Irreconcilable Lowcarb Differences

I'm gradually coming to believe that eating lowcarb isn't remotely difficult, in general. Dealing with the people around you, related to your eating lowcarb, is another story.

There's the endless advice, even from people overweight--as long as someone is thinner than you are, they feel that bestows expertise. People who want you to eat dessert so they'll feel better doing so. People who want to call lowcarbing a 'fad' and lecture you about how 'too much protein hurts you!' 'cause they saw it on TV. Not like they have any clue how much is needed, is too much, is recommended, etc. Between absurd rudeness and social stupidity, it's amazing I've gotten through eating in restaurants and other homes for holidays as often as I have.

The only small favor that weighing nearly 500lbs has done me is that unlike being 30-100lbs overweight, at least once I gained enough, I no longer had men constantly coming on to me with the memorable line that they'd like to "work it off me" -- snort! There's romance. Or the ones who assured me up front they like 'that kind of woman'. Oh where's my bucket. Please.


But of all the BS I've gotten socially over the last 15 years of being really severely obese, I don't think anything has been as difficult to deal with as the reaction (or lack of it) to my finding a way of eating that would work and going on the plan to make it happen.

My husband is responsible for the food, since I work and whatever he makes in his sometimes computer work, he doesn't contribute to the family (an issue I am suddenly about to have An Issue With. Is this my new energy, from eating lowcarb, showing its head?). He was perfectly happy to arrange McDonald's or frozen taquitos and once in awhile cook something. He has made a few lowcarb dinners at my request. But otherwise, there is always some reason that he is too busy to cook, or that he can't arrange for food at any other times, or that he does the shopping but he can't keep meat in the house, or I buy it and stick it in the chest freezer in the garage and he promptly piles so much junk on top of it it can't be opened.

I pay for a maid to come in every week and make the entire house spotless, especially the kitchen. I wash, rinse and put in the drainer or put away every dish I use for anything. So he is the only one cooking stuff. And he only cooks maybe 3x a week, usually when nagged, often not ready till 9pm. Yet the kitchen is always a disaster, I mean terrible. Simply wanting to make a protein shake requires courage and a strong stomach (and flying-bug-killer) to enter. So now I am lowcarb... and I need to make food for myself. I go into the kitchen and it's revolting. He says I am 'easily grossed out'. Yes. I am.

F***ing communism. I swear I sometimes think growing up under it (he escaped from Czech when the iron curtain was in place) created some kind of welfare mentality for life.

Lowcarb has made me realize something. My lack of energy, my despair at how exhausting it is to drag this whale-sized body around, my fear of not being able to do things I need to do -- from getting something off a high shelf (try standing on a chair at my weight!) to just shopping or taking out the trash -- it has profoundly impacted my decisions in life.

I have decided that now that lowcarb has given me the energy to care, the energy to be indignant, I'm going to do something about it. I am taking it back. It is MY HOUSE. As of now the kitchen is MINE. I finally have the energy to do some cooking and cleaning and what I lack, my ten year old daughter is going to learn to help with so we can pull it off.

I feel like he has contributed to the weight gain I had over the last 1.5 years, to the chronic asthma from foods he knows I can't eat without gluten-response but makes for me anyway because it's easier to make that than worry about it. I wouldn't make him food he responded that way to. He just doesn't care. I was on low-carb when he arrived, I'd lost 70lbs and felt great, but with his insisting on filling the house and the kid and dinners with carb-junk, going out a lot so I was always trying to pick-around stuff with too many carbs, gradually sent my carb count up until cravings overwhelmed me and one night I went off the wagon, and only climbed back on 56 lbs to re-lose later. He doesn't spend any time with the kid, either, doesn't even talk to her unless he's griping, and that's the only reason I agreed he could come back here. I am fed up.

I have decided that I am going to cook food that is lowcarb. And he and the daughter -- both of whom are overweight! -- are going to eat it, or they can starve. I pay the rent and buy the food. I care what they like, but my surviving to care is more important right now, in my opinion, than their right to live on junkfood. If he wants to have other food he can buy it with his own money.

I can't believe that after five years separated (and nearly five years of 'just roommates' prior) he comes back and hasn't paid a dime of rent in 16 months, didn't even buy his kid a birthday present, doesn't help with anything. He waters the garden, he feeds the cats, and once in a while he cooks. Is this worth putting up with him so his kid can have a dad? Who lives here but totally ignores her anyway, just messes up the house and leeches my money? I don't think so.

I'm not so scared anymore. I don't feel afraid that the 'challenge' of merely going to the store to buy food will overwhelm me. Thanks to lowcarb and immediate weight loss, I feel like I am capable of what is needed. Not as much as I want, but I'm working on that. Definitely enough.

My parents think that since I am fat, I should be thankful that 'any man will have me'. Have me! Ha! Like I'm not the one who makes the living. I think my parents' psychology about fat has sort of influenced me in a way I don't like. I am taking THAT back too. I deserve a healthy home situation, not dysfunction, because I'm a good person. Weight has nothing to do with it. What other people think means jack to me. I deserve better.

I am sure that in retrospect he will think that lowcarb was the downfall of our situation. I can hear it now. "She went on this diet and then just totally wigged out!"

I call it a low-carb side-effect: finally, I have just enough new energy to insist on what I want from life. Hmmmn. I'd say that's one of the good side effects, wouldn't you.
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