I think I am just sort of venting but.....
I don't know why my husband insists on baking chocolate chip cookies at night.
Does anyone else have a friend or spouse who seems to try to sabotage your efforts to loose weight and be more healthy? What do you do? (Please don't say talk to him/her because that does not seem to work at my house. )

Anyway, last night the house, all of a sudden filled with the smell of cookies. I would just like to say this was very hard for me but I kept saying (out loud) "Sugar is bad for me. I don't like it and it makes me sick." I did notice that saying that helped me to stay away from the cookies ("Back away from the cookies and nobody gets hurt ! ) but I would still like some other suggestions. I think that the better prepared you are the more likely you are to succeed. Thanks!

Sabotage from our loved ones does happen. You are not alone. Some seem to do it because they are afraid of their spouses getting thin, it will change the family dynamic or they are afraid of the dieting spouse getting too attractive and leaving them.

I live with my sister, and while I love her dearly, she is a pretty self-centered person. She eats chocolates all the time and makes starches at every meal. It wouldn't even occur to her not to do these things in order to help me out. But she is supportive, we go grocery shopping and (for the main meat dish at least) she'll check carb counts with me and make sure it's something I can eat. She'll pull out a bit of the ground beef for me before she adds the can of Manwich to make sloppy joes for her kids, etc.

So, is your husband sabotaging you? Or just too self-absorbed to notice (or care) what he is doing is hard on you? If he's sabotaging you, all I can suggest is re-assuring him (subtlely, not with a big talk) that you love him and won't leave him, talk about plans for what you'll do together after you lose weight, etc. If he's self-centered, maybe you can point out how he's making it hard for you and just plain old tell him to stop it.

Just some ideas.

Valerie

Well in my house I have 4 children and a fiance constantly around eating sugar and carbs. I keep my own treats in the house and when the eat cookies my defense is "their not overweight I am so this is what I have to do. I must stay determined if I want to lose" I would rather folks were more conciderate sometimes but I can't make the world change just because I am. So when the cookies start smelling up the house I take out my sf treat and go at it so that I don't feel deprived.

Good luck Tex

Has he always baked cookies at night? If you can't talk to him about this, your best line of defense is to make sure you have things you can eat when these events take place. And if you're in this for the long haul, they will pop up all the time. My husband used to guilt me in to eating. Like if we were out and he wanted desert, he wouldn't order it unless I would. Or if he wanted to stop at the bakery, he wanted my assurance I would have some.
He's low carbing now too, so it's no longer a problem but once the people in your life see you're serious about your new WOE, they (and you) will know you can't be tempted. Good luck!

Since it looks like you just started on the Atkins WOL it must be very hard to be going through induction and having to put up with smells that atack your withdrawl. Have you talked to your husband about what you are trying to do? Does he know how important it is these first few weeks that you make it a priority to be sugar free? Few things smell up a house the way cookies do. If you can look it as a test to overcome it may help you to endure. There are things that jump up at us all along this journey and some are easier to get around than others. Keep focused and in mind this is for you! If all else fails wear a clothes pin on your nose while he is baking and soon he will get the message.

I really like the suggestion to have my own treats available. I think I am going to go to the store tonight and try to find something....maybe some whipped cream to put on the jello so it is more like desert. Additionally, I never really considered the fact that he is just self absorbed. I guess it works better for me to think that than to always think he is "out to get me". I have decided that when he does these things I am going to channel all of that "temptation" energy into determination by using self talk. Hopefully that mixed with the "deserts" will get me over the hump. Thanks
P.S. on the main support board they have a thread like this running right now...for anyone who is activly going through this, that thread is also a good one!

My 14-year-old daughter regularly bakes brownies and cookies. I've learned to live with it. I figure it is her house as well as mine and she has a right to them, especially since I don't bake them for her anymore. She's not overweight (5'6" and 120 pounds). She doesn't seem to have any problem eating two or three cookies, or one brownie, and then stopping, and she regularly refuses sweets when she is not hungry, so my guess is that she doesn't have an insulin problem.

It gets easier as you get further along into low carbing. I honestly don't want that junk 90 percent of the time anymore. The other 10 percent, I either go for a walk (which usually clears up the cravings) or eat something lowcarb if I genuinely am hungry.

Having my own stuff really does help, but in addition I simply stopped buying junk, or the things necessary to make junk.

I buy my dh the kinds of chips and snacks that I don't like, but he does, and he gets his junk at work from the vending machine and never brings it anywhere near me. I'd fail if he did, and he knows it. He's great that way.
My son has lost weight with me being on this woe even though he's not on a diet because the junk just isn't there for him.
I know for some it doesn't do any good to talk, but make it an effort for them to try to sabotage you and just simply only buy things that are legal for you, and maybe some things like bread and rice for the people who feel they need it. It won't hurt them.

Also consider that it might not be that he doesn't care... but that he honestly does NOT understand.

My fiance is the most supportive person in the world, but I finally had to sit down and explain to him that I need hishelp. I have a problem, and it's an addiction. You would not bring alcohol into a house where someone was just getting over a drinking problem.

I honestly don't think that some people understand just how insane the cravings can be. Mike assumed that since I'm a smart girl and usually have a pretty impressive willpower, I would just stop eating that stuff because I wanted to. And I always do what I want.

Except with sugar. I'm an addict, and I nothing I say will change that. So I told him that, and not only is he keeping the stuff out of the house, he's eating low carb with me now, because the meals I'm making look good.

Sometimes it's just a case of people not understanding that you can be addicted to sugar just as badly as any other drug.

Buy some essential oils and place them on the tip of your nose and just inside the rims of your nostrils. That should make it so the smells are not so overwhelming. I do believe that other not fat family members should occasionaly be able to have their favorites foods and we need to gain some skills to deal with it.

Erika

I think it's great that HE's making the cookies himself. At least he's not asking YOU to make them for him (it has happened to more than one friend of mine while trying to watch what they were eating).
I agree with Erika. Well said.

I really like the essential oil idea. Someone told me to put Vicks in my nose but that was not very appealing. Also, I never really thought of it that way, like he could have asked ME to bake them for him....I think he knew that the cookies were not worth his life..hehehe! Anyway, thanks for all the great comments. I am so happy not to feel alone in all of this and meet some people who are willing to invest their time to try and help me ( :

Just as a small aside to this conversation, I also agree it's not fair of me to ask my family to completely stop eating the foods they enjoy. I do think that in the beginning, when things are hardest, we can ask them to help out though.

It doesn't bother me at all anymore when my sister eats chocolates, I can even go with them to Baskin Robbins for ice cream and not have any these days, but I think time helps alot with that. In the beginning, it was a good deal harder.

Valerie

you can expect others to be willing to help - but sometimes you do have to explictly ask for help and not just assume that they know what behaviors they should *stop* in order to *be helpful*

IMO, in the absence of other direction, people tend to act as they would like others to act should they be in the same situation. It may be that the OP's SO doesn't have food temptation issues, so it never occurs to him that it would bother the OP or be unhelpful.

Another thing that may help the craving is l-glutamine. Atkins suggests this suppliment in his book to help battle cravings. I know it won't erase the smell, but it may help the desire to eat one.

There are also some great recipes on the web and here for lc cookies. It may help to make some of those for yourself to have if it just gets too out of hand. Some of them only have a carb or two per cookie. Just a thought.