OMGoodness! Permission from Dh to change his diet!! Help me do it well!

[Janna]

I can't believe dh has given me full-fledged permission to change his diet! Tonight at dinner he said and I quote "If you wanna put salad and beans in front of me and call it a meal, I'll eat it. Tell you what. I will eat whatever you feed me, and only what you feed me, for 2 weeks." Then he second guessed that, but I didn't listen to that part. I'm taking that challenge and running with it! But...how?

 

I have been doing the Eat to Live program for 12 days and LOVE it (though there has been a *little* bit of frustration with it too). Dh has seen me cut out all sugar, bread, dairy, meat and caffeine. He has seen me stop eating with him at night, not snacking and not taking bites from his or the kids' plates. He has seen me not eat even a morsel of food when we have gone out for Chinese food and Penn Station (Subway-like sandwiches but served hot).

 

I have plead my case with him. I have begged him to change his diet, I have even called him selfish for killing himself prematurely (you can LOL at that - it was taken in good fun and he laughed too), but nothing has worked.

 

Dh's diet consists of *nothing* for breakfast (I used to be like that too), usually nothing for lunch and if he does have lunch it's a bag of popcorn that he'll get from Target (close to his work) :lurk5: or a burger from Hardees or the like. Then he'll come home, eat what I've prepared (which I used to think was healthy food until I read and implemented EtL) and then continue to eat until bed - chips, nachos, HUGE bowls of ice cream, pizza rolls...*shudder*. Oh, and the man LIVES on Coca-Cola.:ohmy: And his excuse is always that he's not overweight, so he must be healthy. It's true - he's not overweight at all. He has a very fast metabolism and with the nature of his job, he walks probably 8-10 miles a day, maybe more. Plus he plays competitive basketball once a week with a group of guys. But that doesn't mean he's healthy. His dad had quadruple by-pass surgery 6 years ago and has diabetes. His dad is also very thin. He's had an uncle die of a heart attack. But my dh had hernia surgery 2 years ago and he claims that if his heart were in trouble, he never would have been cleared for the surgery. So as you can see, he's stubborn with his food habits.

 

Now that I have free reign, I want to make it palatable and filling for him, while being highly nutritious. How can I go about this without making him miserable? I did ask him to at least READ Eat to Live, and he said he would. He has yet to do that though. I don't see putting him on the EtL diet yet necessarily because I think it will be too traumatic for him. But I want to eliminate meat (which for the most part we've already done simply because of cost, as I won't buy non-organic meat) and refined foods such as white pastas and white rice. He has a hard time with beans, but if I do them right, I know he'll like them. Help me! This is too important of a challenge to screw up on!

 

By the way, as I was typing this up, dh came over, Coke in hand, and picked up the EtL book - he's reading it! :party:

 

Perhaps it is I who will be having the heart attack! :D

[Jean in Newcastle]

Personally I would work at giving him more of a balanced diet - but not something that is too different from the norm. I would cook him a healthy breakfast (or put the stuff out on the counter). I would make him a healthy lunch. And I would make him a healthy dinner. I might make some of that vegetarian. But I personally would not go cold-turkey straight to the Eat to Live diet. I would make sure there are plenty of fruits and vegetables. I would make sure that he had enough food (of healthy variety) to make sure that he is not hungry. You may not agree with my advice because of your commitment to "Eat to Live" but my advice is based on my experience that small baby steps toward health are a lot easier to implement than huge ones. In his case, just adding breakfast and lunch are pretty big steps. And making fruits and vegetables part of them are even bigger steps. So I wouldn't go more extreme than that.

[Alexandra]

in a cooler. Taking lunch will save money and allow him to relax a little instead of going out. When my dh started working away from home, I bought a little cooler and send the same lunch everyday. He likes the same lunch. I send a huge salad with dark greens and different add-ins. The salad always has some sort of protein like hard-boiled egg or some cooked shrimp. He also gets a couple of PBJ sandwiches on WW bread. I also send either natural yogurt with fruit on top or cottage cheese with veggies on top. I also send a quart of chilled water and an apple.

Dr. Fuhrmann talks about how having tons of greens is a predictor for longevity and health. Even if you don't want to do etl you could really change the amount of fruits and veggies in his diet.

Good luck!

[PariSarah]

That's awesome! I think, though, that I would lean towards resisting the urge to make him eat "perfectly" for two weeks, and make changes that he might be willing to make permanent.

 

So, maybe find out his favorite fruits and veggies. And do two things.

 

One, get a big bowl. Every meal, give him that bowl of raw, cut-up fruit or a lightly dressed salad (chopped raw veggies of some kind). Then he can eat however he wants for the rest of the meal.

 

Two, reduce the carb and protein portions you regularly serve at every meal, and double the veggie portions. Or maybe add a legume dish to every dinner, without taking the meat entirely away. Give his body a chance to get used to them.

 

Yeah, the soda is worth taking away though. Has he tried sparkling water? Or maybe sparkling water with a splash of fruit juice? At the very least, you can get those sweetened-with-only-fruit-juice fizzy drinks like Izzy or Knudsen Farms instead of coke. They're way more expensive, so your budget can be an excuse to cut back on those.

 

Try substituting chips and homemade salsa for his usual snack brigade. At least it's some veggies, and the tomatoes are especially good for him.

 

ETA: Oh, and after he reads that, maybe he'd be willing to read some Michael Pollan! That helped my poor, sweet hubby choke down his collards. "Well, they're bitter and green, so I guess Michael Pollan would approve." *grimace* *choke* *huge gulp of water* Even if he doesn't get all the way on board with BfL, he might be willing to reduce drastically the meat and dairy.