Am I wrong to want my partner to take care of her appearance?

Let me start by saying that I love my partner of 14 years. But her weight gain has really affected my desire for any hint of a sex life.

She has gained about 35 pounds during the last 2 years. It has been bothering me for a while but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. It makes me feel shallow.

I’ve been encouraging her for nearly a year to take better care of herself. For example, eating right and exercising. Finally, a few days ago she seemed to want to start losing weight because she started to exercise—doing sit ups and walking. I was excited that she was taking an interest and told that we could do this together. 

Over the weekend, she bought a sleeveless shirt that was 2 sizes too small for her. I could see rolls of fat and her arms have cellulite and are flabby. If she wants to let herself go like this that’s one thing but dressing like she’s 22 with a hot body is ridiculous. Seeing her like that really bothered me. Never mind the fact she was trying to get me into bed all weekend. I kept making excuses and finally just asked her for time without saying as to why.

Saturday night when she was changing for bed she turned around and I could see this second stomach bursting from her midsection. I can say without exaggeration it REPULSED me.

Fast forward to her NEW exercising routine (I also want to mention that she drinks quite a bit). She took a long walk Tuesday night and said that she was going to take another the next night and also stop by a nearby friend’s house. By the time she gets home she’s drunk. Apparently her vigorous exercise routine incorporates beer lifting. Now that’s great for the already expanding waist line.

I was so mad I said something really awful. First, we argued about her drinking. She explained to me that she wasn’t an alcoholic but a “social alcoholic.” After arguing for 10 minutes, she started up the stairs and called me a “cold fish.”:I had had it. I shot back “Yeah. You’re just so APPEALING.”

Now she’s seething with rage and won’t talk to me. Am I wrong? Not to be conceited but I’m an attractive woman who takes good care of herself. And no offense guys (I’m a lesbian)—if I wanted this I could have married some bubba. I’m both very angry and guilty.

Any suggestions? Am I wrong to want my partner to take care of her appearance? What should I do?


James@15  posted this on Matilda Tuesday's My Fat Spouse Forum

The Obese Man and Erectile Dysfunction

Obesity causes a decline in testosterone.

Lack of activity causes a decline in testosterone.

Both of the above cause a higher level of insulin resistence, worsening diabetes symptoms.

ED is the most overdiagnosed condition for men. However, if your man is fat, dropping 20lbs can do amazing things to his abilities. Further, healthy diet, proper sleep and exercise will improve the condition.

Virtually all men will do better in bed if they get 30-60minutes of cardio (real cardio) 4-5 times a week.

To increase testosterone and HDL (the good cholesterol), have your man lift weights and increase muscle mass. NO money for a gym or equipment? PUsh ups, dips using a countertop and a pull up bar work wonders.

Oh and if they smoke or use nicotene, if they quit they'll do much better in as little as 3 weeks (as well as raise their good cholesterol a few points).

If they are boozers they need to stop to be able to work better. Two drinks a day is still fine by most people's accounts. Just heavy drinking causes problems with standing at attention.

There is no excuse... get cracking men, or your women should be able to crack the whip on you.

Do I have the time to exercise?

I don't have the time...

By Namaste

I work a full time job in a factory. I have a forty five minute commute each way to get there and back home. I have a semi-useless husband and a house to take care of. I have five cats, and every day I have to remind them that they love me and don’t want to wander off and become feral. I have meals to cook, things to clean, shopping to do, and bills to pay.

There is also the issue that I also would like to have some time to do things that I enjoy. I like to relax a bit when I get home from working a full shift. I like to browse the intertubes. I enjoy watching shows that I have Tivo’ed. I like to play the MMORPG “City of Heroes. (yeah, I like to fight crime with my superpowers in my off time. Don’t tell anyone!) Oh, and I have a blog thingey that I’d sorta like to spend more time on. Given that I am a responsible adult who does take care of the responsibilities of my life, I don’t think that I’m being unreasonable in wanting an hour or so of “me” time once in a while.

So do I have the time to exercise for 40 minutes to an hour every work day? Do I have the time to cook healthy lower calorie meals? It would be so easy to say “No.” I would love to have that time to do the things I like to do, that I need to do. It would be easy. It would be a flat out lie, too. I make the time to do these things, every day, because I need to do so. It is as important to me as making my mortgage payment or keeping the cats from starving. If I didn’t make the time to do the things that help me manage my weight, I would not weigh less than 200 pounds. Heck, I wouldn’t weigh less than 250.

When I didn’t take the time to do these things, I weighed around 260-270. I felt awful. It was uncomfortable to live in my body. My left knee was in constant pain from my excess poundage. It was hard to squeeze into restaurant booths and movie theater seats. I didn’t sleep nearly as well as I do now. And, it was much, much worse mentally. I was deeply angry that my body looked and felt like that. I was deeply ashamed that I had let myself look that like. I was supersensitive about my weight, and if something would happen that would force me to confront the truth of it I would be in a foul mood for hours, if not days.

So do I have the time to do what I need to do to maintain my weight loss? Do I have the time to spend forty minutes on my elliptical when I get home from work? Do I have the time to cook my own food rather than hitting the drive thru on the way home? Is it worth an hour a day, more or less, to feel fantastic for the other 23 hours rather than feeling horrible?

I’ve heard from people who think that the answer to these question is “no”. They’ve made that choice for themselves, and they think that this is a reasonable, even unavoidable. But for my part, I haven’t noticed that worlds falls apart during the hour I take a day to make my life a joy to live, instead of painful burden.

I am sorry that I don’t have the time to write in this blog more often. But not that sorry.

Obese boyfriend? I'm too young for this!

I came here by accident and ended up responding to a thread about the sex life of obese men.

I understand most people here are men disgruntled by their wives' weight - from what I saw, most of you had kids and are well into their adult lives.

I'm not. I'm 24, I'm 5'10 and 170 pounds. Not an ideal weight, but it's still going down slowly. I was a normal child, and due to some sexual abuse when I was young, my weight shot up from 130 to 240 between 15 and 17. It was a body armor, shielding me from men. At around 20 I got to 170, and I hover between 150 and 170 now, depending on the season (I'm a lot more active during winter - hockey).

So 4 years ago I reached a decent weight, allowing me to have a decent silhouette and plenty of energy. I met this great guy who had a little meat on his bones, 6'1 and 220/230 - active, played hockey with me, softball, had a job that made him move around a lot.

4 years later and he's settled in nicely at... heck I don't know, last time we bought pants for him they were a 42 waist. Around 290 I'd say? He refuses to get on a scale. Enough that sex is difficult, mechanically. I feel frustrated, lonely and I'm looking at the passage of time and not enjoying my current life.

He's got horrible eating habits that he's not even aware of. I've taken a habit of asking him, are you hungry or are you bored when he eats between meals. He's always hungry. I'm tired of sleeping on the couch. I'm tired of having The Talk every month with him saying Yes Dear and the changes only sticking for a week. I get to a point where seeing him eat irks me, seeing him drink beer irks me, seeing him period irks me. I don't believe in crash diets, so I think he should be able to have a beer every now and then, or a bowl of baked chips watching hockey - but even then...

If it's not a steamed veggie, I can't bear the sight of him eating, which means we don't eat together. So we don't eat together, we don't have sex, we don't even sleep in the same bed since I've retreated to the couch... Man I'm 24. Why the **** do I put up with this...

We're not married (neither of us believes in marriage), but we do live together and I've moved out for a year already (and came back). I'm not gonna play that game forever - but this man is my best friend. He's smart, sensitive, funny, honest, open - he's great looking under that layer of fat. There was a time where he made me feel alive. 

I cook well, lots of veggies, lots of fiber, lean meats - not much oil or sugar or starch. When I do bake dessert, it's always some sort of natural thing sweetened with everything but sugar. I look at his diet (that I've planned!) and I see nothing wrong with it (amounts to 2k calories a day and less than 30% from fat). So he's sneaking food, or throwing out his lunch at work to go eat out with coworkers. He's got an office job now so he's not moving at all during the day.

My job makes me move around a lot, so I exercise only twice a week in summer (badminton and softball). In winter I play hockey 3-4 times a week. We're always walking everywhere, and yet he's not losing the weight. I'm also a part-time student, so I don't have the time to exercise with him more.

I don't get it. I don't get how my best friend who I thought was the man of my life became this fat slob who sits around playing Halo 3 for hours and doesn't move until he's ordered to. Which works! But I hate being the wicked witch with the karmic taser gun... He has no self-esteem, positive reinforcement works until I stop doing it - and I'm tired, TIRED of always trying to motivate him. I have issues that I need to work on too! Permanent change seems... unlikely at this point. I don't wanna become the food nazi. I want him to want better health, better sex, better love. 

Confusion and loneliness. Woot.

"Chymere" posted this on the My Fat Spouse Forum

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She just doesn't do what it takes

I feel so relieved having found this support group, because that is basically what this is. Let me introduce myself. I am a 59 yr old recently retired civil servant, who used to work in Europe. I now live part-time in the Philippines and the rest of the time in Europe. I have been married for 5 yrs to a 34 yr old woman who used to be gorgeous, but has, since I met her, got ever fatter and fatter. It is not that she overeats or even eats all the wrong things. In her case it is probably hormonal (contraceptive pill, gave it up 2 yrs ago, but never recovered from it). What gets me in her case is her inablility or lack of willingness to work out properly to get rid of the fat. She is so damn economical with her energy. When I go to the gym I always do the maximum, she - if she goes - will do the minimum. And there are always excuses: she's got a cold, she got her menstruation, she's got a stiff neck, with complications, She is tired, whatever. And maybe some of these excuses are legitimate, but over the years I have grown tired of all the non-starters. There was the jogging she would do to fight the increasing bulge, there was the Billy Blanks bootcamp work-out which would bring salvation, there was the punch bag that she would happily use to build up muscles and stamina, there was the treadmill we bought at her behest, there was the disco dancing group that would transform her (and my) life, there were the fitness club memberships which did not bring the eagerly (by me) anticipated results, there is the personal fitness trainer who failed miserably where others failed too. And why? Because she just doesn't do what it takes, she lacks the follow-through, she just doesn't have the single-minded dogged determination that is essential to go from fat to fit. She will not put in the hard work. I am a little bit qualified to judge a case like this. Most of my life I have been overweight myself. Been there, done that. There isn't a diet I haven't tried. I have been mostly unsuccessful (but at least I really tried), until I came across the leptin diet, as advocated by Byron and Mary Richards in their book "Mastering Leptin". Following their five principles (in my case eating brown rice, fish, fruit and vegetables) in combination with some serious work at the gym 5 to 6 times a week, has made all the diference. My wife has always been a bit wishy-washy about any diet and exercise advice I give her. I suppose she is fed up with the whole thing too. Unfortunatedly she will not stick doggedly to a routine. She now weighs in at around 170 pounds (at 5' 4"), which is just an estimate, coz I can't get her to weigh herself. She is sick of it herself. It destroys, or at least puts a heavy damper on our sex life, as you can well imagine. She keeps asking me if I love her, a sure sign of insecurity: the fatter they become, the more emotionally needy they are. Certainly, I care for her, but where I never used to fantasize about other women, I now do. She has lost so much of her sex-appeal. I mean she looks like a small sumo wrestler! Anyway, it was nice to get this of my chest and share these experiences with other people who are in a similar situation. I hope that my positive experience with the leptin diet can be of help to others. The great thing about that way of life - coz it is not really a diet - is that you lose all your urges to snack and binge. I never eat between meals anymore. I never touch anything but proper food. I just don't feel the need to eat junk anymore, no willpower involved, and by the way I do not need any alcohol anymore either. Good luck!
Posted by "Fitthen" on the My Fat Spouse Forum