hopeful4, I have talked about the actual eating issue with him a only once, very delicately. I also have spoken to him about the effects, e.g. directly mentioning that the cause of his back pain is the weight he has to hold up front, etc. Every time he responds, "I don't care."
The time I talked to him about his nonstop eating was a Sunday. All morning he was binging on junk, eating at least a couple of donuts every hour. By mid afternoon, after a big lunch and then MORE junk, I couldn't watch it anymore. It was so difficult to broach the subject. It was more difficult than talking about someone's excessive drinking or drug abuse. I tiptoed around the subject and I know he understood. His feelings were hurt and I ended up crying out of frustration. It was so reminiscent of my brother and father, the former I have obviously talked to and the latter I never have. I concluded that the best way for me to deal with this was to think of myself as codependent on trying to "fix" and control his diet. It's really extremely difficult because I am of the belief that the concept of codependency can be a pathologizing of caring at times, with this case being a good example.
I've gotten better at ignoring the problem when it isn't glaring me in the face. For the most part, I'm not so overly concerned that I think about it all the time. However, when he has a dozen donuts that he eats in one day, it's impossible to ignore. Instead of stewing about it, I just now remove myself and get distracted. For now, it seems to be working!