Day 4

Last night I was up super late making stuff. Boiled a few eggs, made some salad dressing. Packed up some lettuce, a radish, and some cucumber into a container. Salad dressing was made with vinegar, spicy brown mustard, green onions, lemon juice, salt/pepper, and a drop of Stevia. He actually seemed to like it.

I sent him off today with an apple, the salad and stuff, the dressing, and two hard boiled eggs. He also ate some strawberries. I can already see that eggs are going to be a regular staple, as they're a lot easier than trying to heat up a piece of chicken (which can, I suppose, be eaten cold, but I'm not a fan of cold chicken and won't inflict it on him).

The total as of now is at around 275 calories for the day. I'm more than a little creeped out. It's starting to show, he's starting to look a little down and out. By the time he has dinner, it'll be just past 500 for the day. Since he's able to go up to 800, he'll have some wiggle room for another apple, some cottage cheese, ect.

Dinner for him is a lean sirloin steak (very small though :P) and some steamed asparagus. However, this is a pretty standard dinner, size-wise, for me, so I know I'll be good (I'm going to eat a piece of spicy sausage tonight).

Still a bit surreal, I think. We bought some "miracle noodles" tonight. What's weird about that is that it's the kind of stuff I always tried to get him to eat when I was eating super healthy, and he wasn't very keen on it.

I suppose I understand that, though. When I finally realized that I wanted to lose weight, that motivation, that drive, only came to me when I was ready to make the change. For me, that was when my cholesterol reached over 250 and I realized that I was on the crazy train to killing myself the long way. What followed was a lot of tracking my food, making better choices, exercising, and lifting weights. It changed my life, but it started, when it came down to it, in me.

As a result, though, I know how to cook healthy, and I'm not afraid to experiment. I have a very limited set of foods to work with, which is annoying yet challenging at the same time. I think he feels the annoyance more than me, as I am pretty strict about saying "You can't have that." I feel like a jerk sometimes, but I think the best way to be supportive is to help him succeed. Sometimes that's going to mean I'm a jerk.

I think one of the next purchases is going to be a steamer basket thingie for the microwave. That way, I can send him off with fresh veggies, and he can steam them and eat them. Otherwise, I have to send everything raw (good for some stuff, not for others), or cook it and pack it, which means it'll get cold and mushy. In which case, he'll treat it like our cats treat an apple. He might lick it, but then he'll end up backing away slowly and giving me a look that says, "You have to be KIDDING me!"

I know it's odd to suddenly blog here about all this. This blog started out, though, at it's core, about how I wanted to do something else. How I wanted to have options, and how I wanted to change my life. It seems a fitting place for this. Who knows, perhaps there are other spouses out there who are also finding themselves in the same support role that I am.