I get it. Your wife is fat.
You’re not Shallow Hal, so the weight isn’t the actual issue. The issue is that you have to deal with all the issues that come with weight.
To start with, you’re ALWAYS late for everything. She can try on four outfits that you think look fine. But, for some reason, it isn’t quite ‘it’ for her. She delays and distracts and no matter how many times you tell her she looks great, she isn’t happy.
When you finally get into the car to head out, the fight starts. It could be a different fight every time, but you know deep down it’s the same fight – she just doesn’t want to go out.
She’s weird about socializing. Sometimes she’s in it to win it and other times she doesn’t want to leave the house at all. You make excuses for why you’re late, or you don’t. Maybe you just shame her for taking so long, so you don’t get the hairy eyeball from your hosts.
The sex is also a problem. Jokes! There isn’t any sex. You’re starved for affection. She’s never really feeling it. When you touch her in a sexy way, she squirms. You’re perplexed. You’re still up for it. Why isn’t that enough to make her feel sexy? When you look in the mirror and see half a vein popping from your bicep and you forget about your gut and your love handles because you’re basically Chris Hemsworth. Why can’t she just snap out of it and feel sexy?
The sex and the social stuff hurts but it’s not ‘The Thing’. ‘The Thing’ is more frustrating, more bewildering and more excruciating to watch than watching your favorite sports team score an own goal (for me it is Roger Federer dropping three match points against Djokovic at the 2019 Wimbledon final).
‘The Thing’ is the cycle of self-destruction. The way your wife will have a reckless weekend of binge eating or wining and dining, only to repent for all of her eating sins on a Sunday and swear to you, the kids and Jesus that tomorrow, this sacred Monday, is the first day of the rest of her life, and that ‘This is the last time’.
New charts appear on the fridge. Fancy products fill the pantry. Shakes, pills and other elixirs drain your bank account as the e-bike you dreamed of evaporates. You take the hit because ‘Happy-Wife-Happy-Life’.
Now that the house is stocked, you watch from the side lines. She starts on Monday, guns blazing, but she’s lucky if she makes it past Thursday (Tuesday?) without falling off the bus. If she gets to the weekend and makes it through, next weekend will get her. It’s only a matter of time before book club (drinking club) and the next morning she’ll be calling UberEats for a secret pizza orgy to take the edge off.
If she has a lucky streak and makes it a month, you know that at some point, she’ll fall off the bus. You’ve seen this movie. You’ve seen how the cracks appear. You find the candy wrappers in the glove box or the car door. You see the full-fat coke cans in the recycling. You find half a tub of ice cream in the freezer. Or, you just notice she’s not losing weight anymore, which begs the question – ‘What is she not telling me?’
Watching this cycle repeat itself is torture. If being overweight is so shit, why does she keep eating? It can’t be that complicated. She just needs to toughen up. Actually, she probably needs to be more like you. You’re driven. You exercise regularly. You’re comfortable seeing your friends. And, as we established earlier, you don’t mind getting naked, even if you’ve got some cushion for the pushin’. That wouldn’t’ stop you from ‘showing your love and affection’ for the woman of your dreams.
The woman of your dreams. Hmmmmmmm…
You believe the woman of your dreams is still in there, so you adapt your behavior to bring her out again. You’re not mean about it. You’re not a shallow arsehole who only digs chicks who look like magazine cover models. You just want her to be happy. Right?
You fight for what is best for her, like when she has committed to a weight loss program, or asked you for help, and you see her eating something naughty, you ask her whether that’s ‘on the plan’. You ‘forget’ to organize dessert for the BBQ, you ask the waiter for the check before he’s offered dessert, or you announce that you’re both ‘eating clean’ when your dinner host brings out the chocolates (cue ‘knowing look’ at your wife across the table).
When you’re feeling super helpful, you announce to the table that she’s on ‘another diet’. That way she doesn’t have to say it herself and be embarrassed or humiliated in front of everyone. You’re just holding her accountable.
Accountability could actually be your middle name. Sometimes, when she’s serving herself seconds or an extra potato, you’re good at letting her know she’s already eaten a lot. When she ignores you, or gets angry, you get angry too. And who wouldn’t be angry? Your wife isn’t loving you, isn’t socializing, and the one thing she is deliberately choosing not to do is the one thing she could do to be better. It directly impacts you. She’s basically giving you the finger with every mouthful of chocolate mousse.
When it comes to exercise, you’re also a great cheerleader for her. You’re very good at reminding her when her workouts are, especially when she misses them. To make it fun, you recommend exercising together. Nothing major. Just a walk in the forest or along the promenade. You’re not forcing her to exercise. It’s quality time that you want. And, you know that if she just gets out more she’ll be less depressed. You’re pushing for a ‘win win’.
Her reaction to all of this is totally confusing. You’re at a loss as to how to get your wife back, to relight the fire in your bedroom and your social life. Your whole life will be better if you can help her get back in the game. The only problem is that everything you do pushes you further apart.
Even though you never thought it would happen, you start to fantasize about some greener grass. ‘Have I married a dud? What has my life become? What am I going to do if she never changes?’
How do you save the day? How do you ‘help’ your wife?
Step One is to listen to Stephen Covey’s Step One – “Seek first to understand before seeking to be understood.”
It will help if you understand how weight issues work, and the first thing you need to understand is that a weight issue is actually a symptom of an eating issue. An eating issue works in a similar way to a drinking, drug, sex or anger issue. It is just like any other vice we use to soothe discomfort. It feels good to do it because in the moment, it regulates the nervous system and produces dopamine.
Food is the most common vice because we have to do it stay alive, and being alive feels much better than being dead.
To really dumb it down:
“If eating makes you feel good and requires little effort, you are likely to do it when you feel bad, because it is easier and faster to eat than it is to do all of the healthier things that make you feel good”
Whatever one’s vice is, they find themselves in a vicious cycle called the binge cycle which you will see below. Before you continue, you should know that this cycle applies to all vices and many people have more than one vice. One thing is certain – everyone has their poison. If your wife is skinny but drunk, raging, scrolling or [insert any destructive behavior here] all the time, you should keep reading.
The Binge Cycle
Let’s start with Guilt and Shame.
In the morning after a night of feasting your wife is going to feel like crap. She’s going to be bloated and feeling fatter than ever. She’s also going to be wallowing in regret and shame. She knows exactly what happened. She probably has a ledger running of every calorie that went down.
Because she’s at an all time low, and her constant attempts to self manage have failed her, she plans her next diet. She wants to do anything she can to undo what has been done, and it has to be dramatic because things are worse than ever.
At this point, before you’ve even offered your feedback or accountability, your wife is disgusted in herself. The shame of eating so much is now eating her, and she’s feeling anxious about the state of her life – her body, her health, her sense of self. She never wants to feel like that ever again. She wants to climb out of her skin and literally be somebody else.
That’s when the charts appear and your wife puts her game face on.
Restriction.
With some hard rules and a day or two of clean eating, she’s feeling better. She’s banked a few wins and this sprint has given her a sense of control.
For a short while, her guilt, shame and anxiety subside. This can last for anything between a day to about four weeks.
Then the cravings kick in.
Physical Cravings.
When we quit junk, our bodies stop getting the mix of stuff they were getting, so generally they give a bit of pushback in the form of cravings. For me it was deep fantasies about cupcakes, a bit of drool from time to time and some headaches. For others, the cravings are more severe but generally they subside within a week.
Her body is simple. Her mind is another story.
Emotional Cravings.
If your wife has an oral fixation (read up about it) or an emotional relationship with food (her vice is food), she will feel hungry as a response to any negative emotion (positive emotions too sometimes). She could hear sad news, or watch a sad TV show, or be irritated by something and then out of nowhere, something in her brain will tell her she should have some ice cream.
Have you ever thought, ‘HOLY SHIT, I need a beer right now!’ after a tough day? Your vice is alcohol, and that is an emotional craving. Your body doesn’t want the beer, your feelings do. It’s the same for your wife.
With some motivation from the weekend of shame, your wife may push through the initial cravings, but at some stage something big comes along.
Triggers.
The trigger is the thing that pushes your wife over the edge.
When a woman takes away the only thing she uses to soothe her emotions, she’s going to go quite a long time without properly soothing her emotions. It’s like a geyser breaking its own thermostat. Unless the thermostat starts working again, it is only a matter of time before it bursts.
It could be anything that strikes a nerve for her. It might be something tiny that happens to be the final straw on the camel’s back after a long day of making breakfast for ungrateful kids, getting stuck in traffic, a crap client, listening to your stuff, feeding everyone, fake-smiling at your mother or literally just the price of cheese.
That final straw comes along, and in spite of her best intentions and usually her best efforts, those feelings of exhaustion, despair and rage are getting soothed in a calming junk food fiesta.
While she’s stuck in the binge cycle, there are some other things going on.
The shame and guilt are exacerbated by the media. Whether overtly or not, every advert for anything aimed at women has told your wife she’s fat since she was born. Apart from having some extra weight, she might have an un-magazine-cover-like body shape, or a scar from the baby, or a funny mole, or an inability to tan, which just make her feel further and further away from the socially accepted blueprint of ‘attractive’.
Her need for control might be exacerbated by a chaotic childhood which burnt an anxious default setting into her brain. Anything that would make someone a little anxious may actually put her into a new realm of anxiety.
Let’s not forget the trauma. Unresolved trauma is the biggest driver of destructive behavior. Trauma could be a divorce at home, physical or emotional abuse, physical or emotional neglect (worse than abuse apparently), a death, an addict parent and a couple others. You might think this is reaching, but the Adverse Childhood Experiences study showed conclusively that the above traumas in childhood were the strongest predictors of addictive behavior in adults.
Connecting this back to the binge cycle – If your wife has one or more of the above traumas, she’s going to have some scars that leave her at a default level of emotional distress that is higher than ‘normal’. In other words, she might have spent her life ‘on the edge’ of an explosion as a result of things that seem trivial from the outside, but that left a real mark.
Another piece of this puzzle is your wife’s belief in herself and her self worth.
Given her weight and her history, she is probably sitting in a place of low self-worth. Not because she’s overweight, but because she believes her weight makes her worthless. This is a big topic, but the simple explanation is this – she finds it difficult to put in a sustained effort to turn it all around because she doesn’t think she is worth the effort. She doesn’t believe she is worthy of being who she dreams of being.
I’m sure while you were reading everything above, you were being a legendary problem solver, absolutely desperate to get this section of the article to her so you can help her understand her eating issue, but please wait, there is so much more for you to know before I tell you how to solve the problem.
First, you need to understand that there is only one thing you can do that might change the way your wife eats, but it is equally important to stop doing a whole bunch of things, as doing the one thing while not fully ceasing the other things will derail all of your efforts.
To start, you need to hear what she hears and what the consequences of your current actions are.
Please refer to this Overweight Wife Translation Chart.
Table 1.
What you say or do. | What she hears. | What she is likely to do. |
|---|---|---|
Hey everyone, [wife] is on a new diet – let’s support her. | You’re fat, and stupid and can’t speak for yourself. | Hate you. Hate herself. Stab a voodoo doll of you. |
Are you allowed to eat that? | You’re fat and stupid. | Hate you. Hate herself. Have seconds. |
Let’s go for a walk. | You’re fat. You’re lazy. | Hate you. Hate herself. Not walk. Eat. |
Hide unhealthy foods. | You’re fat and stupid. | Hate you and herself. Eat in secret. |
You’re putting on weight. | You’re fat. I don’t love you | Hate you. Hate herself. Eat. |
I don’t care what you look like. | You’re definitely fat. | Hate herself. Want to stay home. |
You look fine. | You look fat in that. | Try on everything. Stay home. |
Let’s eat something healthy! | You’re fat. | Hate you. Hate herself. Eat something unhealthy. |
Haven’t you had enough? | You’re fat and stupid. | Hate you. Hate herself. Have seconds. |
Why did you skip gym? | You’re fat, lazy and a bad person | Hate you. Hate herself. Eat. Skip gym more often. |
We never have sex! | You’re a bad wife in spite of everything you do. | Hate you. Hate herself. Never have sex with you, ever. Eat. |
This chart highlights how your best intentions (and sometimes your frustrations) are most likely making the situation worse. What I can assure you, is that your wife is acutely aware of the impact of every calorie she puts in her body, she is acutely aware of every workout she has done or missed.
Every time you open your mouth and something about health or fitness comes out, you are highlighting her flaws. When you talk about how hard you’ve been training, you’re not setting an example, you’re setting an impossible standard and leaving her feeling hopelessly far away from where she wants to be.
I would go as far as to say she may measure her worth against her ability to stick to an eating or exercise program. She feels worthless when she looks in the mirror in the morning. Then she eats something that tastes nice, because it will make her feel better. Then she feels worthless because now she feels worse.
You’re probably wondering, ‘If everything I do makes it worse, how do I make it better?’
The truth is that despite all of the drive and discipline you have accumulated and all of the knowledge you have, this is not a problem you can solve. This is 100% not your problem. Every time you try and help fix her, you strengthen her belief that she is broken.
What’s really going to bake your noodle is the fact that her weight and her eating isn’t actually a problem at all. Your wife’s eating is actually a solution for the problem of emotional discomfort which shows up as low self-worth, low self-esteem, social anxiety, stress, exhaustion and [insert any other negative emotion here]. Every time she feels bad, she solves that problem with food.
Her problem is emotional discomfort. Food is her solution.
There are two ways your wife can tackle this:
- She can get to work on her emotional discomfort
- She can learn to replace food with other things that soothe her emotions without harming her.
Both of these are difficult and painful and neither of them are things you can do for her (see Table 1). I prepared another table of things you might be tempted to think or say out loud and what the repercussions might be.
What you say or do. | What she hears. | What she is likely to do. |
|---|---|---|
Hey everyone, [wife] is on a new diet – let’s support her. | You’re fat, and stupid and can’t speak for yourself. | Hate you. Hate herself. Stab a voodoo doll of you. |
Are you allowed to eat that? | You’re fat and stupid. | Hate you. Hate herself. Have seconds. |
Let’s go for a walk. | You’re fat. You’re lazy. | Hate you. Hate herself. Not walk. Eat. |
Hide unhealthy foods. | You’re fat and stupid. | Hate you and herself. Eat in secret. |
You’re putting on weight. | You’re fat. I don’t love you | Hate you. Hate herself. Eat. |
I don’t care what you look like. | You’re definitely fat. | Hate herself. Want to stay home. |
You look fine. | You look fat in that. | Try on everything. Stay home. |
Let’s eat something healthy! | You’re fat. | Hate you. Hate herself. Eat something unhealthy. |
Haven’t you had enough? | You’re fat and stupid. | Hate you. Hate herself. Have seconds. |
Why did you skip gym? | You’re fat, lazy and a bad person | Hate you. Hate herself. Eat. Skip gym more often. |
We never have sex! | You’re a bad wife in spite of everything you do. | Hate you. Hate herself. Never have sex with you, ever. Eat. |
If something you want to say is not mentioned in Table 2, you can test it with these two simple questions:
- Is what I’m about to say intended to try and change her behavior, or get something that I want?
- Is what I am about to say coming from a place of frustration, sadness, resentment, despair or [insert any other negative emotion here]?
If the answer is yes to either of them, you need to keep quiet.
If you thought watching your wife self-destruct was difficult, things are about to get impossible. No more impossible, however, than it is for your wife to get control of her eating.
The Three Rules for Supporting an Overweight Wife
In order for her to achieve the impossible, you need to do what you can to create an environment in which she believes she can achieve the impossible, and she is empowered to achieve it. You have to give her a perpetual tsunami of unconditional love, without becoming her coach or her slave.
Rule 1 – Unconditional Love
Feelings of low self-worth, low self-esteem, perfectionism and a host of other mental health ailments stem from a feeling of conditional love. Deep inside her subconscious, there is a little voice saying, ‘in order to be loved, I need to be X’. The X could stand for ‘be perfect’, ‘be the best’, ‘be thin’, ‘be beautiful’, ‘be clever’ – ‘X’ could also be a certain number on the scale. The list goes on. The point is that she feels that she will only be worthy of love if certain conditions are met.
When you offer her ‘advice’ or ‘accountability’, criticize her or get angry or frustrated, she experiences that as you taking your love away, therefore reaffirming that belief. ‘I’m not worthy of love, because I’m not X’.
The only thing you can do to increase her sense of self-worth is prove to her that she is worthy of love just by being alive. This means giving her so much unconditional love, for such an extended period, that the neural pathways in her brain change and she starts to believe she is special, important and powerful.
If you give her unconditional love for three months and see no change, and then confront her about the fact that nothing has changed, I hate to break it to you, but that wasn’t unconditional love, and the reason nothing has changed is because she probably felt it. This is something you need to get your head around. You are not treating a weight issue. You are forgetting about her weight and her eating, and you are focusing on giving her all of your love.
Giving her all your love doesn’t mean what you think it might. It means finding her love language and loving her in that language. Forever. If that is hard, then you should go for therapy and marriage counseling.
Rule 2 – Don’t Be Her Coach
Unless you’re both athletes, you should avoid playing any role in her eating or exercise journey. You will resent her if she falls off the bus after ‘all the effort you put in’. She will also resent you for ‘holding her accountable’. Even if she asks you to join her, or hold her accountable, this is your moment to set a boundary and say, ‘Babe, I’m here to support you when you need it, but I think it would be best if you owned your journey without me muddying the waters’.
Don’t be training or dieting buddies either. Feel free to start a challenge or a diet at the same time, but don’t do it together. It might look fun from a bonding perspective, but two things happen (EVERY TIME):
- One of you will cheat or bunk more than the other.
- You will develop a dependency and when one bunks, the other will bunk because a team mate letting you down is the best excuse ever.
- The more driven one will be ‘motivating’ and ‘inspirational’ which, quite frankly, will just piss off the other one.
The best way to do it is to go it #alonetogether. Each person on their own journey, possibly comparing notes on occasion, and being supportive no matter what.
If she decides she is going to go on the rampage and have a pizza loaded with extra KFC washed down with two pints of ice cream, your only role in this is to make sure the cutlery is clean and that she has something nice to drink with it. Then you shut up, and love her unconditionally.
In time she may feel there is one less person to rebel against, and she may just feel less inclined to go off the handle. That is a big fat ‘maybe’, so please refer to unconditional love.
You might have had a revelation at some point in life that changed your life in an instant. You might want that same light bulb moment for your wife. It is possible that it will happen, but it is impossible to predict or demand, so if this is what you are betting on, please refer to unconditional love.
Rule 3 – Don’t Be a Slave
It is important for you to have boundaries, and this is where things get real. You are allowed to choose what you want to eat, but in 2023, family menus and dietary choices are definitely not decided by dictatorship, but rather by collaboration.
Your needs are also important, and it is important for your relationship that your wife understands the impact of this situation on the relationship. I don’t think many people are skilled enough to communicate this without triggering World War III so my advice is to book a therapy session and have a pro there to mediate.
Regardless, be sensitive at all times and strive for alignment rather than victory.
Some Hot Tips
- Next time you see things running late – get everything else ready, and be really kind about it.
- Next time you’re in the car and a fight is about to start – take a deep breath and ask her how she’s feeling. Apologize even if you’re not wrong because what she’s upset about isn’t actually the thing.
- Next time she doesn’t want to go out – cancel and stay in with her, unless she doesn’t want you near her, then go out and make up a really good excuse for her.
- Next time she’s not keen to get naked – love her in her language, make her her favorite drink and chat, read, watch a movie or just hang out. And, be kind about it.
- Next time she announces she’s going on a new diet / transformation / program / challenge – ask her how you can support her. Remember you’re not her coach. If you can afford it, pay for it. Then, keep quiet about it and give unconditional love.
- Next time the charts appear on the fridge – ask her what she needs from you, and then provided her requests seem reasonable and don’t break the Coach and Slave rules, do what she asks.
- Next time she starts a binge or a bender – love her. Maybe a day or two later, once she’s hungover and the binge is over, ask her how she’s doing and how you can support her – her, not her diet.
- Next time she’s winning at her challenge and you want to be supportive and help her keep the momentum – acknowledge her effort, not her results. ‘Wow, babe. I’ve noticed a big change in you lately. You’re really dedicated. It’s inspiring.’ You can acknowledge results too, but aim for a ratio of 80:20 for acknowledging effort to acknowledging results.
- Next time you make this about you in any way shape or form – remember that you have half the hormones she does, a less complicated brain (fact) and that literally, all you need is love.
In Conclusion
On a deeper level, you might have gathered that you do have power in this situation in that you can dramatically improve your wife’s experience of life by loving her more. But, you might also be sitting with the reality of how powerless you are in this situation.
No matter how many things you try, or how many angles you approach this issue from, you just don’t seem to be able to move the needle and get the results you want.
If that’s how you feel, then you and your wife have something in common.
