Hubby is sickeningly sane
 

The other day I asked my hubby how much he would eat if a) he wouldn't gain weight no matter what and b) his food intake would have no ill effects on his health. His answer? "About the same as I eat now." That's probably around 2,400 calories. (He's 61 years old, 6'2", and weighs 180 pounds. His weight never fluctuates by more than 5 pounds.) He went on to tell me that food has never been one of his passions -- not that this was news to me.

If someone were to ask me the same question, my answer would be 5,000 calories, if not more. It's like we're different species...

Anyone else have a spouse with a maddeningly healthy relationship with food?

F.

DH is naturally a big eater and he has to restrict some to stay a healthy weight, so he's not in the same camp as yours. But my daughter...

I never know how much food to make her because she varies wildly in how much she wants to eat and when she's full, she just stops, no matter what it is. At an early age (she's 17 now), she started saving the best (to her) part of her meals for last, only to discover that she often ended up not eating it at all. I try not to push her to eat more than she wants, but it's a little aggravating when she leaves half a brownie that I would love to eat on her plate.

My brother in law might be the same as your hubby. He's 6'3" and skinny as a rail. He just can't eat a lot of food. He has actually tried to put on weight many times over the years but can't put on much.

I think its partially to do with hungry hormones. And partially to do with him having a fast metabolism.

Its also a body type thing.

I bet my husband and older son would answer the same. Me? I'm with you... About 5000 calories would be so great!!! No matter how long I'm with this an no matter what great habits I form, I would and could go back to pigging out daily in a snap and I WOULD if it didn't mean disasterous things for my health and relationships.

I don't think wanting or not wanting an increase in calories is a sign of sanity or lack thereof, or even an indication of a healthy relationship with food. It just shows a general disinterest in food. Which is fine, but I also know people who really enjoy their food but don't have weight issues but would no doubt appreciate the extra caloric ranges.

I view it like money. I am pretty good with my savings and I generally don't lack in anything but if I were to get a raise from my employer, it's not like I'm gonna decline it.

Hmm, in my family, maintaining weight is more of a conscious effort than a subconscious one. Myself, my husband, parents, in-laws etc are all vigilant 'weight watchers', some more vigilant than others.

I am pretty sure that if any one of us could eat without ANY adverse consequences at all, like putting on weight or risking our health, we would be eating with much more abandonment than what we are doing now. That is not to say that we will become gluttons - we will simply be more lax in our daily eating habits.

Almost everyone in my family has a healthy relationship with food and eat as much as they want until they get full. Which is exactly where I'm headed with IE.

I don't find it infuriating, I find it kind of great! Think of it this way.... if you're eating food without restricting yourself, eating as much as you want and stopping when your stomach is satisfied, then what is the purpose of trying to shove more in there? It's like filling a bucket of water and then letting the water keep running, what's the point? The bucket is already full.

I disagree that it has anything to do with a strong disinterest in food. I don't know anyone who is not interested in food. Anyone who is hungry has a strong interest in food. Once you are satisfied it's normal to lose interest in further eating. The difference is they derive pleasure from being satisfied rather than continuing eating.

But some of us are not full or satisfied with a moderate amount of food. I am eating 800 calorie dinners many days right now which always include a huge salad (so bulky food) and no starchy todos and I could still easily eat another 500 or more. I simply hardly ever feel full or satisfied. Hardly any foods are too rich for me.. Too heavy. Some things might be too sweet, but with lots of water, I can handle that too.

That is why intuitive eating would never, ever work for me. Intuitive eating is what got me all the way up to 275 pounds. I just ate what I wanted, when I wanted and how much I wanted. I didn't binge or pig out.... I just ate how I wanted to eat. My husband ate what he wanted and stayed the same weight. I ate what I wanted and gained over 100 pounds before stabilizing.

I think I'd take even more than 5,000...my husband is your husband's polar opposite and would probably ask for unlimited calories and take full advantage of that option!:devil:

This is very discouraging to hear, because once again IE is completely being misinterpreted. IE is NOT about eating whatever you want whenever you want it in whatever amounts you want, I don't know why this myth is so perpetual. IE is a methodical process of rebuilding your relationship with food, it's a lot of hard work, the hardest work I've ever had to do. It has taken me so far out of my comfort zone, and forced me to think about things that I've never had to address before. It's so painful to hear people dumb it down to the "eat whatever you feel like" diet. It just makes it sounds like we are stupid dumb people who are too lazy to lose weight. It's ok to not understand what IE is, but to blame a 100lb gain on IE is ... well I don't even know what to say about that.

Great analogy! And you're right, maybe "sane" is not the right word for my husband. He just doesn't see what the big deal is about food, just as some people don't care for sex or foot rubs.

F.

Mine is a similar story.. I have 2 brothers, both younger and both can eat what they like and dont gain a gram.. Heres an idea of what they eat and their habits. Brother A is a heavy smoker, lives off takeaway and his idea of a snack is a full family sized pizza, a packet of sweet biscuits, whatever else he can find in the fridge, a can of bourban and a ciggie. Brother B is a sugar junkie. He drinks at least 4 cups of coffee a day with 3 sugars in each, he usually has 1-2 energy drinks a day too and eats at least 4 blocks of chocolate and 4-5 packets of those feral sour worms/lollies a week, and he is skinny as a bean pole.

I walk into maccas and I gain 10 pounds. So unfair!

Same here. If anything I'm even more extreme. I can eat 4,000 calories in one sitting before I start feeling uncomfortably full. At age four I ate 2,000+ cals of chocolate in one go and felt just fine. If I didn't eat less than I'd like at every single meal I would weigh 500 pounds.

F.

But don't you think that some people just have larger natural appetites?

F.

Also, with regard to IE, I know this is going to sound really bad, but the only way IE works for me is after I have starved myself for a bit. Not like never eating, just eating smaller than normal meals, never feeling satisfied, and always being a little hungry (not sure if that even constitutes starving yourself - maybe just extreme portion control?!). I dont know if it shrinks my stomach or whatever, but after doing that for a bit, the smaller meals become more satisfying and when I eat a little more than I am used to, it creates a phyisical pain in me so bad I cant move properly.

First no one is saying you are lazy. Where do you get that? You are obviously working the way of eating to work for you. But intuitive eating says this

What I am telling you is that I did eat only when my body gave me hunger clues. I never pigged out. I never binged. I ate when I was hungry and didn't get full signals until I had eaten a huge quantity of foods. Believe me, I tried to only eat when I felt hungry.... But the types of foods I was eating MADE me feel hungry much more often and I don't think I have a normal "I'm full" cue. My husband follows intuitive eating. He only eats when he feels hungry. That could be at midnight, but if he is hungry, he'll eat and he only eats enough to feel satisfied and I always feel baffled how he can feel satisfied with the amount he eats.

See, I think you are the one who doesn't get it, SOME OF US don't feel the hunger feelings normally or the full signals normally. I wish I did, I reallllllly do. My mom said she saw it in me as a kid, I just had this insatiable appetite and she worried I would get overweight, even though as a kid I was not overweight at all.

My way to combat it is to eat the most saturating foods I can to try to feed the hunger to the best I can, eating starchy carbs just leads me to feeling famished and is disaster for me. That obviously isn't true for you and I understand that and appreciate that. But when I say I cannot eat for hunger, I truly mean it.

Ah, the perpetual IE discussion...interesting how it crops up on virtually every diet thread. It reminds me of the religion folks who ring my doorbell. As if they need to convert others to validate their own choice.

BBB, my mom has been trying to explain that to me for years - she just never feels satisfied, no matter how much she eats. Put that together with some carb addictions, and yeah, I see the problem. Me, I have all the right signals but I need to listen with absolute full attention (shiny! tasty!). :D

Maybe, who knows? "appetite" is sooooo subjective. There's no way to measure that. I used to have a much bigger and more intrusive appetite because over many years of binging I had taught myself to get hungry every time I felt nervous/anxious, discomfort. I was like a bottomless pit. I blamed it on the food, I blamed it on liking food more than other people did, I blamed it on the government, I blamed it on sugar, I found lots of things to blame other than being accountable for my own lack of understanding of my body's needs. Our bodies are like plants, they have different needs - it might be more light, more water, less light, and let's face it, some people even talk to their plants and swear up and down that it makes a difference. I used to solve every problem with food, just like I've killed all my plants with too much water. An "appetite" is not quantifiable, it's just a need to eat. Yes, I used to have a much much much bigger appetite. But as I've learned to nurture myself in appropriate ways, my body has let go of the insatiable need for food.

It didn't crop up, it's the actual discussion, or so called "the sane people who don't need to eat as much food" that the OP refers to. Those sane people just happen to eat intuitively, they're not just freaks of nature who don't like food - there is a real reason and explanation for why people don't over eat, some people never lose that sense of intuition that humans are born with, but it can be developed and relearned because it's there - hunger is a primal instict, and responding to it is primal as well.

I don't need to convert you or anyone, I wouldn't expect anyone here to try IE if their only goal is to lose weight. But if someone asks for help with trying to rid themselves of obsessive resentful thoughts of food, or is looking for some kind of sanity around food or has questions about hunger etc, then those are issues that are dealt with really well with IE. Why is my way of eating any less valid than someone elses?

What makes you think I don't get it? I've been dealing with that my whole life. I've known for my entire life that I don't understand my body's hunger signals. That is my diagnosed eating disorder, on paper. I am medically diagnosed - it is a medical fact that my hunger/fullness mechanism was broken, shut down, with a dusty tarp over it. Ok so now I've taken the tarp off and learned that the machine still turns on - I've got lots of tweaking still to do but I'm human, therefore was born with the ability to feed and understand my hunger. I know you don't care what I say but I think that you too were born with that ability, everyone is and we can learn to foster it or we can learn to trick it with, but I have no doubts at all that that it's not broken beyond repair - I can't imagine anyone who is more broken than I was.

You say that "Intuitive eating is designed to be a "common sense, hunger-based approach to eating," where participants are encouraged to eat when and only when their body tells them it is hungry." Not sure where you got this definition from but it's an insufficient definition and not at all indicative of the process that goes into it. It's a simplistic statement that gives no indication of the benefits of understanding hunger. It's more or less also a final result, not the process.

If you gained a 100lbs it's not because of intuitive eating. All of us gained weight because we ate more than our body needed.

Got it from wikipedia's entry on Intuitive eating.

And you assume that your body really knows what it needs and doesn't? I don't believe that. The body is designed to survive hardships. So, it also is designed to prepare for such hardships. If anything, my body is doing a BETTER job at trying to survive because it doesn't say it's "too full" too quickly. So, if there was a famine, I would be more likely to survive because I have more fat stores and my body is really, really good at storing fat.

It absolutely DOES NOT KNOW that we live in times of plenty and that there is about zero chance there will be lean times/famine. There has been millions of years of evolution to tell my genes/DNA otherwise.

I agree to some extent. Most babies resolutely turn away from the nipple or bottle when they've had enough, and actively resist overfeeding. That said, my mother told me I had a huge appetite right from birth. Her doctor told her how much formula she should be giving me, but she found that if she didn't give me TWICE AS MUCH as instructed I would howl incessantly. Whether that means I had a naturally large appetite or weak fullness signals or anything else, I was naturally inclined to eat more than most.

F.

Yes, I assume that. I'm learning a lot about my body, I've learned that it's much smarter than my mind is. I've learned than by honoring it and respecting its needs my body has learned to trust me again, and the messages it sends me now are very clear and precise. I've learned that my body doesn't actually want a lot of the foods I thought it wanted before. I've learned how to truly enjoy my food, and that real pleasure can be experienced from food. You have to do what works for you and if what you're doing is working then work it.

All I'm trying to say is that your husband behavior is not unexplainable. There is a lot of logic in it, and I think something that we're all capable of. He's not a freak of nature, he doesn't like food less than you do, and he's not an anomaly. There's no voodoo behind it. He just understands his needs more than a dieter does - I'm willing to bet he'd never consider a diet, right? Because someone who is in tune with what their body needs would never subscribe to having someone else tell them when/what/how much to eat.

When the machine is broken, what does it matter what type of fuel you put in it? It's broken. I'm fixing the machine and testing out different fuels - of COURSE some fuels are better than others but once the machine is fixed it becomes easier to pick out the good fuels.

OK.... I never said he was a freak of nature... just that I don't understand it because it's so unlike me - how I've EVER been. As a kid his grandmother had to hand feed him until he was like 8. Why? because he would forget to eat. He had no time for it. When his mom would ask him what he ate for lunch, he would have no clue and would say, "ask grandma". That is not how I EVER was. So... was I 'broken" as a child? Or was he? I knew what I eat and I liked to eat. I was just active enough as a kid to keep the weight from piling on.

Would he diet? No... why would he when he doesn't need to? Does he understand that I'm different from him and I need to eat differently from him? Absolutely. He knows that we are different and that how we deal with many things in life - not just food, is different. He fully supports my low carb, high fat/moderate protein diet as he sees I'm happier, healthier and it's easier for me to be moderate in my eating. And I don't force my way of eating on him (or anyone else in the family) because they are different.

Unfortunately both my fiance and I eat irresponsibly. He's still healthier, weight-wise, but I feel like I'm eating more veggies by far. He'll have coffee at work, eat a doughnut or something, drink soda. I'm sipping water and eating carrots... And lately, I've been the one cutting him off saying it's too late to eat or you aren't even hungry, etc.

That's a very interesting point but my take on this is as a breastfeeding mommy who nursed my son for 1.5yrs. I'm one of those hippie dippie breastfeeding, cosleeping, babywearing, attachment parenting mommies. From the get-go I was fighting with doctors - pediatricians and my own gyno who discouraged me from breastfeeding. They would tell me how much easier it is to feed formula, how much less I would have to feed, how my kid would sleep through the night if I formula fed. It all went very against my insticts and I'll be honest and tell you that it was driven by my eating disorder. I had read that kids who are formula fed have a greater risk of obesity and eating disorders later in life and since I was formula fed and I was obese and had an ED I wanted to do whatever I could to offset my child's chances of that. I'm not saying that I have ED and am obese because my mom formula fed me but hey, you know if there's a possible link then why not try to avoid that? (my brother was breastfed btw, totally intuitive eater, thin and confident)

A baby who is breastfed eats and behaves much differently than a baby who is formula fed. Sure, it would have been nice to do a feeding every 3-4hrs. But my son ate around the clock, sometimes feeding up to 4 times an hour. All night long even, I think the longest we went without feeding in the first 3 months was maybe 2hrs, day or night. It calmed down a bit after that but I continued to feed "on demand" until he weaned himself.

How could your doctor possibly know how much you needed to eat? Some people need to eat more, some people need to eat less. I can't speculate on what he meant but eating is not a prescription - your mom did the right thing and gave you more. if she hadn't that would've been like putting you on a diet. How many moms ignore their baby's cry and give them what the doctor tells them to? I have a serious distrust of doctors because of how much they encouraged formula and discouraged me from breast feeding. One even told me that my milk isn't good enough nutrition. Very bizarre archaic stuff.

Anyway, gosh I'm rambling, one of the IE books I read has referred to the initial stages of IE as demand-feeding, feeding ourselves on demand the same way we feed babies on demand. There are corrolations made between babies and how they get their needs met by crying out for food and learning to trust and that it's a similar process for us to relearn how to meet our own needs. I kind of buy into it after seeing some of my friends who formula feed - the baby cries and they say "I'm not going to feed her again until it's time for the next prescribed feeding" - what anguish it must be for a baby who's hungry now and doesn't understand that it's it's only 3:15pm.

Yes. In a lot of ways, I feel fortunate. I feel that my struggles would be intensified if my partner struggled with food. Yet, after many years together, I just cannot seem to model DP's style of eating. I'm working on it.

This is totally a tangent, but when my husband was born in Croatia, most women still breastfed there (unlike in the US) and the "wisdom" at the time was to feed the baby every 3 hours and only on one side and if they got hungry between nursings, to give them water in a bottle. SERIOUSLY. So... that is what my MIL did.

She was AGHAST when I did as you described -feeding on demand (and I too was a co-sleeping, baby wearing, breast feeding, don't cry it out mom). And both my babies nursed ALL THE TIME too. Water in a bottle? How could that ever make sense? "Medical advice"... huh

I have beaten the dead horse on the matter of IE being proselytized lately...so I'll skip that.

However this misinformation needs addressing. WannaB, you need to do a little reading on human biology or maybe evolution. It is not within our "natural" instinct to eat only when hungry then stop when comfortably satisfied. That's one of the reasons it is my opinion the IE is misleading.

We have been designed through evolution to eat as often and as much as we can when food is available, because for much of our human history, starvation was a real threat to our existence. There are reasons with why so much enjoy sweet and fatty tastes. These foods (sweet being fruit in our human history) provided excellent sources of energy and fat (think animal fat) was loaded with valuable calories. Understand that these calories, like from saturated fat really fill us up and keep us full longer AND there was a time when our caloric expenditure to find and hunt this food needed to be accounted for.

If you want to talk primal, then primal is we are made to eat, eat often and eat a lot. Our body's design has not caught up with a world of highly processed foods loaded with junk calories that don't give us the satiety of the diet we evolved on, or a world were all we have to do is drive to the store and buy our next meal. Yes, some people do not have the drive to eat as much, and those people would have died out throughout our earlier evolution. But in today's world, they will actually prosper because now they are not going to be the ones that are obese and having many illness as a result of.

Please, do not fool yourself into thinking IE is primal or natural.

I didn't mean to imply that. But some people find it frustrating to be around intuitive eaters. freelance said "It's like we're different species...Anyone else have a spouse with a maddeningly healthy relationship with food? and yoyoma said "it's a little aggravating when she leaves half a brownie..." I totally understand the frustration, I can't tell you how many times I was angry and resentful of my husband because he ate so freaking normally all the freaking time. I'm like the black sheep in my family, everyone is so normal about food. They don't restrict anything but they don't gorge on anything either! Do you know how many times I've cooked my husband's favorite dinner for him only for him to turn around and not eat any of it because he's not hungry? You can't imagine how many fights we got into because I was pressuring him to eat breakfast, or scolding him for snacking between meals. I always knew better because I was the expert on nutrition. It was a real hanker in our marriage for sure.

Now I just try to understand. If he needs to eat 30minutes before dinner is ready then I have to accept that and not try to interfere and dictate to him when he can or should eat. It's also helped me to foster a better relationship with my son, who as a child is obviously an intuitive eater and is just as happy munching on broccoli as he is licking an ice cream cone - he doesn't know that broccoli is "good" and that ice cream is "bad" and I don't intend on ever telling him ;)

Ah, I posted before reading the rest of the thread. Yes, this is true.

I never said IE is primal. It is natural though lol. Hunger is primal, that is what I said. Hunger is something you're born with, all animals are born with the drive to eat.

A mommy after my own heart. My mom smoked when she was pregnant with me. It was different times then. When you know better you do better. That was just the common thinking back then, I don't fault my mom for doing as she did, she too was taken aback by how much and how long I breastfed. You should have seen her expression when I told her we would do baby-led-weaning on food lol.

After watching you many times on 3FC read a post and then jump to incorrect conclusions on what was being said to you, including name calling and implied insults, I flat out do not believe this. I think this is what you heard, but not what was communicated. I know you've mentioned your child is relatively young (so we aren't talking dated medicine) And I know there is no way all those providers were "discouraging" breastfeeding and you had to fight with all of them. You seem to perceive challenges where there are none, from what I've seen. And its sad that you likely lost out on educated professionals and their guidance because you viewed them as adversaries rather than support. I'm not saying you are lying, I'm sure in your head you saw them as yet another group of people you have do defend your choices against, but I'm telling you, breastfeeding is widely supported and encouraged by the medical community, and namely the American academy of pediatrics. Many studies have been published showing the benefits of breastfeeding. I promise you, you might think you were being discouraged, but you weren't.

No... it could happen. My son (9 years ago) had to be admitted to the hospital for jaundice. First, they wanted me to leave my 2 day old infant at the hospital ALONE and just bring in pumped milk or let them bottle feed him formula. HELLO??? How much milk do they think I would get? Also, the doctor said that if I wasn't an experienced mother, she would have insisted that I bottle feed him while he was there. And I did have to fight them to let me nurse him as often as he wanted and to guarantee that my milk was coming in.

Oh, and when we were in the hospital where he was born, they worried about him losing too much weight before checking out that they wanted me to feed him a bottle before releasing him.

AND... when he was 6 weeks old, a different doctor wanted me to wean him before having gall bladder surgery because I wouldn't be able to breastfeed for 24 hours or so...

So, yes... it is still out there - if they don't gain fast enough. If they seem fussy, etc. STILL advice is too readily given to stop breastfeeding by a LOT of professionals.

freelancemomma - a year ago, I probably would have felt the same way as you! Now, I find myself unable to binge in the same way I used to without feeling overly full and sick. I don't enjoy it like I used to. Yes, I think I could still easily eat very high-calorie meals on a daily basis (mostly drinking those calories!) and enjoy it, but no where near how I used to and I think my desire for that just keeps going down and down and down.

Hm. Maybe I'm actually developing a healthy relationship with food. :dancer: I'm sure it has plenty to do with my stomach shrinking. My bf has been the same lately. We used to binge together, on occasion, and now we have even planned for a "binge" after a very good week and then were hardly able to eat any of it!

Unfortunately, I can go whole hog any time I want!

I agree with all this, I have noticed this as well. I am also a hippy dippy mama who breastfed "on demand.". :D And yes in the beginning that was like every hour. I thought for sure I was doing something wrong because at the hospital they told me every 3 hours to feed her. Im glad I listened to my instincts on that one instead of saying "she can't possibly be hungry, it hasn't been 3 hours yet."

I was discouraged from breastfeeding also. (my youngest is 2) I had to switch peds because of it. My babies are usually slow gainers in the beginning but they more than make up for it later. I was always being pushed to take formula. And I am not confrontational by nature, so I just tried to find a more supportive pediatrician. ..

So yeah its weird how the medical community gives lip service to breastfeeding yet many dr's do discourage it. I don't understand why. I was breastfed until I was about 11 months old. My dh was formula fed. AND they put rice cereal in his bottle from birth because he was such a BIG baby ( 9 lbs) and was hungry all the time. Heh I don't want to get into a debate, but my dh is NOT in touch with his hunger and fullness signals at all. He eats because its time to eat or to regulate his blood sugar. He definitely has weight issues, the more so as he gets older but he eats mostly processed food. Anyway. Fascinating discussion. :)

Why do you keep assuming we just don't understand IE, instead of simply disagreeing with the principles and finding them ineffective? Believe it or not more than one fat chick has read Tribole's book and others like it.

And add me to the group that has no good off button, and when I eat to satisfaction and comfortably full I'm usually 1500 or more calories over my maintenance range. And of foods that make me sick and fat. Bummer, that.