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Old 12-02-2011, 12:58 PM   #1  
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Default I just need to whine. Then y'all can smack some sense into me.

It's just a whiny morning. Everyone in the house is coming down with a cold, my back injury is killing me. I'm cranky because I don't think I'm going to get a bike ride in today, which means no real riding until Monday (DH has dibs on long Saturday rides, and we do a short/slow family ride on Sunday).

This is a food rant/whine, so if that's going to be triggery for you, I won't be offended if you stop reading now.

I'm on a generally Mediterranean diet. Veggies, fruit, fish, whole grains, legumes, nuts, olive oil, etc. My husband is on... beats the heck out of me. Lets call it "High protein". It's lower carb, but not really low carb. I'm trying really hard not to interfere in his weight loss efforts, and I know different things work for us.

Since Thanksgiving I've had no fish. I've had minimal whole grains. I've had pretty low nut intake, and really low legume intake. I've been eating way more meat than I want to be, and more than generally makes me feel good.

Why? Because I try to make dinners that work for both of us. And what he's wanted is no grains at dinner, plenty of meat, and some vegetables. And he made a giant pot of soup right after Thanksgiving (which I was all in favor of). Six quarts of soup is a good thing. Until I'm the only one eating the last three quarts. That's six lunches of soup, until I'm so heartily sick of soup I could scream. I want a salad. I want some tuna. I want a plate of polenta with chickpeas cooked in tomato sauce.

There just aren't enough meals in the day for me to follow my plan -and- his. It isn't any one meal, it's that I'm failing to plan dinners that work for both of us, and making easy dinners that work for him. And failing to plan is planning to fail. Ugh.

So this morning he calls home and says "I thought we'd have spicy stir-fry tonight out of the last of the roast beef and whatever else is around." That means rice, and it means white rice, because he doesn't like brown rice. And we don't have any stir-fry appropriate veggies. He wants to put leftover braised kale in the stir-fry, and that's going to be weird. So I'm going to eat weird, high-meat and high-fat glop that's saturated with sweet and spicy sauce on white rice? I don't think so. I've been craving that kale every day, and just haven't had room in my tummy for it by the time I ate everything I felt obliged to eat.

So I drew a line in the sand. The rest of the soup went down the garbage disposal because it's a week old, and I'm sick of it. I claimed some of the kale for a more elaborate breakfast than I usually eat. Lunch will have a generous serving of beans in it. And I'm NOT eating stir-fry for dinner. If he wants spicy food for his cold, I'm glad to help with that, but on my terms.

Now I need to quit feeling sorry for myself and complaining that I can't make my diet a priority. I need to do my back rehab, and if I want a ride, I need to go out, get on the bike and find somewhere to go.
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Old 12-02-2011, 02:12 PM   #2  
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First of all -- Cheer up!

It sounds like you are extremely frustrated with several things going on right now. I think you need to start focusing on what you need a little more. It sounds like you are pushing yourself, your wants & needs to the side a little bit to much and it needs to stop!

I am not married so forgive me if I sound silly but I think your husband and you need to come to a compromise. Maybe you eat what he wants one night and then what you want the next night. That way both of you are getting what you want several times a week. If he really can't deal with the foods you want then maybe its time to make 2 separate dinners (If that is at all an option). I would try talking to him alone after a nice meal and express yourself. Maybe he doesn't know you are feeling like this and doesn't realize that his behavior may be starting to get a little, dare I say selfish?

I think if you feel like going for a bike ride then you should do so! I don't know how severe your back injury is but if you feel like you can do it then I definitely think you need to make some time for yourself and go on that ride! It would probably relieve some of that stress you are feeling as well.

Again, Cheer up! Everything will work out
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Old 12-02-2011, 02:41 PM   #3  
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In terms of soup - you can freeze it into portions so that you can pull it out when you want it, and you're not eating it everyday for a week. You can freeze soups for three+ months, often up to six.

What if you extended this idea into your rotation? Make two dishes every weekend that can be frozen into portions, one that follows his diet, one that follows yours. Then you can use your frozen meals for days when you both can't agree.

I love "freezer meals" because it saves so much time and energy. You can always use minute rice (par-boiled) so that you both can have the rice you want - it takes only 10 minutes to prepare either one - or use regular white and brown rice and freeze it into portioned baggies. You/he can pull out one of each and tailor your meals just a little with ease.

If your stir fry ends up being veggies that you both can eat and a separate rice and meat, so be it. I also cook chicken, portion it out, and refrigerate or freeze it.

Otherwise, just do what you do - if you want fish, get it! Beans, the same. You are just as important as he is, and diet is such an individual decision.
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Old 12-02-2011, 06:22 PM   #4  
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Thank you both. I ate a decent breakfast, let my pain pills kick in and went for a ride. Some fresh air and sunshine gave me a better perspective.

I came home and looked over my food logs for the last couple of weeks. I don't usually track calories, but I put a soup day into fitday. It worked out to less than 1000 calories. I wasn't hungry, because the soup was very filling and high in fiber, but I usually eat about twice that many calories, and 1000 calories plus an hour of exercise isn't going to work.

That explains my irritability, the general malaise, and my rant this morning. Oops.

And I nudged my husband at work with one of our usual compromise meals, and he was all in favor. Looking at our conversations over the last day or two, he was worried that I was pushing myself too hard while injured, and was just trying to offer to make dinner.

Lack of food apparently makes me really irritable. Thanks again for listening.
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Old 12-03-2011, 07:45 PM   #5  
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Wow, 1000 cals is REALLY low.. no wonder you were feeling irritable! I was kind of wondering what else was going on when I read your OP - it did sound a tiny bit like you were overreacting to the soup/stir fry issue...

I think your two diets are actually pretty compatible! If you just take much less of a portion of meat, and add to it a healthy carb source that you make just for yourself (and I love the idea of making a batch of a few different things, then freezing them in individual portions), then a nice load of the veggies that you both can have (since he's low carbing, I'm assuming most of them would not have a sweet sauce??).. and presto, you're still sharing dinner except for maybe a side dish different.

My husband and I once had international students living with us for a year. 1 was Muslim, so couldn't eat any pork, and one was vegetarian... and at the same time, I was providing daycare for a 2 year old with a severe (epi-pen) tree nut allergy. Oh, and my oldest son was also a SUPER picky eater.

Now THAT makes meal-planning a bit of a disaster!!

GL with getting in sync with your DH!
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Old 12-03-2011, 08:52 PM   #6  
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Yeah, I was overreacting just a -wee- bit.

And really, we don't usually have much trouble with meals. We've both had much more restrictive (and less compatible) meal requirements in the past, and we're really good at problem solving once we define the parameters. Last night worked itself out into a meal we both ate with enthusiasm and satisfaction.

I'm finding it really hard to be aware of hunger right now and trimming "excess" calories, and I think the soup was just a convenient target. I'm examining all my new habits to see which ones are nurturing this, but I have a hunch it's the new website I was using to track my weight trends on. The data input page is also the page that shows a graph. And right under the graph, it tells you how many pounds you lost in the last 7 days, and how many calories of deficit that is.

I retain water around my period, so for a week, the deficit calories dipped.. from 1700, to 1400, to 1000, then down to 700. I've been watching every day since to see that number increase. It's a completely fake number, but it's encouraging me to eat less. And it's not like a 700 calorie/day deficit (which is almost a pound and a half a week of weight loss) is a BAD number. It just makes me a little crazy to think about it.

Of course, eating less and worrying more makes me tired and irritable, so I exercise less, and cope less well with the minor difficulties life throws at us all. Then I turn into a raving fishwife, and ask relative strangers to knock some sense into me.

So, no more tracking weight on that website, and I'm going to unmark all of the "significant dates" on my spreadsheet. I follow my diet, mark my exchanges, get my exercise, and end up healthier.
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Old 12-04-2011, 09:59 AM   #7  
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Ok, so I understand your frustration, I'm a long term healthy eater & calorie counter also the family cook. DH - fast food king, only eats junk...but will tolerate some of my food. So, for us that means compromises sometimes, sometimes it means me cooking two seperate meals, and often it means cooking slightly different dishes with the same ingrediants. Does this sound like a lot of work - probably does, but it's what I've committed to do to lose weight and continue to keep it off. I can't change DH or force him to like to eat how I eat - that just life, but I can decide what I eat and I can get creative so that I can minimize the effort to make dinner for the both of us but continue to stay on plan.

My point is, you just have to decide what's going to work for you. Another approach is to say, Hey DH - if you want me to cook this is what's for dinner and if you don't like it you know where the kitchen is, but that can be kinda harsh and not ideal either - it's all a work in progress.

Now onto this deficit thing and the charts and graphs and oh my gosh I'm tired already LOL. I'm a numbers geek too and like I said a calorie counter and I get all that stuff, and if it's generally interesting to you then cool take a look at it, but take for what it's worth - not much other than numbers. They really don't mean anything, because I'll tell you I know people who have HUGE deficits and lose hardly anything and then people like me who have much smaller deficits but when I stay on track can easily lose 2 lbs a week on not a 2 lb a week deficit. I know people like to say weight loss is just math, but I'm sorry it's much more complicated than that.

Not to mention it really sounds like all this information is negatively affecting your mood and that's where I draw the line. I used to be a daily weigher, but once I realized that that habit was bad news for my weight maintenance, eating habits, and mood I stopped and boy can I tell you I'm a MUCH saner person now.

So anyway, congrats on your success so far and good luck!
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Old 12-04-2011, 10:09 AM   #8  
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Good heavens, no wonder you're feeling a bit lousy if you've been eating soup that's a week old! If you're not freezing portions immediately, which I warmly recommend, then throw it out of the fridge after three days.

My partner and I eat separate meals most of the time, and we almost always cook our own meals when that's the case. I'm vegan, he's not, I'm dieting, he's not, I'm 11" shorter than him and inactive while he has a mildly physical job, I'm on a low-fat diet due to gallstones, and when it comes to weekends, he has a huge lie-in so that he's always several hours behind me for breakfast and lunch. I prefer wholewheat pasta and brown rice where he usually likes the white stuff (although finding a really nice brown jasmine rice helped there), and there was a year when I was on a gluten-free diet and was always cooking two sets of pasta. Sometimes we will make a meal where part of it is for both of us and part of it is separate items, such as a baked potato with different toppings, or start cooking something like a stir-fry and then divide it into two pans to add meat to his pan and tofu to mine. There are plenty of ways to compromise without one of you having to eat food that you don't want to. At the end of the day, you sit down together to eat in a nice companionable way, and you both enjoy your meal, and that's what counts.
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Old 12-04-2011, 12:51 PM   #9  
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ncuneo View Post
Not to mention it really sounds like all this information is negatively affecting your mood and that's where I draw the line. I used to be a daily weigher, but once I realized that that habit was bad news for my weight maintenance, eating habits, and mood I stopped and boy can I tell you I'm a MUCH saner person now.
Yeah, I went back and skimmed Lyle McDonald's "Guide to Flexible Dieting" yesterday, and decided that I was due a free meal for the sake of my sanity, if nothing else. I took the night "off" from my diet, played a new board game with my family, read a book and chose not to worry about it for awhile.

This morning I weighed, logged my weight, closed the spreadsheet and went on with my day. I'm carrying around a lot less stress today as a result.
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