Greg's Dieting Willpower is Strong Enough for Both of Us

I can't imagine going weeks upon weeks without bread of any sort, with no potatoes, no rice no PASTA!!! I should be able to though, since I've watched Greg do it for the past few weeks.

He's weird, is Greg. He's wanted to lose weight for awhile now and when we went to drop the kids off at his parents' house a few weeks ago he saw that his sister had lost weight. She told him about the Dukan diet and two days later he had bought the book. Another two days after that and he had turned his back on carbs in favor of protein, protein and more protein (alternating with days he could also eat vegetables).

So he's awesome, he's losing weight and I can't really believe he's doing so well. His also-dieting sister came to visit and when I made cranberry white chocolate scones (thanks, Kim!) she took a bite of one. Just a bite. And Greg didn't. He hasn't sampled any of the brownies, chocolate chip cookies, Boston Cream Pie, peanut butter brownies, blueberry muffins etc. I've made while he's been on this diet (I know I'm cruel, but I am not on a diet yet and I can't yet live without these things. Plus the kids and I eat them in the kitchen when Greg's not around and I bake everything in the downstairs kitchen so he doesn't smell it too much, either.).

That's another weird thing about him. He "doesn't get" why people go on a diet and then cheat. If you're going to diet, DIET, he says. If decide to do something, just do it. It's that all or nothing perspective that I respect so much about him. It is his major strength or a great contributor to many of his strengths, I think. (It's also the hardest thing to deal with in other ways, but that is another post for a never day.)

Making dinner is proving to be very time consuming these days. I'm not really the type to just switch right over to feeding the family on Greg's diet. It's heavy on dairy and fish and I'm doing low-dairy-nursing and I don't like fish. Still, I try to adapt our dinners for him. It means making most things twice.

For example on Sunday it was sweet and sour chicken. His chicken had to be marinated separately and breaded in only corn starch -- no flour, like ours was. It had to be "fried" without any oil. His sauce couldn't have regular sugar (or pineapple juice) in it and I am anti-sweetener, so the sauces had to be made separately, too.

When Greg came home in the evening and saw sauce and vegetables on the stove I could tell he needed it. He looked about dieted out and I could see the fear in his eyes that this was not a diet-friendly meal. He sat down in front of The Sound of Music with the kids and I brought him his riceless version of the dinner. He ate. He enjoyed.

Then he said something that very clearly illustrated his near desperation. He said, "If I hadn't been able to eat that dinner I would have broken my diet."

Woah.

And I have to thank him for more than loving the skimpified versions of favorite meals I'm making for him. I also seem to have dropped almost three kilos since he started his diet. As I have not been eating any more healthy than before I can only attribute it to the strength of his dieting. He does it SO hardcore that even those around him are losing weight. Now there's a diet I can handle! (the kind that requires you to be around your dieting husband. Period.)