Goodness me, this has been a busy thread today.
Once all the immediate emergency situation is over, here's my suggestion.
Instead of asking your wife to exercise, ask her to do something with you with love.
Tell her you love her very much and want to take long walks with her, holding her hand. Get a babysitter and pack a picnic lunch or dinner for yourselves and walk to (or at) a neighborhood park. Get a 2 person bicycle or, if you have kids, a bigger one that will hold the kids, too. A quadricycle. Go riding together, hold hands, listen and talk (in that order on the last 2!).
In other words, find a way for her to get exercise without it being "exercise". Make it full of love and fun and intimacy.
It's worth a try.
Thank you and everyone all the posts, too numerous to reply to each one individually, as we have been swamped with taking care of my wife, and me taking care of the kids while she is in the hospital.
I'm sitting down for a few precious moments to see the latest, and it's very interesting, to say the least.
First of all, many people must have serious marriage issues to assume that I control or abuse my wife or am unkind to her. They seem to skip over the part that over the 15 years, I have paid for gym memberships, expensive personal training lessons, all to encourage my wife to enjoy physical activity. I have bought and sold many bikes, roller blades, tennis racquets, wii dance floor mat / games, even bought dogs for my wife and I to take out to go walking. Everything ultimate results in her becoming uninterested to go out for physical activity, not because of depression or some underlying unseen issue, but because she loses interest in physical activity and finds it easier to put off physical activity to "later, tomorrow, I promise". It is like dealing with a child at times.
I'm using the words lazy and unmotivated because they 100% accurately describe what's going on here. I never call her lazy or unmotivated, but there must be very nasty people who read these words and think I'm abusing my wife and I'm a very bad husband. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have been 100% supportive of my wife our entire marriage.
For those who think I care about my wife's appearance, they seem to completely miss the boat. I tell my wife she will always be beautiful to me no matter how she looks, but I care greatly about her health and her ability to see our kids grow up, marry, and have children of their own. Health is the only thing I care about. As long as my wife is healthy I'm happy. Who doesn't want their kids and life partners to be healthy? Somehow it seems like people resent me for wishing my wife to be healthy and think I'm a control freak. I don't get it at all.
It's interesting to see some nasty posts from people who choose to interpret my posts as an abusive husband who only cares about myself, not my wife. I suspect those people are projecting their own nasty personalities onto other people, and accuse others of what they are probably doing in real life.
I have become depressed myself over the (lack of) health of my wife. The only thing that has helped me deal with this is by going to the gym and exercising. It's amazing how exercise can be one of the best cures for depression. When I am feeling severely down and depressed, an hour long gym session clears my head and I feel like I'm in the clouds. So ironically, for those who may be depressed, the best medicine is to go work the body and get some blood flowing.
I'll say many of the posts are very kind and helpful, and I greatly appreciate that. Some of the posts are very hurtful and outright nasty. To those people, I will give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they have serious issues of their own that they are projecting onto others. I pray they get some healing and counseling on their own to work their issues and baggage out.