The Love Diet

I told my husband the other day that my stress level had gone down to about zero since I married him, which I thought was a big bonus. And then I thought to myself, and I actually told my husband, too, because I can tell him anything, that one of the big reasons my stress had decreased was because I had given up dieting once I met him. Because he loved me no matter what!

Since we met in January, we have enjoyed introducing each other to our favorite restaurants and feeding each other our favorite things and just being Foodies together indiscriminately. We ate Key Lime cheesecake at The Cheesecake Factory, New Orleans Beignets (with three sauces!) at the Grand Lux, and sushi at every sushi place in town. We chowed down on Chinese food in Des Moines, Thai food in Houston, Italian food in Hot Springs, Indian food in Dallas, and barbecued beef in Texarkana. We had popcorn and Cokes at every movie, and sometimes even movie dogs with the works, too. We indulged in the ice cream of our choice with our home movies--Mango, Passion Fruit, Chocolate, and Dulce de Leche. And we didn't eat that ice cream out of a bowl, oh no, we ate it right out of the CARTON--our OWN carton.

I watched the pounds pack on almost like a scientist conducting an experiment, and I observed my condition in a bemused way, as if I were gaining weight purposefully for a big movie role like what's-her-name did for Bridget Jones (not that she ever actually got FAT) or Robert DeNiro for Raging Bull. I would pull on a pair of pants and laugh at how they no longer fit, ha ha ha, and throw them in the stack of Clothes That No Longer Fit, and grab something else from the other side of my closet, which is stocked fairly well with three different sizes of clothes, due to all of the afore-mentioned dieting. I would giggle when my husband played with my "love handles" and tell him there was more of me to love. I would consciously be aware of how most parts of my body felt like they were encased in a thick cake-layer frosting of lard. I laughed and felt loved.

And then I weighed myself. O. M. G. And, OK, this is the truth, I have never weighed this much before in my LIFE. Well, unless you count the time I had my third child. I did weigh this much after I had her. But I think pregnancy is a much better excuse than being in love. Although, I have to say that the being in love part prevents me from wanting to practically kill myself like I did back when I weighed this much about 19 years ago.

I did tell hubby that I'm going on a diet. He chuckled, amused at me. "That's OK," he said. "Go ahead and lose some weight. I can put it right back on you."

Ha! Let the dieting begin. Man, I feel stressed already.

Our Story

A friend asked me how we met. "What's your story?" she wondered. Here it is.

We met on an LDS singles' website two and a half years ago when he sent me an email telling me he was a mess and why. I responded that he did indeed sound like a mess, but promised that things could only get better. He lived in Texas, but was five hours north of me, and over the next two years we were pretty good penpals, but never met. I think we tried to meet in Dallas a couple of times and one or the other of us would have work conflicts and it never worked out. I just figured he wasn't very interested in me.

Finally, in January, we figured out that we would both be in the SLC airport at the same time while I was bringing my son to a film festival there and he was leaving after dropping his off at the MTC. We arranged to meet at the top of the escalator, a location that he now has a picture of on his cell phone. We talked for thirty minutes, went our separate ways, and that was that. I didn't hear much from him for a while, and once again figured that, well, he wasn't very interested in me.

Little did I know that he went home and made plans to marry me. We finally had another date at the beginning of April, after which he asked if it was too soon to propose. I told him it was not only too soon but to please quit being so nice to me because I wasn't used to that kind of treatment and it was turning me off. But by the end of the month, after keeping a list of everything we had in common that had reached #103, I was completely accustomed to being treated well and we were engaged. We realized that we loved Star Trek, dragon rolls, book clubs, museums, astronomy, blue cheese, our families, cool new stuff, and each other. So much so that we don't want to live without each other very much longer!