Husband's decided he's going to die 'cause of his weight - recipes needed

Cafe Society
41

Another vote for recording everything you eat. I’ve been doing this, since despite a very healthy diet and regular vigourous exercise I’m struggling to lose the last 5kg I want to lose.

It’s been an eyeopener - the small things (a few nuts here, a biscuit there) really add up. And when I say record, that means weigh everything - no cup or tablespoon measures, as these can vastly underestimate the actual amount you eat. There’s a great videoby Leigh Peele which demonstrates this. Click on the first video.

Recording accurately also allows you to monitor your macro intake (protein, fat and carbs). You may find like I do that a diet higher in fat and protein (around 20-30% each) keeps you fuller for longer, helping avoid overeating.

42

Another vote for recording everything you eat on websites like: www.caloriecount.com, they are free and have a great support system. They tell how many calories in recipes, grocery items and some restaurant items.

43

Stop snacking.

Really. You don’t “need” snacks just because you are home alone. One of the easiest ways to eat too much is to eat while doing something. Trust me, I love nothing more than sitting down with a bag of Doritos and surfing the Dope. But if I do that even one time, next time I sit down on the computer I start craving Doritos something fierce. And it will take five or six times before that craving starts to recede. It’s better just not to get that going.

Eat only at the table. Don’t bring a book or the computer or anything. Eat what you need to eat and then move on. Don’t let yourself be tempted to break this even one time. If you need to eat Doritos thats fine. Get the craving out of your system. But keep eating separate from your other habits…

44

There must be something wrong with me, as I initially thought this OP was about a wife trying to assist her husband in his decision to commit suicide via obesity.

Sooooo… I’m gonna recommend replacing snacks with better snacks. I used to eat cheese and sliced deli meat as snacks, and now I eat hummus, grapes, yogurt, etc etc. Also, exercise is crucial. Really, I read the responses above and there’s some great advice.

45

Now I’m hungry.

46

There may be various reasons this would happen, but one thought I have is about cooking temperature. Olive oil has a comparatively (to the “cooking oils” we may be most familiar with) low smoke-point. A kind of general guide, even within the range of olive oils, is that the more flavorful the oil, the more heat-sensitive it is.

One tasty food thought that just came to mind, that my kids love, is “zucchini noodles.” Grate raw zucchini – a great big pile of it, and gently saute slowly in a tablespoon or two or three of olive oil over moderate heat, maybe with a little minced garlic and some oregano. The “noodles” should still be a fresh-looking green when they come out of the pan, but warm and a little more flexible than when they went in. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper or, if your family likes to make a big production of using salt and pepper at the table, don’t add any in the kitchen. Get a “salt mill” that grinds chunky sea salt down smaller (and is a kind of fun hassle to use for very long – they’ll stop grinding salt when they get tired of squeezing the mill handles and they’ll eat less salt). Serve the zucchini as you would serve pasta, with grated parmesan cheese (even the “shaky cheese” kind from the pasta aisle at the grocery store) and a warm tomato sauce (which can be store-bought sauce, possibly with a pound of browned ground turkey ($1.24 per pound, frozen, at my grocery store) in it.

If you don’t have one already, get a steamer – just the foldy metal kind – and try using that for vegetables. Steamed veggies with a light dressing of lemon juice and olive oil can be great. Do you have space to garden in the spring and summer? If so, does your husband consider the yard a part of his area of comfort? If so, he might be able to take an active role in nurturing some plants and a greater than otherwise interest in what they produce. I’m dealing more with developing kids’ appetites in my home, but they certainly get way more excited about preparing and eating veggies if they have picked them. (I do, too.) The process of planning a garden can be great, too, because you can find recipes as you buy seeds and start thinking about ways that vegetables can be good.

Also, take a look at Mollie Katzen’s cookbooks at the library – Enchanted Broccoli Forest and Still Life with Menu, for example. They are not strictly books of dietetic cooking, but they sure can help a person start to think of vegetables as food.

47

Exactly my point earlier on. Denying yourself what you love to eat will normally just lead to failure of your program and yo-yoing weight. I go to my favorite hamburger joint on occasion and do the following. They automatically come with fries. First thing I do is walk to the trash bin and scrape the fries off and discard the top half of the bun. Then cut the rest in half and enjoy a double-decker half-burger. That doesn’t seem like much in terms of cutting back, but the amount of fat and carbs eliminated is significant.

48

One gadget I swear by is one of those little spray things. On pampered chef, its called a kitchen spritzer. I fill it with olive oil & just give my mock fried foods a light spray before I put them in the oven. I have about 4 of them, and I keep them filled with either regular olive oil, extra virgin olive oil. extra light oil, or canola oil. And I only use those 4 types of oil because they are more heart healthy than vegetable or corn oil. Won’t help LOSE the weight, but at least keeps the heart/circulatory system a bit healthier. A few years ago, I spent 3 days in the hospital on a heart monitor because I was having chest pains at work. After the 3 days on the monitor & a treadmill test, they figured out I was having severe panic attacks, and I have the heart of someone 15 years younger than me, despite being (at that time) probably about 150-175 pounds overweight. Of course, I also started cooking low salt & put myself on a low salt diet when I was 12. Since I was the one who did most of the cooking for the family even then, it was easy to put my parents on one too. I also eat lots of soups, but I make them a day in advance so A) the flavors blend better and B) I can put them in the fridge overnight & allow the fat to rise to the top & congeal & I skim it. By the way, I am now probably down to only being 50-75 pounds overweight, but I don;t pay any attention to the actual numbers. I just know that at that time I was approaching a size 26, and now I’m around a 16-18, but sometimes can actually squeeze into a 14. Hey who needs to breathe?
Another idea is to keep a food diary for a few weeks. Write down what you ate, how much of it, and what you were feeling when you ate it. Then take it to a diet counselor. When I was at Fresno State they actually had one on staff in the student health center. I think some insurances may pay for a consultation or 2. And if you think veggies are bitter, I think you’ve just been having them cooked the wrong way & over done. I do a lot of stir fries, very little oil, just use a nonstick pan or a little chicken broth (with any fat skimmed already in the way I mentioned) and cook it until its just crisp tender. It may be too that you’ve been getting old veggies, ask a produce guy how to pick the freshest ones, this will vary with the product. And ask him while you’re at it for how HE recommends. cooking it, but remember the less cooked the better generally. I’m sure I could come up with more, but I think I’ve rattled on long enough. Just remember to increase the exercise too, that and the diet change (and it doesn’t even have to be extreme, small changes over time are easier to maintain & keep the weight off) are best in combination.

49

I would also suggest that you change the way you’re looking at what you’re eating. When you change your diet, do so with a goal to add or replace items with healthy things, not take tasty things away. In other words, as you make small, manageable changes to your and your husband’s diet, try adding healthy things until they push out the unhealthy things. Add another serving of vegetables to dinner tonight. Eat your veggies first, then a small serving each of what you might have had in addition. The veggies should fill you up, so you’ll get that full feeling and and won’t need to eat as much of the other stuff. You will have cut some calories and gotten more nutritional bang for your buck at the same time.

Or replace a bag of potato chips with an apple smeared with a tablespoon of peanut butter as a snack. Healthy eating doesn’t taste bad and it’s not about deprivation.

If it helps any, here’s a menu with easy recipes of what we’re having this week. A couple will last at least 2-3 meals, if not more:

Tonight:
Portabella sandwiches and salad
Ingredients: small whole wheat rolls, one portabella cap per person, one slice mozzarella cheese, one slice tomato, one bag salad, light ranch dressing, 1 jar roasted red peppers.
Directions: Turn on the broiler, put the portabellas on a cookie sheet, roast for 10 minutes, turn over, roast another 5-10 minutes. Put a slice of cheese on top and let it get brown & bubbly. Put the mushroom caps on the buns with a couple slices of tomato. If you want to get fancy-schmancy, you can marinate the mushrooms in canola and vinegar or even in italian salad dressing.

Toss bag of salad into a bowl, toss with dressing, roasted peppers. Serve. (You can top this salad with roasted veggies, recipe below.)

Tomorrow:
Coconut and tomato lentils with brown rice (this is a bastardized version of what I made yesterday, which is a little more involved)
Ingredients: 1 cup green or brown lentils, 1 cup coconut, 1 can chopped tomatoes, 1-1/2 tsp salt, one onion, 2-4 cloves garlic, cinnamon and cumin to taste (you can add ground coriander, too, but if you’re not used to this type of dish or can’t find it, this will do), cayenne (optional), brown rice.
Get the rice started according to package directions. Boil the lentils 12-15 minutes in 3 cups water. In a separate pan, saute onions (chopped - chunky or thin, your chocie) and garlic in 1 tbsp oil until transparent, then dump in tomatoes, coconut, spices and salt. Simmer 5 minutes. Once lentils are done, dump this mixture into the lentils, add 1/2 cup water or enough until you like the consistency (I like it thicker), then serve over rice.

Wednesday:
Buffalo chicken & roasted veggies.
Ingredients: Chicken breasts, buffalo sauce, veggies of your choice (I like one onion, one eggplant, two peppers and/or green and yellow squash), 4-5 cloves garlic and 1 tbsp canola.
Turn on broiler, chop vegetables into bite-sized (or slightly larger) chunks. Crush garlic or chop it chunky. Toss veggies & garlic in the olive oil, spread out on a cookie sheet, broil for 10 minutes, stir, broil 10 minutes. I like to broil until the onions are turning brown on the edges.
Meanwhile, toss the chicken in the buffalo sauce and let it marinate. When veggies are done, turn the oven down to 350 and bake chicken for 20-25 minutes, or whenever they’re no longer pink inside.

Either the veggies or the chicken or both can be used on sandwiches, too, making a great lunch or dinner.

Thursday:
Cheese Pizza with Roasted Veggies
Ingredients: 1 Boboli whole wheat crust, 1 can/jar spaghetti sauce, 1 10-oz. package frozen spinach, some garlic powder, dried basil, cracked red pepper (optional), part-skim mozzarella cheese, roasted veggies from previous meal.
Directions: thaw spinach in saucepan with 1/4 cup water. When thawed, pour off the water, add spaghetti sauce, garlic powder, dried basil, red pepper and any other herbs to taste. When well mixed, pour 1 cup onto crust, add cheese and vegetables, bake according to directions. Serve hot. Can use for lunch the next day.

Friday:
Spaghetti with Marinara and Green Beans
Ingredients: Whole wheat pasta, “pizza” sauce from previous meal, 1 package frozen or fresh green beans, chopped garlic, salt to taste, pepper to taste, 1 tbsp canola.
Directions: Cook spaghetti according to package. Mix with sauce from previous meal. Put beans in a pan, cover with water, bring to a boil. Boil 2-3 minutes or until bright green. Pour into a collander and rinse with cold water. After water is poured out, using same pan, heat oil, add garlic, beans, saute until warm, adding salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot.

Good luck to both you and your husband. And remember, it’s not about what you’re not allowed to eat. It’s about what you can eat. If you have a favorate fruit or vegetable, add it to the vegetable that’s part of your meal now and edge out the less healthy stuff. I know that this is going to be hard for both of you at first. Food is a great source of comfort for me also, but it gets much easier after the first week (or it did for me, anyway). Once you make it through a few weeks, it’ll be second nature and much easier to make further changes.

50

Get a book for diabetics (ADA-approved). The recipes are are low-fat and low-sugar . Also, I like the “exchange” concept (1 piece bread=1/2 bagel=1/2 English muffin, etc). This lets you eat real food and focus on portion control, which is what you need. There are books with exchanges that you can discretely carry around so even in a resaurant you can stay on track.

51

Are you lucky enough to have a restaurant supply store or an ethnic grocery, or maybe one of those little groceries run by Amish or Mennonite folks? Those places can be great options for stretching your grocery budget, especially in the spice department. And a good selection of spices makes eating low-fat, low-cal taste so much better. Building up a spice cabinet takes some time and cash, though, if you’re starting from close to scratch, which is why I like the places like the little Mennonite grocery the next county over, where dried rosemary is $1/lb, rather than $3 for 2 oz. And if you plan to use broth in a lot of recipes, chicken paste (or base) is cheaper than canned broth and so much tastier than boullion cubes.

You might look into Indian recipes–a lot of them are mostly or wholly vegetarian and reasonably inexpensive. You said you like lentils, there should be roughly nine bajillion hits if you google “indian lentil recipe.” I’ve also got a recipe for a ham and rosemary lentil stew that is out of this world, simple, and cheap–lentils, a couple onions, a couple carrots, some rosemary and other herbs that we generally have lying around, a little broth, some water, and some sort of smoked pork. Oh, and a little cider vinegar if you’ve got it. I figured it up once, and it came out to about $5 for a pot if you find ham or bacon on sale or use a ham hock. The book says it will feed 4, but they must be 4 people who haven’t seen food in a week, because the two of us eat till we’re about to bust, and then there’s plenty for us both to have it for lunch the next couple-three days. And we are NOT small eaters.

The one really sucky part of this is that there’s no way to do it without feeling pretty damn hungry for at least a couple of days, more likely three or four. You’ll have to eat less than your stomach is used to, and it’s gonna bitch at you about it until it has a chance to shrink and be filled up by the new normal amount. Feeling hungry all the time sucks huge mountains of goat cock, and it gets worse the second or third day before it starts getting better. It’s going to be worse on your husband than for you, because he’ll be at home alone so much of the day with fewer distractions and because he sounds like a boredom/emotional eater.

And let’s face it, he’s not going to stop eating for boredom/emotional reasons overnight, because the issues at back of his eating aren’t going to go away overnight. The people in here saying “Oh, he just needs to stop that right now,” are deluding themselves. If it were that damn easy, he wouldn’t have gotten fat (or as fat, as the case may be) in the first place. Yes, resolving the issues that cause him to eat for reasons other than hunger is a great goal that he absolutely should strive for, but it’s just that–a goal, not a starting point. For the meantime, making the switch from chips to carrot sticks is a great stepping stone.

For the wolfing issue, you might try serving dinner in multiple small courses. It’s something I’ve noticed if we go to a fancy restaurant with a multicourse fixed menu, or to a tapas-type place. I always feel like I’ve eaten like a hog, but I never feel stuffed, and when I total it up, I’ve eaten the same amount as if we had a regular entree with either a dessert or appetizer somewhere else. Actually, I frequently find I’ve eaten less. It’s those little gaps in between courses does it–buys you brain some time to say “No, really, I’m pretty full. You can stop now.” Of course, the fixed portions helps with this, too. There’s been many a dish that if I’d had the whole serving platter right there in front of me, I’d have kept eating till I foundered.

52

Beans need a lot of something zingy, but it doesn’t have to be salt - something acidic goes a long way. A ton of lemon juice, garlic, olive oil and vinegar, chili peppers…one of my easiest bean recipes is just white beans (navy, cannelini, or lima) with a ton of lemon juice, minced garlilc, a bit of olive oil, and a whole pile of minced fresh dill. Sage is good with beans, too.

53

Nothing personal, but . . . if your hunger is affected by herbal tea and tooth brushing, you’re obviously not dealing with an obesity problem.

I’m participating in a study of diabetics. It involves both medication and diet. I once mentioned to the nurse practitioner (who was extremely thin) that I have no problem sticking to a diet during the day, but I start bingeing at night, eating everything in sight. She told me that when she gets hungry at night, she sucks on some ice chips. I asked her, “When you tell your obese patients to avoid bingeing by sucking on ice chips . . . how many of them just laugh in your face?” She answered, “Most of them.”

54

There was no claim in what you posted that her hunger was affected by herbal tea and tooth brushing, only that her eating was.

And there’s nothing “obvious” about her situation other than it apparently differs from yours.

55

Thing is, it’s like someone saying they want to get in shape and asking “I’m sick of being out of shape and want to change things, what kind of workout clothes should I get?” And then when everyone asks “What kind of exercise do you want to do?”

They reply “Oh, well the thing is that I’m really out of shape, so it hurts when I move around too much and I get all out of breathe. I’m not ready to start doing stuff yet. I just figured I’d buy the clothes and see what happens. Also,I like watching TV. What kind of workout clothes should I wear when watching TV?”

That example characterizes the OP as stupid, which isn’t at all what I want to do. I just want to say there is some good advice here.

56

Grr! Stupid hamsters ate my post. Somebody put them on a diet.

Holy cow there’s tons of information out there about weight loss and healthy eating and diet and exercise. No wonder people give up and go curl up in a corner with a bag of M&Ms, whimpering.

I think, based on what I’ve read and the responses I’ve gotten here, that I’m going to gradually work on two goals: Portion control and healthier foods. Plus we need to wean ourselves off the soda (we currently go through ten 2 liters of Dr. Thunder a week), so make that three goals. Plus the exercise, so four…I’ll come in again.

Hubby and I agreed that soups and salads, served alongside (or instead of) whatever main dish I’d normally make will probably be a good start; that plus replacing the mushy white bread I’ve been buying ('cause it’s cheap) with whole-grain bread and crackers (I love the internet!). So we’ll give it a try and see how it goes!

57

I haven’t read the whole thread, but you can now search for recipes from Cooking Light magazine on myrecipes.com. Cooking Light is FANTASTIC and has recipes for all budges and skill levels.

58

There is a ton of information, which means you can take it entirely the other way and say, “Hey, if one thing doesn’t work, I’ll try something else!”

You can be the lab rat of your own life! Whee! :smiley:

59

Walking is a good idea. But, most people quit. I walk my beagles everyday. If I do not they make life miserable. It forces me to go whether I like it or not. I have not missed a day in years ,except for deep snow or rain. No body can face the big eyes of a depressed beagle.

60

Shoot, if you guys are going through that much soda, replacing that with a non-calorie option should result in some weight loss just by itself. A quick back of the envelope calculation shows that’s roughly 8000 calories a week (a little more, because I figured it on quarts instead of liters). A pound of body weight is 3500 calories, so that’s 2-2.5 pounds a week, right there.

Of course, when you drink that much soda, changing over to something else can be hard. I like diet sodas myself, but a lot of people don’t, and of course they’re just as full of sodium as the caloric version. And a lot of people who drink a lot of soda have trouble adjusting to just plain old water because it has no flavor, no sweetness, and no fizz. I’m very partial to those flavored carbonated waters. They’re fizzy like soda, and they’re sweet, and they don’t taste strongly of artificial sweetener, so you don’t feel deprived. And a lot of times you can get them for about the same price as soda–the Walmart brand is usually either 50 or 58 cents for a liter, depending on if it’s on rollback. Sugar free Kool-Aid is a good option too, and usually pretty cheap, especially for the store brands.