COMMENTARY
When love and weight loss clash
By Jeanne Marie Laskas
Washington Post
My husband is losing more weight on my diet than I am. This is what I don't get. I am scraping up my last spoonful of my allotted one-cup bowl of three-bean low-fat vegetarian chili, and I am thinking that this, yes, this is making me crazy.
"Well, I'm surprised how delicious this is!" he is saying, slurping a giant spoonful of his third bowl. "Aren't you surprised?"
"No."
"And see, I feel better without all that sausage I usually put in the chili I make. Don't you feel better?"
"I never believed in sausage," I say. "Sausage was never my choice."
He's eating this chili with gusto, as if he's found a new religion. That it is my religion, metaphorically, should make me feel good. For the first time in our marriage I think I've got him seeing the light of a lower-fat way of life. I should be happy. I should feel accomplished.
Instead I feel: crazy. He's lost six pounds on my diet, and I've gained one.
Not that he is, technically, even on my diet. He's on the Ice Cream Sandwich Diet. This is literally true. He has replaced his evening pint of cherry chocolate chip ice cream, which often sat atop a brownie and beneath a decorative arrangement of M&Ms, with a single ice cream sandwich. At first the deprivation was more than he could bear, but now he says he's managing it.
By contrast, there is my dessert: two calcium chews.
This was my dessert even before I started my diet. This is the difference between us. I am a healthy eater to start. He is not. Sugar and fat are easy on him. In his body they do not readily convert to blubber. People have always said to him: "Wow, you sure can eat a lot."
A few weeks ago he started noticing some extra "winter weight." This was what he called it. Then again, this is what I call it, too. Usually this time of year I go low-cal. I like to get a jump on things so that when bathing suit season comes around I don't have to hide behind the bushes bemoaning a few too many slips into the chicken wing way of life.
So, diet season. I know how to do this. Like a lot of women, I have experience. I can look at a piece of cheesecake and more or less immediately tell you the ratio of fat grams (tons) to calories (tons) to fiber (zero), and then within a millisecond compute the decision as to whether or not that thing goes in my mouth (no).
But the husband, he can't do this. He'll say: "Cheesecake, hmm. Well, I can have that, can't I?" I'll shake my head. "But it's cheese," he'll say. "Cheese is healthy, isn't it?"
It's exhausting, really.
Anyway, seeing as he is my husband, and seeing as he is the father of my children, and seeing as everyone in this house wants him to live on this earth more or less as long as possible, I don't mind that he's reaping the benefits of my low-fat vegetarian chili, or any of the fresh fruits and vegetables I am importing by the truckload into this house. Good for him. He's making a little effort and seeing some results. Good for him.
Meantime, I am making more effort and seeing no results. Right, then. OK. He's losing weight on the Ice Cream Sandwich Diet while I'm stagnating here on the Deprivation Due to Neurotically Writing Everything Down Diet. This has always worked in the past. This diet is based on the theory that if you record every single thing you put in your mouth — including every last little Pepperidge Farm Goldfish you grab from your kid's plate — you will become appalled and cut back. So this is what I do. It gets complicated. I don't, for instance, know how to calculate how much 1 percent milk I add to my various cups of coffee, and I don't know whether to count sprinkles of Parmesan cheese as actual cheese, really, since I use this as a salt substitute.
"Well, I'm satisfied!" the husband announces, having finished his, yes, fourth serving of chili. "I don't need any more. See, it's all about listening to your stomach !"
Oh, dear. He's moving into diet guru-speak?
"If you think about it," he's saying, "if this were the old me, I would have had more than sausage in this chili. I would have had gobs of sour cream and a bowl of taco chips and probably a hunk of bread and butter."
Uh-huh. And congratulations. And isn't this the oldest story in the world? The "D" student, the kid who never bothers doing homework, comes to class one day and raises his hand and says something smart and everyone stands to applaud. Look at that "D" student! He's really ... improved! Meanwhile, the hard-working "A" student with perfect attendance decides to better herself, to really push herself to be all that she can be — and, well, that's nice dear. Here's an extra pound on your hips.
"You ready for dessert?" he says, reaching for my little purple box of calcium chews (mochaccino flavor with added vitamins D and K), but not in a mocking way, which you have to admit is a gesture of something.
