Has your journey toward betteter health changed how you see the people close to you? Have you turned into a concern troll? I'm afraid that's happening to me.

My husband and I are both fat. We've both been fat as long as we've known each other. We have enabled each other, I guess, in the five years we've known each other - I never felt the urge to change my lifestyle until I had a health scare, because he loved my body, even as fat as it was, without condition. And I think he's just the sexiest man ever. I don't think either of us has ever been happy with our bodies, but we had each come to accept them because, the way we saw it, if our bodies were good enough for our significant other, it was good enough for us.

Anyway, couple of months ago, I went to the doc and there was a problem that made it obvious that I was going to have to make a significant, permanent change. My husband has been incredibly supportive. He does the cooking, and he has been game to try healthy recipes for dinner, weighs out my food, tells me how proud he is of me, the works. Really, could not have asked for better support. But he knows what this is like, what I'm doing and how it feels. Shortly before we met, he had lost 80 lbs. I was always so impressed with that, especially because I had never managed to undertake a long-lasting, successful lifestyle change.

And y'all, I'm doing it. I'm having success. I'm on the cusp of having lost 10% of my body weight. I'm noticing small changes about my body. He's noticing changes about my body. I generally feel so much better than I've felt in years. But...

As I've gotten further into my journey, I've found myself wishing that he would join me. Not because I want his body to change - I love his body exactly as it is. I will always love his body, no matter how it's configured. But I just feel so much better, and I know he would feel better, too. He has bad knees, no doubt exacerbated by his weight, which limits our activities sometimes. It used to be I didn't mind if he didn't feel up to walking around our nearest city, because lazy lardass that I was, I didn't feel like it, either. It was perfect, both of us enabling each other again. Now that I've started eating better, having more energy, and stepping up my exercise, though, he doesn't feel like going for walks with me after dinner. And while I'm on my own journey, and it's mine, not his, I would so much like his company for a walk around our neighborhood each night. Not to try to passively get him into exercise or losing weight, but because I like having someone with me to talk to while I'm walking. And he doesn't want to, because of his knees. After all the support he's given me, I feel a little guilty for wanting even more from him.

And I'll admit, I've begun wishing he would join me in this lifestyle change. He eats the healthy dinners with me, but then knocks back several snack bags of chips as a snack an hour after dinner. And, like, it bothers me more now than it did several months ago (when it didn't bother me at all). I have been telling myself that just because I am doing this doesn't mean he has to. Even if he didn't have autonomy, even if I could guilt him into joining me in eating better and exercising, if he doesn't want it for himself, it will not work. I am only succeeding because I'm driven to it by internal goals for my health. And I can be concerned about his health, but he has to be concerned for his health in order to make his own change, and my pointing out that I wish he'd join me a) would sound like I am not happy with him as he is, as if I love him only conditionally and b) is concern trolling, and that's irritating and shitty.

But I got my wish! He went for an annual checkup and the doctor told him he needed to lose weight (like he didn't already know that). He had, I think, been thinking about undertaking a change since I was in the middle of it, but the doctor visit clinched it, and this week, he began counting calories. Yay!

Now there's another thing bothering me, though. His calorie allowance is close to 2000 calories, because he's a big guy. He's been eating much less than his budget this week, though. I thought it was because he was just tinkering with his diet - it took me several weeks to get into a groove and routines with my food, to figure out what worked and what didn't. But the other night, as he was making himself a drink (bourbon and Coke Zero), I mused about how many calories bourbon has, and he said, "Don' know, don't want to know." Then he said that part of why he was eating so much lower than his budget was to leave room for his drinks in the evenings. It was obvious he didn't want to talk more about it, so I didn't say anything else.

We're different in our approaches to lifestyle change. I love data points and am meticulous about my counting, whereas he's willing to kind of wing it and not be super-precise. He's more process-driven and I like the minutiae of measuring this, measuring that, graphs and charts and whatnot. That's fine, though. We each have to find our own way, what works for us as individuals. I really do respect his autonomy and recognize that I have to walk my road, and he has to walk his.

But yesterday, I looked up the calories in bourbon. And estimated how much he's drinking each night. And realized that probably half his daily calories are devoted to his nightly drinking. He is eating probably 1000 calories a day, and drinking the other 1000. Or maybe he's eating more, but still drinking 1000. And it bothers me. It bothers me that he is restricting his food intake to leave room for alcohol. I mean, that sounds like a problem to me, ya know?

He's always been a drinker. That's fine, and never bothered me. I used to be a drinker, but haven't been so much in the last three years or so. I still drink wine occasionally, but rarely to excess - though I love alcohol, alcohol doesn't love me, and so the hangovers, heartburn, and so forth aren't worth it to me. While I have mostly quit drinking, he's kept on drinking his usual amount. And that never bothered me before. It's occurred to me before that he may be alcoholic, because he drinks 3-5 drinks daily, but he never seems drunk. He never seems hungover. He never misses work. There are never any apparent bad effects from his drinking, never any problems. And he's a grown-ass man. It's not for me to decide whether he should drink or not, or if he's drinking too much, especially since it doesn't affect me at all.

But finding out he's restricting his food so drastically (eating less than I do!) expressly to leave room for his nightly drinks really bothers me. That seems more problematic to me than his drinking ever has seemed before.

I don't know what to do. I feel guilty for wanting him to change anything at all. I love him exactly as he is, but I find myself wishing more and more that he would eat more healthily, and now this, with the drinking. It makes me feel all judgy and shitty. I subscribe to the thought that you should love your partner exactly as s/he is, because if you wait around for him/her to change, you're both going to wind up unhappy. I've never wanted to change something significant about him before, and now I do, and I don't like that. And while I could probably talk to him about it in the guises of "I'm worried about your health," I don't want to be a concern troll. It's not like he doesn't already know that reserving half your daily calories for alcohol is unhealthy. He doesn't need me to tell him. But that sort of mentality seems even more unhealthy, like worryingly unhealthy and actually disordered, than having a few bags of chips after dinner. The attitude he apparently has about drinking seems like an illness, like a pathology, like alcoholism, like something I, as a person who loves him deeply, should be willing to address with him. On the other hand, it's not like I"m a paragon of health. I've only lost a handful of pounds. I'm still fat. I smoke cigarettes. I am still doing destructive things to my body, addict things, and though they're unquestionably and objectively terrible for me, he has never told me he's concerned about me and wants me to quit smoking, lose weight, whatever. He has accepted me even with my worst flaws.

So should I just accept that he is alcoholic and leave it alone, let him do his thing while I do mine, in the same way he has not judged me or come down on me for my unhealthy behaviors? Or do I have a responsibility to talk to him out of love and caring about his health? Have any of you experienced something like this where your own journey toward health has changed how you see the people you care about? I appreciate the opportunity to vent. I suppose this is a post better meant for r/relationships, but I thought the fact that you are all in the throes of a journey like mine would lend a layer of understanding that the folks over there probably wouldn't have. Plus, I don't want to be told to Facebook up, hit the lawyer, and leave the gym.