Photo by Petras Gagilas
In the history of the world three stupid decisions stand out as the most obviously stupid:
- New Coke
- Invading Russia in winter
- Telling your wife she needs to lose weight
Don’t believe me? Next time your wife asks, “Do these jeans make my ass look fat?” tell her, “No, honey. That half a cheesecake you had for lunch makes your ass look fat.”
No one wants to be told they need to lose weight. I don’t care how great you feel now that you’re back into the same size pants you wore when you got married, you don’t get to tell another adult what they should do.
However …
If your wife — or anyone else you know — asks you how you lost all that weight, don’t pull that false modesty crap. You decided to do something to improve yourself. You found a method that works. You stuck to it. Go ahead and say so.
What’s really handy, when it’s your wife, is that she’s already seen what you’ve been doing. Maybe she’s even tired of making two side dishes every night because you won’t eat the potatoes.
Vegetarians, Jews and anyone else with specific dietary restrictions have known for a long time how hard it is to live with someone who doesn’t eat the way they do. It’s especially hard when the person doing most of the cooking isn’t the one with the special rules.
Expect to be on your own
Friends and family will tell you that low carb is bad for your heart. Or your kidneys. Or your breath. (Yes, vegetarians bring this up all the time.)
You’ll get crazy resistance from all angles, even after it starts working. “Well you’re just setting yourself up for problems in the future.” Right, because I’m lowering my weight — and my blood pressure, and my triglycerides, and my blood glucose — right now, obviously something very bad will happen in the future. That’s just good science. 🙄
Don’t go around trying to convert people. When they’re eating their whole-grain bagels with fat-free cream cheese and strawberry jam and bitching about how they can’t seem to lose any weight, just nod sympathetically and go back to your steak and salad with creamy Italian dressing, and smile.
Grab your opportunities
Jenn and I started eating low-carb at the same time right after New Year’s. She did better than me at first, then plateaued while I kept going down. Then she found out she was pregnant. Well hey, that explains why she’s not losing.
So for the next seven months she ate mostly the same way as I did. Still gained weight, of course. I kept going down pants sizes, she kept going up. By about the eighth month, she had decided she never wanted to see “fat clothes” again.
Then she had Luna. Two weeks later she had lost 20 pounds from her immediate pre-delivery weight. Three months later she’s down another 25 pounds.
When I started eating this way, I think she joined me to be supportive. This time, she means it. It’s for her.