The best thing for my wife' mental health was when she switched jobs. Everybody on her new team only knew her as heavy. There was none of that underlying comparison or judgement any more.

And most of the people on her new team were overweight, too. Instead of making rude comments about her lunch choice, they were inviting her out and stuffing her silly.

I've witnessed friends lose for a vacation. The girl wants to fit in a bikini and will crash diet hard for 3-4 months to prepare for this cruise/trip. Usually it's to celebrate an anniversary.

And of course they have to vlog every moment of their struggle on social media. And show off their new figure.

Their metabolism is at a crawl by time they leave for the trip due to them starving themselves for months.

And then you'll see a Facebook photo a couple months after the vacation and they're an absolute bloated whale. Piled back all of the weight and then an extra 20-30lbs because they wrecked their metabolism and pigged out for the next couple months.

I really loved it once my wife started wearing my old big t-shirts around the house because it was the only shirts that fit her loosely.

It then just became another excuse why she needed to lay on the couch and eat - because to run errands or go outside would mean "then I would have to totally change my clothes, get ready, blah blah"

Everything becomes such a "big deal" in their mind as they get fatter and lazier.

It something that aroused me as a teen. But I never entertained it in real life or dated heavier girls. But then those embers roared later in life when my wife gained weight in pregnancy.

I swear, the bagger for our grocery store's curbside pickup is a secret feeder. For a month now they've subbed in fried chicken for our rotisserie chicken. We even had a random large bag of hershey kisses in our order last time. We didn't order that lol.

This was a challenge early on in my wife's gain, especially when eating out. At home almost always eat a different meal than her. She'll share a pizza or fried chicken with the kids. But it's been normalized that I have a different meal already prepped for myself.

It works well because she feels liberated to indulge in whatever she wants that night which often could be her weird cravings/ideas (like eating an entire large bag of pizza rolls for dinner).

I feel left out, haha – my wife has lost in quarantine!

Her office life of the ladies bringing in donuts every morning, the peer pressure of dragging her out to massive fast food lunches are all hard to replicate working from home. And so little driving (stopping at gas stations, passing fast food).

Eating out for dinner has gone down dramatically. No tailgates. Nightime snacking is up, but not enough to offset the rest of the decreased daily eating with quarantine life. : (

The first time my wife's doctor confronted her about her weight my wife came home so enraged. Thought it was insane someone could think of her as obese.

In her mind, she was still 140-150lbs. The cognitive dissonance truly blew me away. She was over 70lbs heavier than that.

Always a tough position to be in as a spouse; her standing there with her beer belly hanging over her pants "Tell me truth, would anyone seriously ever think of me as FAT??"

She still refused to believe it until her bloodwork was showing it.

My wife could never admit she was 200lbs.
She was always "190" until she was about 225 and couldn't get away saying 190 any more.

I've noticed among our circle that after a wife is done having kids, there's usually one last fitness/diet hurrah to try to get the old body back.

And then once they regain, that's usually where it just PILES on and they accept they're "just going to be bigger from now on". And then their definition of "bigger" expands every year with their waist line.