How can I force fat wife to lose weight

On Fri, 17 Oct 2003 21:02:09 GMT, (Jayjay) wrote:

Think of this as you would an alcoholic or drug addict. THey can only
help themselves when they reach rock bottom.

Total bull****.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031011.html
Lift well, Eat less, Walk fast, Live long.

On Sat, 18 Oct 2003 08:32:03 -0400, M_un Over Seattle
wrote:

Think of this as you would an alcoholic or drug addict. THey can only
help themselves when they reach rock bottom.

Total bull****.

Not total bull****. Yes people can help themselves before they reach
zero but more often then not they don't unfortunately. It's sometimes
the same with "unstable obesity". One tells himself that he is fine,
he is healthy, he's at his set point as he slowly gets fatter and
fatter and fatter. (so much for his "set point") It's not until he's
riding a scooter that he wakes up.

--
Ron Ritzman
http://www.panix.com/~ritzlart
Smart people can figure out my email address

In article ,
M_un Over Seattle wrote:

On Fri, 17 Oct 2003 21:02:09 GMT, (Jayjay) wrote:

Think of this as you would an alcoholic or drug addict. THey can only
help themselves when they reach rock bottom.

Total bull****.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031011.html
Lift well, Eat less, Walk fast, Live long.

I agree with you there. Plenty of people stop bad habits before they're at
"rock bottom." I was 50-60 pounds overweight when I started working out
and doing low-carb, I didn't have to wait until I was 100 or 200 pounds
over. Anyway, to the OP, even if you are a troll, the situation you
describe is one that probably affects many people, so advice given to you
might help other people reading even if you are just a phantom. And I'll
tell you this: Ever since I started gaining weight in my teens, I've had
lots of people trying to get me to lose. My dad, my sister, my extended
family, my friends, a boyfriend or two. These were all people who cared
about me, and aside from my boyfriends it had nothing to do with how
attractive I was, they only cared about my health and happiness. My ears
were completely closed to their suggestions. I had this "I hate the world"
attitude and my fat was a way of saying "**** you" to society. Nothing
anyone else could have said or done would have made me lose weight (ok,
short of kidnapping me and locking me in a room with no food) I had to
change the way I was _thinking_ in order to change the way I was living.
For anyone who has an overweigh spouse, friend, child, sibling, etc I would
recommend the following:

First, ask yourself, does this person seem depressed or emotionally
troubled in general? Out of control weight is a symptom of an out of
control life. It's not natural to be overweight, and I believe that most
people get that way because they're either using food for comfort, or
they've gotten to a point where they hate themselves so much that they just
don't care.

If the answer to the above question is yes, then don't say a word about
weight loss or being fat, try to persuade that person to seek emotional
help or emotional balance in some way. Maybe they don't need therapy, maybe
they do. Talk about it. Ask questions like "You don't seem happy in your
life. Want to talk about it?" If it's your spouse having the problem,
maybe go to couples therapy together. If it's a child, consider family
therapy. Once the individual gets to the root of why they overeat and
don't take care of themselves, then they might make a change. Above all,
realize that with most people, they eat because they hurt. Judging or
berating or insulting them will not cure that hurt. Sometimes, loving and
supporting won't cure it either, in which case professional involvement may
be warranted.

--
-Michelle Levin (Luna)
http://www.mindspring.com/~lunachick
http://www.mindspring.com/~designbyluna

He's my suggestion in how to get the wife to self motivate. Have an
affair with a younger more attractive woman who is thin.

A perfect way to get that divorce. I don't think so!

It seems to me that the OP is genuinely interested in sticking around and
helping his wife. That is to be commended as some people would just give
up and file for that divorce without staying to work it out.

Personally, I believe that everyone is shallow to some degree, either
minisculy or otherwise. Unfortunately, the OP is moreso than most. We
shouldn't flame him for that.

If he's really interested in helping his wife, be honest with her.
Reaffirm your relationship with her and let her know what the problem is.
ie: I love you, but I'm finding it harder to be sexually attracted to
you due to your size. It's turning me off. If the wife is understanding
of the feelings, she will take that to heart and maybe use that to make a
decision in her life.

Bottom line is that the decision and motivation to do anything about this
is solely in the hands of your wife. She is the *only* one that can make
make this happen. If she does, be there to be supportive. Forcing her
to do anything that she doesn't want to do will only backfire and make
things worse.

There's my .02 cents!! .0262640 CDN

Cheers!

Alex


--
************************************************** *****
VirtualGuy - Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
************************************************** *****

"Ozgirl" wrote in message ...
"David Thompson" wrote in message
...

Someone suggested that I am somehow a bad person. Quite to the
contrary. I still love my fat wife as a human being. She is a good
person. However I no longer find her attractive physically. I am the
exact opposite of a "shallow" person who only can love trim girls. I
am a "deep" person who loves my wife despite her ugly appearance. And
I do not want to leave her, I want to help her. Whoever is being
judgmental about me, you are wrong!

If you love a person they are never "ugly".

It's obvious from the above paragraph that David uses "ugly" to
mean "not sexually attractive" to him.

Sexual attraction is distinct from love. There are lots of things
or people you can love without wanting to have sex with. For example,
you might have a pet dog which you love but feel no sexual urges
toward. You might not describe the dog as "ugly" but in the narrow
sense of sexual attractiveness the dog would be effectively "ugly."

Even in the general sense of aesthetic appeal, it is possible to
love things while finding them ugly. For example, suppose you have
a sentimental attachment to your house, but due to neglect your house
has fallen into disrepair. You could certainly say the peeling paint,
the rotting boards, the decaying roof, and the dangling gutters
make the house look "ugly." Your sentimental attachment to your house
would remain, and your impulse would be to REPAIR your house. You
would want to RESTORE your house to its PROPER condition.

You would want to bring back the house you loved originally.

You on the other hand are very
"ugly" on the inside and your wife really doesn't deserve your sort of
intolerance.

David's wife is free to file for divorce whenever she wants.

But according to David she hasn't.

As far as what a woman "deserves" if she chooses to eat her way
to 280 pounds at a height of 5'7"---she "deserves" whatever sort
of man she can attract at that size.

It's unlikely David would have married his wife if she had been that
large when they first met. Maybe David would not even have tried to
meet her.

Your wife sounds absolutely beautiful to me

Evidently you have unusual sexual desires. Most people do not
feel much sexual attraction toward women who are 5'7" tall
and weigh 280 pounds. (Although some men are so horny they
will have sex with obese women if they cannot attract any
slender attractive women. There might even be some men who
turn down real offers of sex from slender attractive women
to have sex with obese women, but I have never heard of a
confirmed case, either in real life or on Usenet.)

How many women have you had sex with who were as large as
David's wife at the time?

and strangely it
appears that unlike you she accepts you just as you are.

No way. David's wife specifically rejects David's desire for a
slender, attractive wife. That desire is an important part of
who David is, and his wife does not accept that part.

Instead she prefers the pleasures of sloth and gluttony to pleasing
her husband. She is not accepting him; she is thumbing her nose at
him.

She is also guilty of bait-and-switch. She originally attracted
David by being attractive. But evidently she isn't the type to
stay committed.

That is analogous to a man who attracts a wife in part because
he is industrious and responsible, but then after they marry
he quits his job and gambles all his money away.

When was the last time you told her she was beautiful,

With a straight face? Probably before she destroyed her beauty
with sloth and gluttony.

that she was a great mother,

That's a separate issue. A woman's ability to (a) arouse men sexually
has little to do with her ability to (b) nurture her offspring.
The oldest profession and the second oldest profession demand
different skills.

Men and children have very different needs and thus they value
different attributes in a woman. For example, a hungry infant
doesn't care what a breast looks like as long as it produces
milk, whereas a horny man values breasts according to how they
look and feel. (There is some correlation between a breast's
sexual attractiveness and function---an elderly woman's breasts
aren't usually as good as a young woman's breasts either for
arousing men or feeding babies---but this correlation is less
than 1.0.)

It's possible for a woman to be beautiful to men and a great
mother, but that is probably about as unusual as a person
being, say, an excellent athlete and an excellent musician.
When did you last hear of someone who got paid to be an
athlete and also got paid to be a musician?

had a great personality?

A great personality does not succumb to sloth and gluttony,
nor does a great personality deceive others through bait-and-switch.

Her self esteem may be very poor

In which case she should stop being hung up on her own feelings.
The issue that matters is how she is making other people feel.

If she cares about how her actions affect the feelings of others,
then she needs to adjust her actions. In this case by moving more
and eating less. She needs to go back to what she was doing when
she was the slender woman David fell in love with.

and don't believe that
she hasn't picked up on your "disgust". She may be crying inside, is that
what you want for the woman you supposedly love?

David specifically tells us what he wants for the woman he loves.
He wants her to break her addictions to sloth and gluttony and
become beautiful again.

In answer to David's original question in the Subject: line,
unless he has dictatorial powers he probably cannot "force" his
wife to do anything other than get used to living without him.
David probably does not have much leverage other than threatening
to leave, and he said he does not want to do that.

I have some questions for David:

1. When you first met your wife, how much did she weigh?

2. Did she ever express any disapproval of obesity?

If she was always completely accepting of obese people, she
probably doesn't see her current self-imposed condition as
a problem. In that case you are asking how to get your wife
to form a belief she never had.

On the other hand, if your wife found obesity disgusting before
she ate herself into obesity, then you are asking how to get
your wife to express those beliefs again.

In your article at the top of this thread, you said:

I have always been the fit one, because I exercise and
do not overeat.

Are you implying that your wife never exercised much, even before
she gained the weight?

If so, the odds are probably against you. If your wife never
exercised systematically, she never formed the athlete's mindset.
She also lacked the immediate feedback that would have alerted her
to what she was doing as she gained the weight.

For example, when I go to the gym and do chin-ups, my rep count
goes down as my weight goes up. Even a five-pound weight gain
has an immediate effect on how many chin-ups I can do. Since
I work out regularly, and I can count my reps, there is no
way a weight gain can sneak up on me.

I notice a similar effect when I climb hills on my bicycles. If
I gain even five pounds, I immediately notice my small loss of
climbing speed relative to the other bicyclists I ride with.
Even a small loss of speed can translate into a big gap at the
top of a long hill, turning an otherwise enjoyable group ride
into an annoying game of catch-up.

People who exercise regularly with activities that involve
lifting their bodyweight against gravity have a valuable source
of objective feedback about their weight. Gaining excess weight
impacts them right away in ways they cannot help noticing.
At athlete can sense a weight gain before his or her
clothing starts getting tight.

A sedentary person, on the other hand, never demands much from
his or her body and may not often notice a weight gain until it
becomes large enough to impact ordinary activities such as
getting around the house. But by then the sedentary person's
gluttonous habits are so deeply learned that unlearning them
can be quite difficult. Plus, the glutton is by then trapped
in an insidious feedback loop wherein he or she relies on
the immediate pleasure of overeating to mask the
emotional distress brought on by the consequences
of chronic overeating.

A former athlete who gets out of shape can more easily get
back in shape than an out-of-shape person who never exercised.
It's like recovering any dormant skill. If you played a musical
instrument as a child, you can recover that skill after a long
layoff much faster than you could learn to play an instrument
if you had never played one before. A former athlete knows
what it took to be an athlete and can do those things again
(barring some sort of permanent physical disability). An obese
person who never learned such discipline in the past does not
have the same tools and will be hard-pressed to learn them now.

Working out is not rocket science, but there are bunch of
little things an athlete has to learn. It's a lot easier to
learn all that stuff if you don't have 100+ pounds of excess
fat to lug around.

If your wife was sedentary when you met her, and had never
exercised seriously before, you took a large risk when you
married her. Knowing this now doesn't help you, but it's a
useful lesson to keep in mind for anybody who doesn't want
to end up in your position.

-- the Danimal

Crossposted groups snipped.

Chris M. Tyler wrote:

Just my 2 cents.................. Jayjay has a made some very insightful points about
motivation. Here's my suggestion in how to get the wife to self motivate. Have an affair
with a younger more attractive woman who is thin. Most important, let the wife catch you
at it. Women are very competitive when it comes to attracting the opposite sex. If this
doesn't motivate her nothing will. ;- )

Oh, that would motivate me alright. Motivate me right down to the
office of the best divorce lawyer in the state. Can you say
"injunction"?

Depending on the state, that little maneuver could entitle me to 70%
of the marital assets (not all states are no-fault).

Shirley

to reply via e-mail remove the trees from my address

Chris M. Tyler wrote:

at it. Women are very competitive when it comes to attracting the
opposite sex.

And then there are other women who would think... "the guy has no
sense of commitment. She can have him! I can do MUCH better
than this!"

"Ozgirl" wrote in message ...
"David Thompson" wrote in message
...

Someone suggested that I am somehow a bad person. Quite to the
contrary. I still love my fat wife as a human being. She is a good
person. However I no longer find her attractive physically. I am the
exact opposite of a "shallow" person who only can love trim girls. I
am a "deep" person who loves my wife despite her ugly appearance. And
I do not want to leave her, I want to help her. Whoever is being
judgmental about me, you are wrong!

If you love a person they are never "ugly". You on the other hand are very
"ugly" on the inside and your wife really doesn't deserve your sort of
intolerance. Your wife sounds absolutely beautiful to me and strangely it
appears that unlike you she accepts you just as you are. When was the last
time you told her she was beautiful, that she was a great mother, had a
great personality? Her self esteem may be very poor and don't believe that
she hasn't picked up on your "disgust". She may be crying inside, is that
what you want for the woman you supposedly love?

You're fat too, aren't you? If its ok to divorce someone for substance
abuse when its drugs or alcohol, I see no reason you should not be
able to divorce them when they abuse food. Sometimes its best to dump
someone even when you love them if they're harming themselves and/or
you.
~~~
ARNE S.

Excuse me, but are you married? If you are, then what you wrote tells me you
have the ring and the license, but not the commitment.

And that's one of the things wrong with so many marriages today, no
commitment.

--
Budd Cochran


"Arne" wrote in message
m...

You're fat too, aren't you? If its ok to divorce someone for substance
abuse when its drugs or alcohol, I see no reason you should not be
able to divorce them when they abuse food. Sometimes its best to dump
someone even when you love them if they're harming themselves and/or
you.
~~~
ARNE S.

"Budd Cochran" wrote in message ...
Excuse me, but are you married? If you are, then what you wrote tells me you
have the ring and the license, but not the commitment.

And that's one of the things wrong with so many marriages today, no
commitment.


What about her commitment? She knows her weight is making her husband
unhappy, but she doesn't stop eating.

--
Budd Cochran


"Arne" wrote in message
m...

You're fat too, aren't you? If its ok to divorce someone for substance
abuse when its drugs or alcohol, I see no reason you should not be
able to divorce them when they abuse food. Sometimes its best to dump
someone even when you love them if they're harming themselves and/or
you.
~~~
ARNE S.