Hi everyone, my partner and I have found ourselves in a bit of a challenging situation regarding meal planning and I'm looking for some advice. We like to cook and eat together, and we really enjoy planning our meals and trying new recipes that we find online, so we're open minded to any of your suggestions.
The problem is that our needs are so different - see below for our height/weight:
Me: 29M, 5'11" (180cm) / 160lb (72.5kg), approx. kcal goal is 2700/day
Her: 30F, 5'4" (163cm) / 180lb (81.6kg), approx kcal goal is 1600/day
About a year ago, I started running with C25K, fell in love with running, and am now running about 30 miles (48 km) per week just to maintain my fitness and sanity. I'm at my goal weight and don't have any goals to change that (up or down), but on running days I sometimes have to log my food to make sure I'm eating enough. I've found that running absolutely kills my appetite and sometimes I'll realize I'm at a pretty significant calorie deficit before bed, which I'll remedy with a late night snack...and then maybe another snack an hour later if needed to hit my calorie goals.
For my partner, things are a bit different. She has had some health problems that have made it harder for her to exercise similarly - some recurring issues with her foot and GI system cause her a lot of pain. It simply isn't possible for her to maintain the same level of activity as I am right now. She really wants to lose weight but has been constantly discouraged and frustrated by her health problems, and I'm looking for some ideas from you all to make the process easier for her. She's working with doctors to figure out what's going on, but these things can take a while to figure out. I should also note that her weight has bothered her for most of her adult life so there is a significant emotional component there too.
One of the difficulties I've noticed recently is that I frequently buy high-calorie snacks for the house, since I need a lot of calories (cheese, nuts, and sugar cereal because let's be honest that stuff is amazing) - but then she feels a lot of temptation to eat those because they're around. I've tried to get around this recently by only buying the kinds of snacks she doesn't like, but that doesn't change the fact that she feels sad and I feel guilty when I can eat with seemingly no reservations while she has to weigh everything and count every calorie in every ingredient. I've lost weight through calorie counting before and it is damn tough!
When it comes to meal planning, we've actually done a pretty good job over the years of coming up with a number of lower-calorie meals that are really tasty and filling. The problem with that is that I don't have a huge appetite, so if we eat those kinds of meals I still eat a relatively small amount and I have to eat like 5 times a day to not lose weight.
So I guess I'm trying to figure out how I can help her without hurting my own calorie needs. If I had similar goals, we could just remove all of the high calorie food from the house and then it would be relatively easy to make meals that met both of our needs, but some days I'll literally need to eat twice as much as her! When I leave high calorie food around, then that provides temptation for her to eat it which hurts her weight loss goals. How can I best be supportive of her? I'm willing to help shop, cook, etc. as needed but our needs are just so different!
Thanks for the help, I really appreciate whatever advice you may have for this situation.
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