AITA for telling my girlfriend the exact amount of calories she ate in a single day?

A man is trying to support his girlfriend, who has been struggling with her weight. After she expressed a desire to lose weight, he spent a day with her to observe her eating habits.

When he calculated her total calorie intake for the day and pointed out that it was too high for weight loss, she became furious, accusing him of shaming her instead of helping. read the original story below…

 

‘ AITA for telling my girlfriend the exact amount of calories she ate in a single day?’

My girlfriend is on the bigger side, which is something I do not mind. I am on the more fit side, I’m pretty lean, have well defined muscles and probably around 15% body fat. I used to be about 40 pounds heavier and lost the weight pretty simply. My girlfriend always complains about her weight and her body.

I tell her I find her sexy for so many reasons outside her body and it didn’t matter to me whether she got bigger or smaller. Eventually she decided she wanted to lose weight, I offered to help and when I pointed out things she could be doing better she gets mad at me. She isn’t losing weight currently and in fact says she is gaining a few extra pounds.

I ask her what exactly she eats in a day, she says she eats healthy so she should lose weight. I question that and we have an argument. I tell her that if she wants to show me, let me just spend a day with her and see what she eats in a day.

She said only if I don’t make comments on what she’s eating as she’s eating it. I agreed. Now by the end of the day she had consumed, a plate of avocado toast that was about 400 calories, a coffee that was 110 calories, an 800 calorie salad from chick fil a and a fry (as a “reward” for the salad) and veggie burrito that was about 500 calories.

Along with snakinga but throughout the day. Her total consumption was about 2200 calories. At the end of the day I explained this to her. My exact words were that the amount of calories she is consuming is the amount I need to maintain my weight as a man 5 inches and 20 pounds bigger, who is constantly active.

So chances are she’ll slowly gain weight eating like that and that eating healthy isn’t going to guarantee she’ll lose weight. She got super f**king pissed at me and told me I wasn’t helping her and was just shaming her. I told her I want to help her but she did not listen.. AITA

Here’s the input from the Reddit crowd:

Lower_Ground_Score −  I’ve learned from personal experience it never goes well when a loved one talks about weight/diet.. the best way is for this information to come from an outside source. (Has she tried any of those diet apps? Or could she afford a nutritionist?)

Editing to correct: dietician is better (thanks to the comments below.. my brain typed the wrong word when I posted this 😅)

needabook55 −  I know you want to help but the way you went about it wasn’t what she needed. Ask her how you can help her. Maybe cook together and meal prep healthy foods. Go on walks together to help burn calories. Ask if she is using any tools or would like help researching tools to help be healthier.

There are apps or journals that help track and encourage people in being healthy and losing weight. Let her lead in her journey and be there if she needs help and/or encourage. But don’t try to take over or tell her she is doing it wrong, that will just hurt her and make her not want to talk to you about it in the future.

DerpDevilDD −  Wait… your girlfriend puts an *entire* avocado on her toast? And *six* teaspoons of sugar in a cup of coffee? 800 calories is on the very high end of a chic fil a salad, but sure, maybe.

Given that a tortilla shell only has 50-100 calories (depending on the size) and veggies have next to no calories, to reach 500 calories, she’d need to have around a cup of cheese and sour cream slathered on there. Your math seems to be a bit, let’s say, generous.

And I get the feeling your “offer” to help was less of a suggestion and more of you imposing “help” on her. You’re deluding yourself if you think she or anyone else would want you following them around all day, keeping track of what they eat.

Especially when you then lie to them (or are just ignorant), because 2,200 calories in a day is within the average recommended caloric intake for a woman. So, even your inflated count is still normal. How about you stop playing amateur nutritionist and leave your gf the hell alone? YTA

ETA: why are so many people talking about the salad? I didn’t dispute the salad. Man, you guys want to be mad.

Available-Love7940 −  No vote, but you offered what may be useless data. “My exact words were that the amount of calories she is consuming is the amount I need to maintain my weight as a man 5 inches and 20 pounds bigger, who is constantly active.”

Maybe, BUT: What is her height and weight? What is her age? What is her activity level? I googled and ended up with a calorie counter on the Mayo Clinic website. It asked my age, height, weight, and how active I am. To maintain my weight, as a 5’4, 205, 52 year old woman, I need 1750 calories a day. Now, if I eat 2200 I may slowly gain weight. But…it’s not that simple.

How many days does she -under- eat? A fair number of us skip or don’t eat enough at some meals. (The fact that you were able to log all her food suggests it was a weekend, not a work day.) At one point, when I was trying to get healthier, I discovered I was undereating by about 800 calories a day.

And you might think “well, boom, weight loss.” Nope…I was eating so little that my body entered starvation mode. Yet, the amount I was eating was ‘maintenance’ for someone else. Then there’s the ‘what do you/can you eat that is good for maintaining a healthy weight AND feeling full.’

Too often, we think ‘I will eat a salad to be healthy.’ And even if someone skips dressing/etc, it tends to leave us feeling hungry…meaning we’ll snack. Also, “I used to be about 40 pounds heavier and lost the weight pretty simply.” Ah, the advantage of being a man. You eat 5 less fries and boom, there go 5 pounds.

A woman looks at a sugar cube and we gain 3. (Plus the fun of hormones shifting us through the month, and a body that wants to be ready to produce another human.) If you want to be more helpful, think of activities you can do together.

Taking a walk after dinner is great for helping weight loss. It doesn’t have to be a power walk or ‘We’re gonna put in 5 miles.” But even a stroll helps. Edit: If you want to tell me ‘starvation mode isn’t a thing,’ please provide Peer reviewed paper citations.

shikakaaaaaaa −   Eventually she decided she wanted to lose weight, I offered to help  INFO: Did she actually say the words out loud that yes, she wants you to help?

iheartwords −  INFO Did she really agree to you helping her, or did she relent?

Apprehensive-Pea6401 −  Before I say anything about this particular situation- people do not understand how “salads” work if you want to lose weight. The salads you get (readymade) generally have a lot of oil and stuff in the dressing. Further, the choice of protein in said salad also matters.

If you wanna lose weight by having salads the best way is to get some veggies chop them up and add some source of protein that is not high in fat. Then toss it in with some spices and stuff. Add less dressing. This is so obvious yet people fail to recognise this. They think eating salads = losing weight.

Anyways, for your situation I would say NTA. You gave her constructive criticism. How can you lose weight without being on a calorie deficit? And you didn’t really mention work out on her part. And she has started gaining weight? I bet she started to reward herself a lot more for eating “healthy” stuff.

I think you should suggest her to get one of those app subscriptions that are goal based and help lose weight and count calories (I never used these but I have seen people use them successfully).

floral_hippie_couch −  YTA because it really sounds like you were pressuring your help onto her. She didn’t ask for it, she resisted it, you persisted. Bad mojo. Let her have her own journey, don’t get tangled up in it. Answer questions she directly asks you, otherwise you’ve got to stay out of it.

Even if she’s doing it wrong. Because she didn’t ask for your input. 

Sensitive_Scallion98 −  She doesn’t want real answers. She wants you to take her side and agree it’s some imaginary thing’s fault instead. NTA but with that way of thinking, good luck.

Independent_Prior612 −  The reason your input is a problem for her is that it was unsolicited. The fact that you had all this advice ready in your head, and chomped at the bit to give it to her, indicates you are not as fine with her physique as you claim to be.

You judge her for it and you couldn’t wait to make that clear. While you may be factually correct about her diet, you didn’t go about it in a very constructive way.

Should he have approached the situation differently, or was he justified in sharing his observations? What do you think? Share your thoughts below!