I appreciate people generally eat more over xmas but the volume of rubbish the kids and Mrs are getting through is giving me concern.

The kids came away with a carrier bag full of chocolate and fudge from each set of grandparents, the mrs keeps baking cakes and whenever we see anyone, all the rubbish food comes out, which they all say yes to apart from me.

We have piles of xmas stuff still to be eaten from Christmas, which I try and hide, but how do you deal with this without being labelled mr grumpy? The Mrs is less than supportive and comes out with things like “it’s only a bar of chocolate” etc, whenever the kids are offered it. I’ve told my Mum and dad not to give them loads of chocolate, but it seemsd to be against the rest of the family.

We have several rounds of visiting ths weekend and I know the same will happen, so how to deal with it????

Take some of the chocolates etc. wrapped up as presents?

Dad The **** Up, and tell them it’s celery your way or the highway.

Are your Mrs and kids ‘heavier’ than they ought to be and/or not eating a balanced diet – if so do something about it.

Otherwise, just hide/eat anything that’s unhealthy. 🙂

take it into work – leave it out – soon disapears.

thats what i do 😀

Grab the bags of choc’s and sweets, grab the family, take to landfil and empty choc’s n sweets into skip in front of them.
“feel smug”

Keep the cake flowing though.

Our xmas chocolate lasts till easter…..

trail_rat – Member
take it into work – leave it out – soon disapears.

thats what i do

+1

I’ve solved this by eating all the shite myself after much cycling.

Some of it comes as presents

most is offered on arrival or during visits.

The kids are under 5, so will say yes to it galdly.

The mrs is too polite, so it’s just me that says no thanks, then everyone turns on me as the grumpy bad person.

None of them are fat, but the kids are not getting enough exercise at the moment (another story) and they are eating rubbish almost every day. I don’t want them to live like monks and like chocolate myself, but the amounts in question are excessive. Me and the Mrs have had quite a few arguements about it.

I’m with you on this one – too much cr@p given over christmas time.

Given my current level of phys activity, plus a bonkers metabolism, I’m happy to act as the family ‘scoffer’ for now – well, no-one wants a fat wife and kid do they…..

Additionally, cake and treats keep you in cycling friends for many years!

DrP

We have piles of xmas stuff still to be eaten from Christmas, which I try and hide

Take it into work and share it out.

take it into work – leave it out – soon disapears.

+1

Have off-loaded boxes of Xmas crap on my co-workers they’ll eat anything

Otherwise just bin it. If it’s not there they can’t eat it. Ho ho ho!

We just made reward charts for our 4 year old twins for eating their fruit and veg, 10 portions yesterday. If they get a full row of stickers they get sweets.

Its not surprising they are now focused on an fruit and veg eating competition, the treats have just sat there since we introduced this.

Kids will do anything for a sticker

We still have loads left this time of year, but mid January is mrsmidlife’s birthday so we have a party. Lots of people come, and scoff the lot in one night.

This is the nub of why c 69% of men and 59% of women are overweight and obese in the UK.
Eating too much and poorly has become normalised. Sod the fact that your position is EXACTLY what the government and doctors are saying is essential i.e. you’re not taking an extreme position…
Being of sensible weight, taking a decent amount of exercise and having a good diet mean you’re in a minority. And minorities are always seen as ‘wrong’, and the majority ‘right’.
EAsy to say from behind a computer screen but I think you need to get clear agreement with your wife about the rules you’re going to set and how you’re going to influence the kids to look after themselves rather than following the herd into a lifetime of poor health…
Maybe you need to get your wife down to the GP with you and discuss it with them (neutral party, expert)
Good luck! This country has a hell of a fight on with this now

The kids are under 5, so will say yes to it galdly.

Ah, this is where parenting comes in. It’s your job to tell them when they’ve had enough. 😀

well said brooess

If I’d accepted invites to all the doos over the past 2 months, eaten everything offered, started drinking again and didn’t cycle 3 times per week…none of which is excessive, I’d certainly be much heavier.

Literally as I type this, I should be attending a “Coffee and Doughnuts” session with the MD. FFS.

I assume your wife is an adult and is therefore capable of making up her own mind?

take it into work – leave it out – soon disapears.

Seems to work in our office – all kinds of post-xmas sweet stuff in the office kitchen at the moment.

She doesn’t have to be that fat to give her a complex that will have her chucking it in the bin or just eating it in secret. Either way you won’t have to watch her stuffing her face. Focus on the lovehandles, phrases such as “I like a girl with a bit of meat”, stuff like that should do it.

Meh. I’d say exercise is more important.

Surely all of us remembers scoffing tons of chocolate and other rubbish at Christmas and Easter as kids?

As a kid I used to regularly come home from school and scoff a bowl of weetabix smothered in sugar before I had my dinner.

That didn’t make me fat.

When I stopped being active, stopped playing sports and started sitting about on my arse for a living, that’s when I got fat.

Is this soon to be followed by another STW my wife left me thread?

first of all you need to realise that its a generational thing. When your grandparents were kids a bar of chocolate was a massive treat and because everyone was so much more active a few extra sugary calories was neither here nor there. And for most older people its a genunely given treat for their grandkids. Its probably not a good idea to refuse it at point of delivery, so to speak as you are insulting them. Its sounds to me like its only part of the problem as well. If you can address some of the other lifestyle issues that you allude to then a few sweets won’t be an issue.

Personally I’d speak to the relatives and explain why you have the attidue that you do and see if you can’t get them on board with helping you and your missu change things a bit for your kids. Most kids will accept whatever they are given and be happy so try substituting loads of chocolate for less but more fun ones and some interesting fruit.

trail_rat – Member
take it into work – leave it out – soon disapears.

thats what i do

This, works every time…Unless you’re self-employed of course 😉

Grab the bags of choc’s and sweets, grab the family, take to landfil and empty choc’s n sweets into skip in front of them.

what I want to do

I’ve solved this by eating all the shite myself after much cycling.

what I actually do.

I do some of the above (sweets taken to work etc) but mainly because I get sick of seeing them everywhere.

But (IMO) there is nothing wrong in kids eating sweets etc as long as their diet is balanced. Our kids get sweets, chocolate, ice cream etc but also have to eat fruit, veg, pasta, meat etc.

We have recently taken all sweets with artificial colours and flavours away though after noticing some big changes in behaviour…

The chocolate goes out with the tree here, once xmas is over its no good to anyone having bulk sweets, its better off in the bin.

i just put excess stuff on the counter at work. greedy customers help themselves.
so far, 1 family tin of roses, 2 tins of biscuits and a xmas cake.

You: parent, your wife: parent, eaters of too much chocolate: children

Parents decide what to do bewteen them, impose decision on children ( what parent2 does is irrelevant as adult, and can decide for self)

Done

I don’t want them to live like monks and like chocolate myself, but the amounts in question are excessive. Me and the Mrs have had quite a few arguements about it.

I’d say stick to your guns. My parents were extremely lax when it came to my diet – we’d always have chocolates and biscuits in the house, and every day after school my mom would go to the newsagent and buy a newspaper and my a pack of sweets or chocolate for both myself and my brother. I had coffee from the age of three, but decided I didn’t like it at the age of six, and switched to tea. I’d have piles of sugar on my cereal (even Frosties and Crunchy Nut Cornflakes), and three sugars in my tea. Until I was in my mid-teens, the only vegetables I’d eat were tinned carrots and sweetcorn with Sunday dinner. I didn’t have broccoli until I was 29, and cauliflower when I was 32. I’ve still never managed to eat an entire piece of fruit – I hate the taste of apple and banana, and I’m not over keen on strawberries. I find raspberries and blackcurrants acceptable… if they’re in a delicious pie. I like orange juice, but not with bits. I don’t like oranges in their natural state.

The point is, the habits your kids get into as children will be hard for them to break as adults. My diet is still fairly appalling, mainly consisting of meat and sugar, and I genuinely hate the taste and texture of fruit. I’ve cut down to one sweetener in my tea, and only put sweetener on Weetabix and Shreddies, and golden syrup in porridge – Mr Toast occasionally compares me to the elves from Elf, putting syrup on everything, but compared to my childhood, this is a marked improvement. Hopefully by the time I’m 40 I’ll have weened myself off sweetening my breakfast completely! 😆

I rarely get crisps, chocolates, cheese or biscuits into the house, as I have virtually zero willpower. :/

SAVE YOUR CHILDREN! SAVE THEM NOOOOW!

My youngest (3) is type 1 diabetic so she doesn’t get offered sweets, as a result the eldest (5) doesn’t get them either. However, if he is on his own he has been given them in the past by a foolish grandparent. He then goes into full-on Tazmanian Devil mode for about an hour.

Not a mistake they will be repeating 😉

We get given loads of chocs/cakes/biscuits every time we hook up with the MIL’s grandparents. They did this before little monkey came along so it’s just what they do. We go with it, eat some (don’t give any to monkey) and hand out the rest to friends or at work.

Everyone’s happy. Job done.

Have you thought about locking them in a cellar?

Have you thought about locking them in a cellar?

The relatives, the kids or the chocolates?

The chocolate goes out with the tree here, once xmas is over its no good to anyone having bulk sweets, its better off in the bin.

people think we’re weird for doing this.

Once your back to work, you just don’t need quality street by the ton, plus you’ve eaten everything you like and it’s only chocolate liqueurs & turkish delight left.

just bin it.

+1 trail rat
full tin of Quality Street left in brew room , four employees , gone by lunch, amazingly they`d all only had a couple each!!!!!

I see no problem here. Let them get fat then we can all sneer at them on STW for our own amusement.

As a non parent myself take this with a pinch of salt but if the rest of their diet is pretty well balanced and they’re not excessively overweight then a few small treats around Xmas probably isnt going to matter too much.

I suppose if you took the hard stance then one outcome could be by banning the treats you end up making them covet them much more. Think Amsterdams stance on cannabis! (v tenuouos parallel I know).

From my own upbringing my parents never really had much in the way of fizzy drinks or sweets in the house but never went ott strict if I ever wanted them say around Easter or Xmas. What they did enforce though was to make sure I wasnt a fussy eater and ate loads of fruit and veg. Now pretty much the only 3 foods I can’t bear to eat are rhubard, turnips and parsnips. And even then I’ve grown to like the taste of roasted parsnips over Xmas.

My MIL is terrible for this. She can’t resist a “bargain” and buys all manner of short dated and broken “treats” crap from the man up the market, passing it on to us. This culminated in her giving us 2 catering size bags of those horrible pink wafer biscuits, and I just told her to put them straight in the bin and if she didn’t they would go in the bin the moment she left. She still does it now, but not quite as excessively.
Luckily mrs trb agreed with me but didn’t want to offend her mum over it, so she just hid!

I also once made the MIL put the 2nd pack of 18 yorkshire puds back in the freezer. She was about to cook 36 yorkshires for 5 people – 1 of which was only 4!

So back to the OP, You need to take control of the situation, but if you’re working against the mrs then I wish you luck. My kids are still eating christmas chocolate, but they only get it for desert, after their tea