Keeping secrets...

I have been with my boyfriend for over a year now. When we first started dating he made a comment about my weight, not being mean, but saying something to the effect that I could lose some weight. He is very thin and fit. It really upset me because I was so used to people complimenting me about how good I looked, because I was down about 60 lbs. I told him that I had lost a lot of weight and I could see a look of panic on his face, and he asked how much I had lost. I lied and said about 30. He seem bothered by it, saying that I had weighed more then him. Anyway I have never told him the truth about how much I really used to weigh.

While dating him I have slowly gained weight. By November I had gone from 144 to 157. I was feeling really uncomfortable with him and upset with myself for gaining, so I came here and am current back down to 146. He knows of my recent efforts and has asked me questions about what I am doing at the gym and what am I eating. He keeps offering his two cents, which I know is his way of showing support. He has asked if I am seeing results and again I lied. I told him I have only lost a few lbs, instead of the 10 I have lost. I guess my telling him the truth it would be admitting how big I was getting.  

As stupid as it may seem my weight is the only thing I have ever lied to him about. I am not sure of what I am so afraid of. I mean I am not even telling him how much I have lost. I know he will never really get it. He has never had an issue with weight. And he is one of those people that thinks weight loss is nothing more then eating less, moving more, (Yes I know that is true) but has no idea of the emotions involved with gaining weight and losing it.

Does anyone else do this? Is your weight or what you have weighed in the past, your dirty little secret?

I haven't done it yet, but I am probably going to... My original goal weight was 165, then I dropped it to 160, 155, and finally at 150 my husband made me promise not to go any lower.  I'm not going to be happy at 150, so I'm probably going to drop to 145 without telling him (I'm currently at 162), if I don't feel too guilty that is.

from what you say his reactions seem purely concern based and i don't think he would think any less of you, just worried about your health. As you also seem to be concerned (if you weren't you wouldn't be trying to lsoe weight right?) your goals are the same... being completely honest with him is vital, then he will be able to give you the support you need... saying you're doing so much and not losing alot may lead him to think you're not actually making any effort... so own up to the hard work you've put in and the AMAZINg results!!! 10 pounds lost is nothing to be ashamed of!

So what if you WERE bigger... at the end of the day that is in the past you are striving to change it, I don't think anyone could think that was a bad thing. You except how you were but you're changing it!! your boyfriend sounds likea nice guy and he is obviously trying to help you... I'm sure he'd love to hear that your progress is more than you're saying and that you're truly making the effort.

What you DID weight is in the past and it should be left there!!! you're leaving it behind and I'm sure if you explain that he will too!!! maybe you could even find some active things to do together ask him to show you how to play football or go on bike rides or something... as soon as he knows the REAL struggle, the REAL progress I'm sure he'll be nothing but supportive!!!

I know how you feel !  When my husband and I were still dating he told some of the guys in his family that "I could lose a little weight".  I was devistated.  I had just lost a bunch of weight and was the smallest I had ever been in my life.  Everyone kept telling me how great I looked - and all it took was one little comment from him to crush me.    It's miserable worrying all the time what someone thinks of you.  If he loves you - He loves you --no matter if your skinny or chunky.  (this just brought back a lot of dating memories -- I may just have to punish him again for it today! Ha Ha)

I agree completely with joejoe. If he loves you, he loves you!!!! It doesn't matter if you are fat or skinny. I was 135 pounds when I married my hubby 15 years ago. Now after 2 kids and 15 years, my highest weight when I started this was 238. It is hard for me at times as my hubby and kids are all thin and have no worries about weight. BUT once again if he truely loves you he wont care. He will fully support you as you need and help out whenever he can. My hubby helps me with my diets and getting food ready. When I make my meals, he eats the same. He just eats more and throughout the day. But doing this and having him eat what I eat makes me feel like Im not different. You need to be truely honest with him and what happens in the end is for the best. He will either understand and support you with open arms or be on his marry way. And if that is what happens then maybe for the best. You need to have people in your life that are going to support your decisions and help you as much as you can. If you contiue to lie it is only going to stress you out and hurt the relationship itself. Nobody wants to have a relationship based on lies. GOod Luck and hope you make the right decision for you.

i tink the fact that u feel uneasy to talk to him about ur weight says alot....in my last relationship i was open and honest about my heighest weight, what im doin, my goal weight and how much im losin and i felt comfortable tellin my man about it... they are suppose to support us, not make us feel uncomfy...   i dont know if the issue is him of if its you, but its something!!!!! good luck

I agree with tasha...  I had a boyfriend back when I weighed about 140 and over the course of the relatinship, gained about 40 lbs and it really really bothered him.  I was really crushed by many of his comments and I can remember one day when he told me my weight bothered him so much, he wanted me to move out.  I can still recall this clearly and it was about 14 years ago.  It still hurts a lot, even though he is long gone from my life.  He once also told me (when I was around 140) that "He would still love me even if I was 300 lbs.  We would not be together, but....I'd still love you"  Yeah right.  now that I am 267 lbs, for some reason this conversation pops into my head now and again.

So, the question I pose to you...are you secure in your self to withstand determining whether he really loves you and is supportive or whether your true stats will bother him so much he might not be deep enough of a person to accept you as you are?  I think telling him the truth about your former stats will set you free.

By the way, your 60 lb weight loss is AMAZING. 

I agree with Tasha as well. It is a bad sign that you don't feel comfortable being yourself around him and letting him know about such an important accomplishment and ongoing challenge. If he were really the right guy for you, he would be impressed, not scared, by your large weight loss.

I have been with my husband for 20 years and he still doesn't know how much I weigh.  I don't feel the need to every single detail to him.  However, he does know that I have lost 50+ pounds, so I'm sure he has a good general idea of my starting weight.

Yes, your boyfriend should still love you no matter what your weight.  Do you need to tell him every time you gain or lose a pound?  Up to you.

the number on the scale should not be important to him.  stop talking in absolute numbers with him.  whether it is how many pounds you weigh, how many pounds you've lost or gained, your BMI ... any of it.

next time he asks, tell him you've chosen not to be a slave to the scale anymore and that from now on you are going to judge your "progress" by the fit of your clothes, the way you look in the mirror, your energy level, etc.

if his TRUE concern is for you happiness and well-being (physical AND mental) he will accept this and that will be that.  good luck.

I have told people different things about my weight.  It was more about my own personal insecurity with weighing so much rather than my fear of their reaction.  I guess I thought they would feel as disgusted with me as I was . . . .

Keeping secrets about something that is such an integral part of one's life can be devastating; It will eat at you from the inside out.  It really is easier just to be up front in the beginning - even though it may not seem like it at first.

You probably have had enough responses but wanted to share my story regarding this issue.  I dated a guy (before I was married) for a few years and he was always giving me a hard time for my weight.  He was naturally skinny and had to try to gain weight.  He would always try these competitions, "I'll give you 20 bucks for every pound you lose" or "let's make a bet, you try and lose as much as you can and I will try and gain as much as you lose".  I finally told him I was hot and didn't need to lose weight and that maybe if he wasn't so scrawny that maybe I wouldn't look so big nextt to him LOL

Keep in mind that I only weighed 135 pounds at 5'5" so I wasn't fat.  He would take me out to dinner and order me a side salad with no dressing and eat a huge burger fries and shake.  He bought me a used bicycle for xmas and his parents bought me plus sized hosiery to make fun of me.  Needless to say I stuck around too long.  If 135 pounds if fat, they had the problem not me.

However, in regards to his / her weight.  I have gained a considerable amount of weight now and am only 40 pounds away from my husband of 20 years.  I was 120 pounds when we got together and I am now 208 pounds.  He is 6'4" so my "psi" (pounds per square inch  is obviously NOT good lol.

Point being, he loves me anyways.  He doesn't want the skinny girl, if fact he likes me better 10-20 pounds overweight.  The ones who are stuck on our weight usually don't change much I'm afraid to say.  Just stay confident in who you are and brush it off.  Good luck with your goals and remember this is for you and not him!  

I agree with most of what has been said. Just wanted to add- when weight loss becomes a dirty little secret, that adds an element of guilt into it that can really sabotage any weight loss attempts. Believing that he would think more of you at a lower weight will just make you harder on yourself when you're not perfect about diet and excercise, which creates a vicious cycle that's very hard to break.

Ask yourself- do you want to be lying about this for the next 60 years? When your bodies change due to aging (which, realistically, will involve some degree of weight gain), will you still value yourself in the relationship?

What bothers you the most...The fact you lied to him or the fact you FEEL you had to lie to him to make him think highly of you?

I agree with mostly everyone here. If the guy is stuck on weight then he always will be. It's not the most healthiest thing *mentally* to be apart of. Love, True Love is about accepting the person in any shape or form. For it's the person underneath you should be in love with. Even if psychical attraction does play a role in it everyone needs to realize that looks don't always stay with us. Unless you have millions of dollars to afford cosmetic surgery every 6 months for whatever flaw.

You need to find someone who is going to love you for you so you can have the feeling of self worth. Communication and trust to me are the biggest important aspects of ANY relationship. You need both to be successful.

You can tell him the truth and be honest as to why you didn't say in the beginning that you were self conscious about what he thinks. With his response as scary as it may be it will at least let you know what type of person he is and will give you insight into what your future with him might be like. Better to find out now then later on when it will become more hurtful.

You need to be able to talk to your partner not lie to them because if you can't do it now over something like this then you never ever will be able to and a part of you will always feel guilty and like a piece of your relationship is missing and truth is...it will be.

Be proud of your accomplishments 60 pounds is a big deal! But, at any weight know that you are beautiful and ANY woman needs to know this and that your true prince charming will know this sentiment as well.

:)

When my current boyfriend and I got together, I was a little over 200 pounds.

I am currently 166 and losing, slowly.

He knows how much I weighed, how much I weigh, and supports me in his own way (by congratulating me on my successes, but not by monitoring my food, or making me exercise if I don't want to.)

He knows I was 250, and has openly admitted he would not be attracted to me at that weight.

I think there is NOTHING wrong with someone not being physically attracted to someone who is largely overweight, or underweight. It is all personal preference. Again, this does not mean someone should be controlling how much you weigh, or leave you if you gain 50 pounds during pregnancy. But a lack of control over what you are eating, and how well you are taking care of yourself shows a lot about who you are, and where you are in life. I know that at 250 pounds, I was NOT healthy, and I was not taking care of myself. I would not want to be with someone who was not taking care of themselves (possibly leading to health issues, i.e. heart conditions/early death/etc,.).

That said, boyfriends and girlfriends should be able to be honest with one another. You should not feel you need to lie to him, and I sincerely hope you do come clean, and talk to him about WHY you feel you needed to lie.

I think it would clear up a lot of your tension you're feeling regarding your weight, and make him even more supportive. You've lost 60 pounds!!!! That is a HUGE achievement! How could he not be happy about your road to health and happiness?

I lied too, for the same reasons as you it seems. It's the same reason I don't fart in front of him, and that certainly doesn't make my relationship of any less quality.

I don't feel it's much of a lie at all. You look like what you look like, regardless of how much you actually weigh. If I can tell him that I weighed 120 when I was actually 130, then I congratulate myself on the good body image. It seems to me that your boyfriend is being supportive in his own way and that your weight loss journey is something you're doing for yourself as you should. As Garfield's talking scale once said, your weight is your own business.

Sauciedj, I don't think she's not telling him about her weight loss because she wants to maintain a sense of mystery/romance in the relationship, but because she's truly worried that if he did know how much she weighed in the past, or how much weight she had gained recently, he would be disgusted, and think less of her as a person. 

Some guys are completely disgusted by "fatties" - and their level of revulsion is more than the standard "I'm not very attracted to overweight people" thing.  He was "panicked" when he heard she once weighed more - it sounds like he finds overweight people disgusting.  She's going to live her life in fear that she may once again be fat, and that will disgust her boyfriend, and he will leave her.  That's no way for her to live.  She should be with someone who is attracted to her the way she is, and who would be reasonably forgiving if she were to gain some weight (as most people do, as they get older).  Life is too short not to be with someone who loves all of you (your past, present and future) for you.        ;

I think that it is unhealthy for him to open his mouth about your past weights, I dont think that it is any of his concern. What should be his concern is that you are happy and healthy and not overly stressed, its because this hiding, and lying and stress that is going to make it hard for you to reach your goal weight.

I have a great husband who supports me, and is honest, but he knows not to step over the line, even in this juncture of my life, bc making me feel bad about myself is a DEAL BREAKER.

Please be confident in yourself and know that he is lucky to be with you as well, and you dont have to take any guff.

I don't "keep secrets" about how much I weigh from my husband, but I don't volunteer the information either.  He doesn't know that I'm on CC, but not because I'm keeping it from him; it just doesn't come up.  He's said that he wants to lose weight with me, but whenever I bring up the recommendations from this site, he kind of dismisses them because his friend, who is a radiologist and therefore instantly an expert on all things health-related, has gotten some pretty lousy ideas into his head--like exercise without buckets of sweat is worthless.

I do feel a certain amount of guilt over weighing 200 lbs, and I feel like my weight is a secret I keep from the world.  I haven't told my mom or my mother-in-law how heavy I've become, even though they are both very supportive of my weight loss efforts and would like to lose weight as well.  Hubby does know how much I weigh and how much I lose, but I was at 200 lbs for quite a while before I disclosed that information to him.  Looking back, I don't think we discussed how much I weighed until I was at 200.

When we met I weighed about 125, and almost immediately started gaining due to eating his mother's cooking and fewer nights dancing with my girlfriends.  I guess I did keep it all a secret, and when I would invariably try a new "diet", I'd tell him how much I lost, but never the number on the scale.  He's never been negative about my weight aside from geniune concern for my well-being, physical and emotional, so I think that most of the hiding is a result of my own shame and guilt.

Original Post by trustwomen:

I agree with Tasha as well. It is a bad sign that you don't feel comfortable being yourself around him and letting him know about such an important accomplishment and ongoing challenge. If he were really the right guy for you, he would be impressed, not scared, by your large weight loss.

Same here.  If you feel like you have to keep that kind of secret, that doesn't bode well for the relationship.  My hubby knows all about the weight ups and downs I had before I met him.  I've had a few since knowing him, too.  He's nothing but supportive and loving--and truly doesn't care about my weight.  He didn't marry me because I was (or wasn't) a certain weight, but because he loves me.

Before I met him, I had a boyfriend that I did feel I had to lie to (as in, never reveal) about the 35 pound weight loss I'd just experienced.  He was still obsessing over his last girlfriend, who was skeletal BECAUSE OF AN EATING DISORDER THAT HE KNEW ABOUT and probably encouraged.  When we broke up, he told me that he wasn't attracted to me physically because he liked people "who look like [him], tall and thin."  So, since I'm undeniably the opposite of tall, let's just fill in that second adjective there, right?  He was calling me fat, no question.  At the time, I was the thinnest I'd been in close to a decade (although at a "healthy" BMI, I was so thin that my coworkers were starting to ask if I was sick because I looked ill) and already had a really disordered relationship with food.  Man, that statement haunted me.  Still does, some days--until I remind myself what a jerk he was.

someone I dated a few years ago once told me "I'd be hot if I lost a little weight"

I never felt the same about HIM after that (probably when I weighed about 155 at 5'5)

My boyfriend knows how much I weigh, and knows I'm trying to lose.  He supports me going to the gym, and the efforts I'm making to maintain a good diet. 

It's nice to know that even at my highest weight, he thought I was beautiful.