For the past 35 years, it has always gone this way: I struggle with losing weight, with controlling my rather glutinous appetite. I diet, I exercise, I eat more fruit than a spider monkey, and I am a fiend when it comes to portion control. And lo and behold, I lose weight. It comes off slowly, but it comes off, and as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, over the past year I’ve lost 50 pounds.
But whenever I diet, there is someone else who loses weight right along with me, and that someone is my husband, Clif. On my current diet, Clif has lost weight with a vengeance, and when he recently weighed himself, he observed that his weight is the lowest that it’s been in a long, long time.
Now, in terms of absolutes, I am pleased for him. While Clif has never been hugely overweight, the way I have been, he has carried, from time to time, an extra 10 or 15 pounds that he’d rather not have, and it is good for him to lose this weight.
However, I must admit that it irritates me, just a tiny, teensy bit—all right, maybe a little more—that he loses this weight without the struggle I go through when I lose weight. With him, it just seems to come off.
“I’ve been careful,” he protests when I confront him with this unfair aspect of life.
“Yeah, right,” I reply. “You carefully go back for seconds almost every night at supper.”
“I don’t take that much.” Now there is a decided whine to his voice.
“And what about that bowl of peanuts you get every night?”
“It’s a small bowl. And besides, it’s better than having chips.”
I can’t argue with this logic. Nevertheless, it is galling to watch him eat more than I do and still lose weight. I suppose I have to lump the fact that men just tend to have faster metabolisms than women do. But, still.
At this point, it is time to stop my own whining and to put in a plug for the way we eat, which is essentially a plant-based Mediterranean diet with a bit of fish once or twice a week. We rarely have meat, and when we do, it is usually mixed in with the meal rather than served as the main event. We use lots of olive oil.
Just as important, we go biking almost every night and weekend, when the weather and the schedule allow.
And voilà! Off comes the weight. More easily for some us than for others, but off it comes, just the same, which is a very good thing.
Notes From the Hinterland 
Good job Dad! Though the same is true for Michael and it’s really not fair that guys have it so easy . . .
Well done, Laurie! Gordon, thin Gordon, is a cruncher. At 10:00 in the evening, just as I’m thinking I’m hungry, maybe I should go to bed so I don’t eat, he sits down and starts crunching: crackers, sesame sticks, nuts, cookies. Or I’ll want to show him something on facebook, and he’ll stand behind me, crunching! And I say, “I’ll show you this, but you have to stop crunching in my ear.”
Susan, that is too funny! Clif is also a cruncher, and like Gordon, night is the crunching time. I’d like to be crunching as well, but I resist. Shannon, you are so right!