I am a brand new member who needs some encouragement from time to time. I joined Slimming World last week for the fourth time in my life. I previously joined after the first, second and fourth children. This time I cannot blame in on them as my youngest is 10!
I was devastated when I got on the scales as I am heavier than I have ever been........my hubby is quite literally not married to four stone of me. I have tried on my own but at 47, the full time worker in the house, totally reliant on my house hubby for meals etc and just hitting then menopause it ain't working like it has in the past. I guess I am upset that I have gained the weight without really noticing it. It has literally crept up on me. I am not upset at how I look and that is down to a wonderful hubby who loves me and tells me all the Time how great I am. I don't mind admitting I am spoilt by him but that is what is slowly killing me. I sitting on my ever increasing backside either in planes, trains or automobiles, or sit behind my desk and in meetings all day. I make an effort to be well turned out but I am worried by my health and that has been my prompt.out of breath walking even up stairs, wheezy and needing an inhaler to be able to play with my little kids, fall asleep the minute I get home......swollen ankles at times, dry skin.......I am really hoping that someone can encourage me that if I stick with this it will all I prove.
Now I am not being negative, simply stating the truth and actually I am sure that even one stone off will makeme feel the same way as you do when you are getting over the flu.
I am SO encouraged by you all, I am not a one for forums although I do love my Facebook. I love all your pretty profiles and need to look into how you do that.
Right enough rambling......here goes...weigh in on Wednesday and I hope I see a result......don't want to be fat , fifty and flipping flabby.

Slightly confused, what do you mean by he's not legally married to all of you? Does he make comments regarding your weight?

Sorry didn't want to confuse.......when himself married me I was 10 stone 9 lb.....now I m 14 stone 9 lb......therefore the additional four stone was not there when we married, thus not legally part of the bargain......he is too nice to me though, loves me whatever and never criticises. I think that is where my complacency comes from.

Unless your vows were very different than ours, your husband is legally married to all of you. So unless you substituted "for as long as neither of us, or any of our life circumstances change," for the traditional "for better or worse," your extra weight is just part of the bargain, not a deal breaker.

My husband and I didn't plan for a lot of changes we've encountered in our marriage.

Together, we've lost 185 lbs, our jobs and more than more than $50,000 in anual income (because we both had to go onto disability) Do we owe each other some kind of refund, because neither of us got what we expected?

I knew my husband had inherited a degenerative joint disease, so we knew that the man I married would not physically be the man I was married to ten or twenty years down the road. He and I both thoght I was in reasonably good health.

We planned for the possibility that I would eventually become his caretaker, but we didn't plan for the possibility that I would become disabled before five years of marriage, or that he would become disabled only a year and a healf later. We didn't expect that my disability would require him to take over almost all of the household responsibilities and management of my care (we help each other, but right now, I need a lot more help and care than he does. Eventually the roles probably will be reversed, or we'll end up in a nursing home together). Yet, that's what has happened.

Should he feel "gypped" and should I feel guilty because this wasn't what we planned for? And if so, who gets the blame? Me for getting disabled? Him for feeling guilty? God? Fate? Or is it just part of the "better or worse" that inevitably is a part of a real marriage.

We've chosen to see all the betters and worses and something we face together - and do not shoulder the responsibility or the blame solo. We're both in this together, and our challenges are both of ours, and dealing with the problems together is just an expected part of the "deal."

Lose weight because you want a better life for both of you, not because you "owe it" to your husband, because you've somehow "cheated" him.

See improving your health as a way to take care of and pamper the wonderful person you are, not as a way to punish yourself or make yourself worthy of your husband.

You're already worthy, and worthy deserves being protected - you deserve being protected from the damage that obesity does. You deserve to eat healthy, wonderfully tasting food. You deserve a strong, healthy, capable body.

When you see healthy habits as rewards you are giving yourself - not punishments, there's never a reason to quit. Make gaining health as fun as possible, and you'll want to do more. Make it miserable, and you'd have to be crazy to stick with it.

We're taught to make weight loss miserable, and then we wonder why we get sick of it, and quit.

i think she meant it in a funny way? it's just the British way. she was just trying to look at it in a lighter way (pun intended)

pretty sure she was joking lol

Yes, but how we joke about ourselves matters. It's very easy to feel as if we're less valuable and have "let others down" because of our weight difficulties. Even in humor, it makes the problem that much more difficult to face, because it reinforces the idea that we "owe" it to others to punish ourselves for the problem we "caused."

It's just too easy, and too common to look at dieting as a way to punish our bad selves, rather than reward our good selves. And I think if it were more acceptable to "reward" ourselves with healthy habits, instead of punishing oursevels for being inadequate, weight loss statistics wouldn't be so dismal.

Making wieght loss about punishment and atonement aren't only more unpleasant than rewards, they're much harder to maintain.

you shoud be able to take the p*ss out of yourself before you become to serious , the higher up you are the further you have to fall lol it was a simple joke, i don't think theres a need to get up in arms about it.

Ha ha isn't it funny to feel guilty and worry about how our weight is an inconvenience to others, and isn't it funny to apologize for being fat - especially to the person supposed to love us "for better or worse."

Nope, don't really see the humor in it.

If you do, ok.

I don't. I think self-deprecating fat jokes are as tasteless, crude and offensive as humor about gender, race, and sexual orientation. And making them about ourselves isn't any more appropriate than making them about others.

Is it natural and even understandable? Of course. Do I ever do it? Yes. Do I ever think it's funny? Yes. Does that make it right or appropriate? Nope. And when I do it, I hope people call me on it when they see it, because it's wrong, and reinforces the sterotype that we're supposed to apologize and make amends for simply being human.

oh my im not going to argue over something so silly. to the op, chin up my dear and good luck with your weightloss. its never easy but i believe in you and so do many of us ladies here.

We've all used humor to blunt the pain of how bad we feel about our weight.
I turn to these forums to be honest with myself and my fellow strugglers.
when my DH says where is the thin girl I married I answered I ate her.
But humor will not help me beat my sugar addiction or my need to stuff myself until my stomach hurts. Only honesty will help me overcome.
So lets be honest with ourselves and support one another.

huzzah for common sense!!!
i thought i was the only one who thought kaplods was a little too ... uptight. I think if she wants to joke she has all the right in the world.

I thought the OP was nuts (sorry OP), but apparently it was just an inter-cultural mix-up. Of course, I also tend to find most self-deprecating humor depressing and draining.

Agreed. If she wants to joke it's her right, and I found her post to be quite 'British' in humor. Love it. Chill out, Kaplods. I'm going to be honest here, I found your response to be very bullying. Just because someone is different than you and can actually use humor to keep her spirits light doesn't mean she's wrong and it doesn't warrant the scolding. Lay off. Maybe think about not taking everything so seriously and literally sometime instead of just getting up in arms, it might do you good.

Apologies if I'm sounding harsh but your posting really pissed me off. Just being honest, which is also my right.

I didn't mean to bully, just express my shock and horror at this being seen as funny. I'm usually pretty unshockable, but this was just too horrific for words.

I'm absolutely amazed that no one else found this joke as shockingly and painfully offensive as I did. To be honest, joking about weight problems and marriage vows this way, ranks right up there with "baby in a blender" jokes for me.

Having said that, I do suddenly realize why I reacted to the joke so strongly. Just as a woman with infertility problems or a history of miscarriage might view a baby in a blender joke unspeakably horrific, my experience and view of marriage made this joke extremely distasteful to me. My husband and I have endured so much of the "worse" that "better or worse" has to offer, and have come out the other side, more committed to our marriage and more in love than ever, that I personally, would have found a baby in a blender joke to be far less offensive.

That's obviously my problem, though - so I apologize sincerely. I think I need a break not only from this thread, but possibly even 3FC completely, because I'm obvivously losing my objectivity and my perspective. I just don't "get" the self-deprecating humor any more, and have virtually no patience for it. It just hurts too deeply - maybe because I've spent 40 years of my life apologizing for my size, to everyone, as if it were the worst sin on the planet. As if it would be preferable (and so darned funny) to say, "hey I may be a mass-murdering pedophile, but at least I'm not fat."

Until I have more control over my emotions, and can read a "joke" like this without feeling as if I've been stabbed in the gut with a flaming dagger, I think it's probably best if I stay off the forums for a while.