I doubt marriage has anything to do with gaining 44 pounds. Exercise doesn’t matter either if you’re eating enough to gain 2 pounds per month. The only thing to do is to control your eating and decrease calories intake, preferably through a permanent lifestyle change. Fasting and/or eliminating high calories junk food works for most people.
As for marriage, just like any other partnership, it doesn’t always last indefinitely. If you are not getting much out of it anymore AND IF you are prepared for a divorce + solitude (both of which have the potential to push your stress way above its current level), get out.
I don’t mean anything really though. Just thinking aloud. But I would push back on my weight gain not having anything to do with marraige, because with the advent of marraige, it adds a plethroa of life events. Mostly feasting with in-laws, feasting on specific days, feasting in-general. Lots of feasting. My homebrewed definition of feasting here = both the obligation and oppertunity to eat a lot of food that presents itself due to an event or circumstance.
As a single person I never had a feast (under what I established above). Capitial NEVER. I ate cup ramen because it was convenient. Or sometimes not at all.
When I drink I eat more as well. I will eat just for the sake of eating. When I am not drinking I tend to make better food choices, I don’t order random pizzas, and the pounds drop away.
Not saying you do that, or other drinkers, but I know that is how it works for me. Alcohol leads to bad life choices.
What’s funny, to me at least, is exercise doesn’t seem to help. I get regular exercise and it doesn’t make much of a dent in weight loss. Nothing drops weight for me like a week of no alcohol.
You also have to remember that your marriage also likely coincided with aging. As a younger, single person it was just easier to keep the pounds off.
Unless you’re “feasting” with a remarkable frequency, it’s more of the regularly diet they influenced your weight. The occasional overindulgence won’t make a huge difference compared to the day to day metabolic realities.
I am probably in the same zone. I am walking several hours on a treadmill ever single day while teleworking but it seems completely useless. I did obstain from alcohol for a week several months ago in a rare feat, and indeed I had the most weight loss during that time, but that was an unbearable struggle. I wasn’t the same person. I guess I am a drunkard.
Lee is right that that alcohol is the likely culprit. Best thing to do is give it up. Not a permanent thing, but as a weight loss thing. It’s not easy but after a few weeks it becomes a habit to not drink.
If marijuana is legal in your state, you could try some edible stuff as a substitute. It’s mild but it may be enough of a slight buzz that you won’t miss the drink. Beware of the munchies, though.
Maybe try switching to low-calorie alternatives like Chuhai then?
It’s relatively easier to eat healthy while living in Asia vs out west so you might want to try eating more traditional Japanese foods (i.e. less Curry and Katsu and more fish and tofu)
Cool but I am…unforuntaely, the main cook of the household, which is super dumb. But I learned a lot having to take up the mantel. Ironically or not, my Japanese wife is clueless and can’t cook very well.
Her cooking kind of sucks outside of very specific things like of Gyoza. Ouch.
There’s a few simple dishes you might want to look into adding into the repertoire - even just getting into the habit of making onigiri could be helpful in portion control and pretty easy to do. Back when I lived in Japan and was on diet mode I was used to go to conbinis and tried to buy foods that kept me in the 600Kcal range per meal. Might want to take a look and see which of those are doable from home w/o too much effort.
Just as a relative example:
It doesn’t matter how many meals I can shave 200-300 calories off of if I have two craft beers at the end of the day clocking in at ~250 calories each. Drinks seem simple, small, and not that calorie dense. That is very far from the truth. 1oz of bourbon? 70 calories. 2 oz of vodka and 4 oz of tonic water? ~170 calories.
We easily say things like, “oh we shouldn’t drink sodas, they are horrible and empty calories!” A can of Coca-Cola is 140 calories.
Don’t look just at your food but overlook drinking alcohol. Beer guts are a thing for a reason.
So mix with diet soda. I lost 52 pounds on keto drinking two drinks a day, Captains and Coke Zero. But I stopped losing weight at 180 so I decided to mostly quit drinking and the next 10 pounds fell away petty easily.
For what it is worth, I long ago switched to drinking only red wine, and limiting myself to a couple of glasses a day. It helps that I like red wine, of course. Two glasses of red wine are the calorie equivalent of two apples, and you aren’t going to get drunk on two glasses of red wine unless you’re using a fishbowl as your glass.
I lost about 20 pounds or so during the pandemic, mostly by eliminating restaurant eating and reducing how much I was eating at home. I also took up an exercise regimen that was pretty simple and quick to stick with and doesn’t require any home gym equipment.
It takes like 10 minutes, and it’s quick enough that I probably manage to stick to it at least 5 days per week. When I started, I did fewer, basically 3x 20 of each, until I could do more. My weight now stays between 156 and 159 pounds (I’m 6’1”) and my body fat percentage hovers around 16%. I’m not Schwarzenegger, but I’ve eliminated the layer of fat on my chest and belly that I’d carried for years and it feels great.
Of course none of my clothes fit, so there is that lol.
Edit: It helps a lot that my wife has the same attitude about food that I do. We both love great food but can’t really be bothered to make it anymore, and with restaurants mostly off the table, our approach to food these days is pretty damned minimalistic.
