Posting two today–one to make up for missing Saturday, and one for today’s letter, F.

I’m fairly ambivalent about eating and food. When The Little Woman asks me in the morning what I want for dinner, or worse, when she asks me on Thursday what I want to eat over the weekend, I usually roll my eyes and shrug, the same way I do when my mother asks me in October what I’m planning to do for Christmas. I don’t know, and frankly I don’t care.

Do you live to Eat or Eat to live? I fall into the latter category, usually. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy a fine meal or appreciate a lovingly prepared feast, but overall, food does not excite me the way it does some people in my life.

I’m married to a foodie. When we met, I weighed about 20 pounds less than I do now. Of course in the intervening 14 years I‘ve grown older and my metabolism has slowed considerably, so part of the change in weight, I’m sure, has to do with aging. But still. I now weigh about 20 pounds less than I did four years ago, and that has mostly to do with exercise and the fact that The Little Woman is not cooking for me daily any more. If my math is correct, that makes for a 40-pound weight gain in about 10 years. Not insignificant.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to blame TLW for my weight issues. I’m not. She did not hold me at gunpoint and force the fork into my hand. I simply got caught up in her enthusiasm for food, and eating, and the celebrations and socializing we did around food. And, when someone puts as much love and thought and delight into preparing a meal as she does, it is damn difficult to apply any sort of meaningful self-restraint or portion control.

And then TLW went to culinary school and spent a lot of time practicing. I was a very willing participant in her epicurean experiments. We had people over often. We had big parties and lots of food (and drink).  We ate and ate and ate. One weekend, Mother was visiting and she opened the refrigerator and exclaimed, “No wonder you girls are chubby! There are seven pints of heavy cream in here!”

No wonder indeed.

I was working away from home during the week in those days, and before I left on Monday mornings, TLW packed me grocery bags full of amazing food to get me through the week. I was the envy of everyone in the lunchroom where I worked. At lunchtime, I’d pull out perfectly grilled pork chops (with the grill marks) and garlic mashed potatoes made with heavy cream and lots of butter while my colleagues dined on frozen NutriSystem or Healthy Choice entrees.

And suddenly I weighed close to 200 pounds (at 5’ 6” tall) and even my fat pants were tight. How had I, someone who had never really had a weight issue, gotten to this place? Something had to change.