you posted your question in the first place, since apparently you don't really want to change your position on this issue. I am glad that you took the time to respond today to all who have posted.



While I can see that that is a problem, to me the real issue is that you are eating something that you don't want to eat in the first place because of your wife's insecurities, and then finding yourself in this pickle. I hear everyone here saying , "There are ways to get politely get around this in the first place." It's hard to understand why you have to eat the bun on the hamburger or hot dog on Memorial Day because your wife has an emotional attachment to such things. Really. Her holiday is going to be ruined because you ate a plain burger? That's hard to swallow, no pun intended.

Kay

Sorry, double post.

Being a sugar addict is kinda like being an alcoholic. One snack, one cookie, one handful of chips... those aren't one. They're never one.

If you are a sugar addict, the chances are good that if you don't follow a low carb life, you will develop diabetes. The fact that us sugar addicts don't EVER eat sugar in moderation pretty much guarantees that we are going to short out our bodies.

I suggest being frank. When I asked my fiance if he wanted me to develop diabetes and start losing limbs and my eyesight, he pretty quickly understood that there weren't a lot of holidays important enough to risk my life for.

Since you say your marraige is happy aside from this, I would think if you explained it as being about your health as opposed to your weight, she'd be concerned enough to help.

Ouch Dave ... that's a pretty unfair place to be.

However if 'reasoning' ain't working .. and you don't want to argue ad nauseum ... I'd suggest a 'smoke-screen' of some sort. e.g. fake a reaction to the carb binges, this could be just a simple loss of appetite, to an Oscar winning – rolling on the floor clutching-chest type thingy [though the latter being a last resort] ... ultimately I recon you should fight fire with fire. Leverage the FACT that consuming high-fat with high-sugar is a real killer. And hopefully tap into your wife's nurturing qualities by making her review the damage she's subjecting your health and relationship to.

I guess that I think it comes down to this: You have to want the good feelings you get from sticking to your low carb plan and not want the terrible cravings and difficulty getting back on track MORE than you want to make your wife happy by being her eating buddy. I would ask myself if I was subconciously happy to have these 'excuses' to go off my plan from time to time and endulge in some high carb treats. It doesn't sound like it, because then why would you post here looking for help, but on the other hand.. if you suffer as much as you say you do from eating the carbs, it just doesn't make sense for you to continue doing it. I understand that your wife has emotional attachments to the foods.. we all have those. But why does she need you to eat the same foods at the same time as her. If you eat pork rinds at the movies while she has her popcorn.. or bunless weenies and burgers while she has the bun..nothing is lost to her experience. It has to be more than that for her. She 'needs' you to break your diet along with her for some reason. It isn't for you to figure out what the underlying cause is.. it is for you to decide what is most important for you and then to be strong enough to go for it.

If you think it is 'worth it' to continue as you are.. then I guess you will just have to face the hard times of getting back on track and the slower return to health.

I still think it would be incredibly helpful to let your wife read this thread, perhaps she doesn't really understand how hard this has been for you.

Good luck.
Tracy

Wow, some responses were a bit tougher on the feelings than I was expecting..

Why did I post such a question?

Well because this support group is a place I found with caring people that seemed allot like me. What I was hoping to hear I guess, was a few people who also have spouses and find themselves in similar circumstances about eating ritual sort of things. It's hard to believe I am the only one who's ever heard a spouse say, "Can't you not Low Carb tonight, so we can have a good time, and get a pizza for a change" then again Maybe I am.

It's an honest problem, I was taking a chance and kind of opening up for some support, but I know making myself a bit vulnerable , I wasn't expecting to offend or upset anyone. Maybe I need to be careful what kind of support I seek here, maybe that is too far off topic.

I do appreciate those who did give thier support, it helped, and I appologized to the others who found such a post on this board offtopic and maybe not suitable for this forum and its structure, my intent was honest, it is out of fustration, no harm was intended.

I think it best to close this thread, we are all friends here, and I do not want to be the one rocking the boat, your all a bunch of good people, so in the light of friendship, we can just let it fade away and move on to something else.

I don't see anyone sounding offended or responding that they think this is off topic. I see a lot of opinions (mine included) and suggestions on what you could do about the problem.

If anything I said was hurtful to you, I appologize, I certainly didn't mean to come across that way.

Take care of yourself.
Tracy

I'm also sorry you didn't get the kind of support you were looking for. Nobody meant to hurt your feelings. I guess my definition of support is just different than yours. You seemed unhappy with the situation, so instead of making sympathetic noises, people thought you wanted help resolving the situation.

It has to be hard to feel you're stuck.

Just Dave,
I believe most of the responses to your problem were supportive of YOU.
I honestly believe that every person on this board and in the TCD wants you to succeed. Perhaps folks get a little frustrated when they see the one person in your life that should support you the most, and a fellow low carber to boot, is the person trying hardest to de-rail you.

Believe me, we all wish you (and your wife) nothing but the best.

Other folks on the board have spouses that aren't very sensitive to this WOE and eat junk around them and bring crap into the house, etc... but it is hard to accept when a fellow low carber (who knows how hard this is sometimes) tries to trip up someone trying so hard to stay on plan.

We did not mean to hurt your feelings, just be supportive of you and your continued success. Please don't believe for a moment that we don't care about you and your personal journey to a heathier you.