BOOK REVIEW: "The Power of a Transformed Wife"

[Grimalkin]

.     I am pretty certain that if someone at my church wrote a Christian book there would be something about it in the bulletin about it, even if it was a small blurb. Especially if it were a member who was well liked or respected. I suppose they would not if it were against the church's teaching. Do we know where she goes to church? I thought we did at one point. Do you think they will bring a case and try to sell them at church? Have a discussion group?

[lawfulevil]

I hate exactly one vegetable/fruit- turnips. Everything else I've ever tried I enjoy in at least some preparation, although some vegetables I don't care for some ways- roasted Brussels sprouts are amazing but I don't think they're very good boiled. My husband... can be coaxed into trying things, but he only really likes lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, and potatoes. He's come around on sweet potatoes recently. I don't think potatoes are a vegetable (I personally think of them as being much more like white rice, and his doctor agrees), and I'd die of boredom if I only ever made salads and the other 3. He'll eat a lot of other things in some quantity as long as I cook/season them carefully.

If we only ate things he agreed he liked when we started dating... hamburger doesn't need that kind of help, tuna definitely doesn't need help, In-N-Out is not a food group, and I firmly believe that you have to eat vegetables and drink water sometime or you'll die, probably of impacted bowels.

[smittykins]

My husband hated tuna fish and cottage cheese(both of which I like); I told him "you don't have to eat it, but don't say I can't."  He liked Chinese food and I don't; there's a restaurant up the street from our old apartment and I'd say "You go get Chinese and I'll grab something here."  He also liked Taco Hell Bell and I don't, but our nearest location is co-branded with KFC so it worked out.

[feministxtian]

1 hour ago, anjulibai said:

My husband is a diabetic and no longer eats sweets or drinks juice. I think we'd be getting a divorce if he demanded I not eat sweets or drink juice along with him. 

I hate strawberries with a bloody blue passion. I mean HATE them. BUT...hubs will occasionally get a thing of them and eat them. He just knows not to kiss me until he's gotten the smell/taste from his mouth/face. 

[feministxtian]

4 hours ago, lawfulevil said:

In-N-Out is not a food group

BLASPHEMY!!!!! A double-double animal style, animal style fries and a chocolate shake is a land all unto it's own when it comes to food. 

[Imrlgoddess]

I guess I'm the oddball.. It was never my husband (s) that ever had an issue with eating good food.... It's me. I'm a junk food addict. I'm ridiculously picky & eat very few vegetables at all. I don't care that I should because I'm old enough to know better or because I have genetically high cholesterol...I really just don't like food that much. I eat because I have to & I live in an area where food is almost a religion. 

I fix things that agree with the crowd, when I'm not feeling it, I cook for the girl & the husband & do whatever for myself. Lots of throw together meals here. 

[Gemini]

I have a friend who, when her children were small, insisted that they are the same meal as her partner (not the kids dad)

He would love food such as meat loaf, whilst the kids hated it with a passion. She would make meals that she know the kids would despise, but that was just the way it should be!

Lead to awful meal times and a whole host of eating issues!

She on the other hand was a vegetarian and wouldn't touch the stuff! Go figure!  

[feministxtian]

When my kids were small there were only two choices for dinner "take it or leave it". 5 kids...no way I was going to be a short-order cook. The rule was they couldn't just turn their nose up at something...they had to try ONE bite. Thing is, I didn't make things they didn't like...but sometimes kids like to push it. If they chose to put up a fuss, they left the table and that was it until breakfast the next morning. I think I can recall one of the kids being hard headed about eating dinner once or twice...they knew I wasn't playing and they could either eat or not, I wasn't going to make an issue of it. My oldest bio child will eat just about anything that's not moving...for the life of me I can't remember what she doesn't like. Stepchild #1 will eat almost anything, bio child #2 has food/digestive issues due to his service in Iraq and is on a strict diet...but up until then, he was a walking garbage can. Stepchild #2 eats anything, biochild #3 doesn't like mayo or tomatoes. 

Me...the list of what I won't eat includes yogurt, strawberries, cottage cheese, most cheeses (I can't get past the smell), I don't drink because I don't like the taste of most booze.

[alba]

11 hours ago, Hisey said:

I don't understand the Ritz Cracker thing. Why would she care what Ken eats? My husband eats lots of things I'd never touch. He even eats things that I think are gross (certain type of raw meats come to mind). So what?

And why would she think she had a right to comment on what he ate? Did she actually enter marriage expecting to eat exactly the same foods as her spouse? 

At that point, Ken was a young man of perhaps 22. So he wasn't really risking a heart attack or anything. Most young guys will eat crap like that. It was 100% his business. I don't know, I've never tried to control what people eat (actually, I usually don't even notice). Is this something other people do?

Well, *I* care what my husband eats because he doesn't have a healthy diet and it's important to me that he's healthy because, you know, I love him.

But for that logic to extend to LorKen it would mean that Lori loves Ken, and I'm not buying that.

[acheronbeach]

I don't follow LoriKen, but if she thinks cheese spread abstinence means love, she's completely off her rocker.

[louisa05]

6 hours ago, alba said:

Well, *I* care what my husband eats because he doesn't have a healthy diet and it's important to me that he's healthy because, you know, I love him.

But for that logic to extend to LorKen it would mean that Lori loves Ken, and I'm not buying that.

I think there is a balance, though. Forcing your likes and dislikes on a person is not loving, it is just self-centered. Wanting a person to eat healthier for legitimate reasons is okay. My husband is not naturally inclined to eat healthy. He likes meat and boxed mac & cheese. Those are probably his two favorite things. So I make him meat. But I make it in reasonable portions and put vegetables on the table which he will eat if they are in front of him. I take advantage of food he likes the best (things I like, too) to make for a healthier diet. He loves soup in winter. So we eat soup all winter and I've learned that a giant kettle of soup with 1/2 lb of meat or chicken and loads of veggies and beans and such things will feed us for a week and he loves it. I don't have to fight with him, force my likes on him, or nag him in order for him to eat healthier food. I just have to make the healthy food good to eat. At the same time, I'm not going to bitch at him if he eats jerky once in awhile. I am not his mother or his personal nutritionist. And he's not making me eat it. 

Incidentally, I have learned over the years that the reason he doesn't like many foods, especially vegetables, is because his mother is an awful cook. He and his sisters hate carrots for example and both insist that they "taste like dirt". I recently discovered that my mother-in-law neither washes or peels carrots before serving them. She takes them out of the bag and cuts them as is. The carrots they ate growing up tasted like dirt because they had dirt on them. Meanwhile, husband has decided he loves carrots in a pot roast, soups, or roasted with chicken when I make them because they "taste totally different". Yes, they do. Because I clean them. 

[alba]

33 minutes ago, louisa05 said:

I think there is a balance, though. Forcing your likes and dislikes on a person is not loving, it is just self-centered. Wanting a person to eat healthier for legitimate reasons is okay. My husband is not naturally inclined to eat healthy. He likes meat and boxed mac & cheese. Those are probably his two favorite things. So I make him meat. But I make it in reasonable portions and put vegetables on the table which he will eat if they are in front of him. I take advantage of food he likes the best (things I like, too) to make for a healthier diet. He loves soup in winter. So we eat soup all winter and I've learned that a giant kettle of soup with 1/2 lb of meat or chicken and loads of veggies and beans and such things will feed us for a week and he loves it. I don't have to fight with him, force my likes on him, or nag him in order for him to eat healthier food. I just have to make the healthy food good to eat. At the same time, I'm not going to bitch at him if he eats jerky once in awhile. I am not his mother or his personal nutritionist. And he's not making me eat it. 

Incidentally, I have learned over the years that the reason he doesn't like many foods, especially vegetables, is because his mother is an awful cook. He and his sisters hate carrots for example and both insist that they "taste like dirt". I recently discovered that my mother-in-law neither washes or peels carrots before serving them. She takes them out of the bag and cuts them as is. The carrots they ate growing up tasted like dirt because they had dirt on them. Meanwhile, husband has decided he loves carrots in a pot roast, soups, or roasted with chicken when I make them because they "taste totally different". Yes, they do. Because I clean them. 

Oh, I totally agree. You can care about what your partner eats because you want them to be healthy without being autocratic about it. I'm certainly not "appalled", as Lori is, to see my husband eat junk food; I just try to find ways to make healthy food easier for him, like washing and peeling a kilo of carrots when I get home from the grocery store an sticking them in a Tupperware in the fridge (the thought of eating them without either washing or peeling them makes me shudder!).

My husband's dislike of vegetables is similar to yours; he was brought up on Scottish school dinners, where it seems to be a national sport to try and see just how mushy you can get the vegetables before removing them from the stovetop and serving them to unsuspecting children. There are very few veggies he'll eat cooked at all, because he's used to them being boiled to buggery.

I once made fruit salad and offered him some, and he made a face. The next day I itemised the particular fruit I used and he agreed to have a bowl of it. Turns out that when you say 'fruit salad' he thinks of that horrible tinned stuff they used to serve at school. So now I know if I want him to eat fruit salad I say it's a bowl of chopped pineapple, mango, grapes, strawberries and blueberries

Lori really seems to treat it as a moral issue, rather than an issue of genuine concern. You and I both care that our husbands eat healthily because we love them; Lori cares that Ken eats healthily because she considers junk food and weight gain immoral.

[Hisey]

I think gently encouraging one's spouse towards healthy foods (or exercise, or reasonable work limits) is different from becoming angry because you see your spouse eating ritz crackers.

My husband has a lot of issues with food, which has been a source of conflict between us. His issues manifest when he tries to get us all to clean our plates, or overfeeding himself with stuff on our plates that we don't want, or trying to get us to use food that is clearly rotten. It also bothers him if I refuse to try an unfamiliar food,. He used to get nervous and unhappy if he sees me preparing food, simply because I was not doing it exactly as he wants. 

I found these behaviors to be very controlling. They drove me out of the kitchen very often. Even now, we can only cook together if he is being very careful not to micro-manage me. He's learning. His childhood was very dysfunctional when it came to food. Food is a constant struggle to him and he has a host of relatives who are overweight or have eating disorders.

What a person puts in their mouth is their own business, for the most part. Trying to control that, or how much a person eats, is treating them like a child and asking for troubled behavior.. Now that my husband is getting older, if I see him really heading down a path he'll regret (like eating lots of Halloween candy), I might gently try to steer him away. 99% of the time, this works. Usually, he'll thank me later. But if he really wants to keep eating, I leave him alone. It's his affair. (If he were diabetic I suppose things might be different).

But to get MAD because he doesn't eat like I do is the height of immaturity. Lori told stories of getting mad at Ken every Sunday because he wanted to take the kids to Subway after church. To me, the strife involved is far worse than eating one junky meal. Cassi talks about being forced to sit at the table till she ate her "Big Salad." Those kinds of behaviors are just plain crazy.

[lawfulevil]

My husband IS diabetic and I've just had to accept that there's only so much I can do. Spending your life policing another adult's behavior is the path to madness. It's acceptable to you (ugh, fine, I have accepted that the laundry hamper is a REGION and not a receptacle), acceptable to you if they're at least making the effort (many things), or it's not acceptable to you (gambling the rent or hiring a prostitute would be an instant deal-breaker). Trying to scream things from Category C to Category A is doomed.

That's in reality, of course, and Lori doesn't live in reality. She seems totally unable to distinguish between things that are legitimately a problem (too bad you're overwhelmed with our children, lonely, and depressed, but basketball is awesome bye) and things that aren't (she strikes me as the kind of person who throws a hissy fit when you make up silly alternate lyrics to songs).

Of course Lori says women aren't allowed to HAVE deal-breakers. You picked him, honey, so finding 15 dismembered corpses in the basement is just part of God's burden of marriage for you.

[SrMaryEloquentia]

I love food and I like to be considerate about it (preferring local, organic, vegetarian) - however, I try not to make a religion out of my personal preferences. I absolutely indulge in some junk food myself every once in a while and I won't judge anybody else for their choices.

I think at the heart of this issue is a power struggle. And from what we've seen on her blog Mrs. Lori "oh so submissive" A. has won. I just can't believe a man with his higher need for calories and protein will feel satisfied after a big salad for dinner.

[feministxtian]

3 hours ago, SrMaryEloquentia said:

I think at the heart of this issue is a power struggle. And from what we've seen on her blog Mrs. Lori "oh so submissive" A. has won. I just can't believe a man with his higher need for calories and protein will feel satisfied after a big salad for dinner.

I think EVERYTHING with LoriKen is a power struggle. Neither one of them is willing to give an inch. That stuff gets tiring. I just don't have the energy for that. 

[Ruviana]

Just want to say that this topic gives a whole new meaning to "bitch eating crackers!"

[Koala]

Lori definitely has a food obsession.

First she had the Ritz Incident with Ken.  Then she went on to have serious control issues with her children & food.

Quote

Ask my children how controlling I was...They had to sneak junk food, so I wouldn't get mad at them.  I think they were actually afraid of me

She had one of her children convinced that consuming sugar was a sin:

Quote

 Steven grew up thinking eating sugar was a sin.

One daughter wrote that Lori would make her sit at the table for hours at a time if she wouldn't eat her salad.  

She and Ken have both admitted that they were extremely conscious of their daughters' weight, noticing even the slightest weight gain.  Both girls went on to struggle with body image / eating disorders. One a says she verged on anorexia.  

Then there was the brag post about her son force feeding her granddaughter when she wasn't hungry / denying her food when she was hungry.

Quote

Ryan, my son, made Emma's breakfast this morning. He started feeding it to her. After one bite she said, "No!"  Ryan made her eat at least 20 bites between her crying. He doesn't want her to get her way and become a picky eater. He is a very smart daddy.

 

Erin, Emma's mother, told me that when they eat dinner, Emma begs for their food. Ryan didn't like that so he set a blanket down and made Emma sit on it with her toys and books while they ate. For a week, she would just sit there and scream. Then she would just cry.  Now when he lays the blanket down, she crawls over to it and plays happily while they eat.  She knows her daddy is boss and means what he says.

This is a woman who uses food to control / bring misery to other people.

[Emilycharlotte]

I guess it's kind of irrelevant, but  I've just never understood why the baby couldn't have their food.  

[Meridae]

The whole food thing drives me absolutely bonkers, because I LOVE food. Even from the time I started eating solid foods I was the furthest thing from a picky eater. I've got just two rules- no insects and no organ meat- everything else is fair game! Italian, Mexican, Japanese, Korean, Indian, French, Greek, German, etc etc can get in mah belly  I love trying new foods and will rarely ask what something is before eating it. However I do try to eat healthy and exercise as much as possible to offset any goodies! My boyfriend, on the other hand, is much more a meat and potatoes kind of guy. He's not as adventurous when it comes to new foods (although he's gotten better and was surprised to discover he loves Indian!) so cooking for him can sometimes be a bit aggravating. But hey, I love him anyway!  My motto with food is that the worst that can happen if you don't like it  is you can just spit it out and go about your day. So why not try something new?

For all that's worth, having a grown adult yell at me for my food choices would be obnoxious as all get-out. Whiz cheese every once in a while won't kill anyone. It's certainly nothing to get worked up about!

[feministxtian]

God...now I need Whiz cheese when I go to the store this weekend...I'll offset it with triscuits. 

[Hane]

40 minutes ago, Emilycharlotte said:

I guess it's kind of irrelevant, but  I've just never understood why the baby couldn't have their food.  

Me neither. Sharing bits of appropriate "grownup" food is a smart way to help small kids develop an appreciation for different things. Also, having your child at the table with you helps her to learn table manners. How else is she to learn how to use a fork and spoon?

[feministxtian]

My kids got fed at the same time the rest of the grown-ups or family ate. When they were tiny, maybe in their infant seat near or on the table. Once they were old enough to sit in a high chair, they sat in the high chair and would get bits and pieces of table food to play with or eat as they wished. Food was never a power-struggle...the power struggles with my kids were centered around sleeping (they hated to sleep) and potty-training. With the first one, they eventually had to learn that mama wasn't kidding when she said it was time for bed (or I'd never get any sleep), but things were also arranged that if they woke up, they could play quietly until they were ready to go back to sleep. Potty training...well...they "won" that one...I gave up and figured they'd eventually get tired of shitty diapers. I was right. They were all housebroken before they started school. 

[feministxtian]

Finally got my review to publish 

https://www.amazon.com/review/RRPA828JVEJXC/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

If one reads Mrs. Alexander's original blog "Always Learning" you will see where she has advocated what can only be described as child abuse to her children and grandchildren. Smacking a little one over and over for hours to pick up raisins?
Also, read her husband's defense of Joshua Duggar's molestation of his sisters.
The Alexanders are not people you want to take marital advice from...google their names and read what comes up. It would be an eye-opener for sure.

[Hisey]

3 hours ago, feministxtian said:

Finally got my review to publish 

https://www.amazon.com/review/RRPA828JVEJXC/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

If one reads Mrs. Alexander's original blog "Always Learning" you will see where she has advocated what can only be described as child abuse to her children and grandchildren. Smacking a little one over and over for hours to pick up raisins?
Also, read her husband's defense of Joshua Duggar's molestation of his sisters.
The Alexanders are not people you want to take marital advice from...google their names and read what comes up. It would be an eye-opener for sure.

Bravo, Feministxtian!