When your partner can eat differently from you
My favourite food in the world is my own spaghetti bolognese.
Not restaurant spaghetti bolognese. Not somebody else’s authentic version with a more impressive Italian name. Mine.
I know exactly how it tastes. I know what the kitchen smells like while it is cooking. I know how the sauce clings to the pasta and how much Parmesan belongs on top, which is naturally more than a person attempting weight loss would describe as administratively convenient.
And I hate watching my husband eat it when I have decided that I cannot.
He is a skinny, muscly rake who appears to have been issued an entirely different digestive system at birth. He can eat what he likes, when he likes and in quantities that would require me to hold an emergency meeting with myself.
He snacks. He has a sweet tooth. He has a biscuit or something similar with almost every mug of tea.
There are many mugs of tea because he is British and apparently hydration only counts when it has been boiled, steeped and accompanied by a cookie.
None of this is his fault.
That has not always stopped me resenting him for it.
The deeply unfair sight of somebody else’s plate
For years, watching him eat differently felt like being shown evidence that life had made an administrative error.
Why could he have the large portion of bolognese, then wander back into the kitchen later for something sweet, while I was measuring, calculating and wondering whether a slightly larger spoonful of sauce had destroyed the structural integrity of the week?
I knew the reasonable answer. We have different bodies. We are built differently. We do not process food in the same way.
Unfortunately, knowing something reasonable
does not prevent you from thinking
something petty.
Sometimes I would look at his plate and feel as though he had been granted permission that had been specifically withheld from me.
Then there was the flank pinching.
Every so often, he would pinch the small amount of skin at his side and announce that he had gained weight.
There was nothing to pinch.
I could have played a tiny violin, but I might have used it as a skewer.
It was ridiculous to be angry with him.
He was not eating at me. His metabolism was not a personal insult. He had not ordered the bolognese as an elaborate psychological operation.
Still, resentment does not always wait for the facts before settling into a chair.
Love does not make it feel fair
I used to think acceptance would mean no longer noticing the difference.
It does not.
I still notice that he can eat foods I have to think carefully about. I still know that banning snacks from the house would make my life easier.
It would also be unfair to him.
He should not have to live on my diet simply because I am the one having diet dramas.
Sometimes one bite helps
There have also been evenings when the food I made for him looked so irresistible that pretending I did not want it became its own exhausting performance.
Sometimes I take one small bite.
I decide before I take it that it is a taste, not the opening ceremony. I chew it slowly, properly savour it, and then move on with my own meal.
For me, that tiny permission can be easier than sitting opposite him feeling theatrically deprived of something I cooked with my own hands.
The important part is that I decide what the bite is before I take it. It is not a vague nibble that quietly applies for full dinner status. It is one taste, enjoyed on purpose, and then finished.
That does not work for everyone or every food. Sometimes one bite wakes the beast and starts negotiations. But when it works, it reminds me that I am not banned from flavour. I am simply choosing not to eat the whole portion tonight.
Support does not make it fair, but it helps
It helps enormously that my husband is supportive.
He does not nag me to eat what he is eating. He does not sulk if I make a different choice. He does not keep offering food after I have said no or act as though I am spoiling the evening by eating something else.
He notices the effort rather than treating my food decisions as an inconvenience.
That matters.
A partner cannot change the fact that you have different bodies, but they can avoid making the difference harder than it already is.
When that support is missing, I think a proper conversation is justified. Not a dramatic speech delivered while they are holding a biscuit. A calm explanation of what is difficult, which comments are unhelpful and what practical support would actually make a difference.
You do not need them to join your diet.
You do need them not to sabotage it for sport.
The less noble thoughts
Occasionally, when he is eating something particularly sugary, I have found it useful to think, briefly, that I am making the healthier choice.
I am not putting that rubbish into my body. Look at me, practically glowing with nutritional superiority.
It is not my finest internal monologue.
It also does not last, because I love him and would quite like him to be healthy too.
But right now, I do not have the bandwidth to manage two diets. He does not particularly like vegetables or plainer food, and I am already negotiating with one reluctant adult about what she should eat.
That adult is me.
For now, his choices have to belong to him. Mine have to belong to me.
I cannot make my body less complicated by resenting his for being easier.
The fantasy of meeting in the middle
I tell myself that when I reach my goal weight, we will eat the same healthy meals.
I will have a slightly higher calorie allowance than I do now. He will eat a little less extravagantly. We will meet peacefully in the middle over a balanced dinner, both delighted by the vegetables.
This future exists in the same glossy mental brochure as all the lovely outfits I am going to wear.
Perhaps it will happen. Perhaps parts of it will.
But I cannot depend on that imagined future to make tonight’s dinner easier.
His plate is not a comment on mine.
His larger portion does not mean mine is unfairly small. His biscuit does not mean I have been deprived by him. His body is not evidence that I should be able to eat exactly as he does.
I do not have to enjoy the difference.
I just have to stop treating it as a dispute between us when it is really a fact about two separate bodies.
The spaghetti bolognese still smells unfair.
I am simply no longer making him responsible for the smell.
