I went to visit my dad the other day for his birthday, and he had just sat down for dinner and… ok let me give you some background information on him first.
He is a tightwad. During winter, he keeps the house temperature low so that everyone freezes and during the summer everyone fries to death. I remember yelling at me for leaving on lights, driving into town for something (because it wastes gas), and for even eating too much food, especially when I was bulking. My mom and I had to go out to buy our own separate food because he would refuse to buy enough.
A little less than a year ago, he weighed 220 and was 25 - 30% BF as my estimate. He began doing insane cardio for an hour a day on top of eating probably around 1,000 or less calories a day. He was so happy to do it too because of the tightwad his is. He lost a ton of fat and muscle, dropping down to a frail 170. Despite the weight loss, he is still around 15 - 17% BF because of his stubbornness to listen to me. He’s still trying to lose weight, and is becoming obsessive.
Anyhow, back to the story. We sat down for dinner and my mother places a large bottle of water (probably 32 oz, and btw ALL he drinks is water, ever) and he begins to complain about how the bottle of water is too much weight to put on. The bottle he wanted was 6 oz. 6 ounces!
If you didn’t catch that, he drinks very little water during the day (on top of his ridiculously low cal diet) so that the water doesn’t move the scale up for a few hours. I tried to tell him that drinking more water actually increases fat burning because of its ability to flush out impurities in the body, including fat to an extent. I listed its other health qualities to him, but he refuses to drink more.
Taking in not even half a gallon of water a day from, with all liquids in the day included like milk, pop, tea, on top of a 1,000 calorie diet is not healthy. How do I get it through his head that he’s destroying his metabolism and body?
He isn’t. He gets enough water with his food. He may feel a bit better if he drinks more but the benefits of drinking tons of water has been greatly overhyped.
There’s nothing wrong with being frugal, hell if everyone did that there would a lot less demand for oil. While I have no problem sacrificing my comfort level to use less fuel (e.g. riding my bike and limiting my use of air conditioning) I draw the line at when it comes to my health. That’s why I want to slap all the vegetarians who say “don’t eat meat it’s bad for the environment!”
Anyway, it sounds like he has a very obsessive personality and there’s probably nothing you can do to change his mind. Although unless he’s very tall, 170 pounds isn’t that frail. Maybe try to get him into weightlifting, so he can see for himself how his diet affects his strength.
I just stopped attempting to help people all together 4 years ago.
Those guys with their feet in the air on the bench press? Nope.
That women ordering a Chicken Salad, but orders 3-4 saucers of Ranch Dressing? Nope.
That guy doing bicep curls in the squat rack but jerking his entire body, and not going through the entire range of motion? Nope.
I just don’t even bother. But, I gladly give advice to the best of my knowledge to people who ask/seek information; like on this forum (specifically) for example.
I say just don’t bother, if he doesn’t want to drink water, then that’s fine.
He’s 6’1". I asked him what he eats every day, and he told me it’s 1 meal a day, and it’s not even a large meal.
I can deal with frugality to a point, but his nutritional frugality is overboard. Heck, my 130 lb mother eats twice to thrice as much as he does and still maintains weight.