Cooking for One: The Case of the Junk Food Boyfriend and the Dieting Girlfriend

Aw, love. It makes you do crazy things - leap from a plane, move to Alaska, gain 10 pounds. . .

Moving in with your significant other is wonderful and trying at the same time. You have to find a way to blend your life with another person. From books to closet space (I was fair and have up half - nix that: I was a freakin' saint) to creating meals that you both can enjoy. With a little compromise, it can even become a fun puzzle. James' transition into moving in was fairly easy. He didn't have a lot of stuff and what he had fit in my apartment well.

What didn't fit into our new life together was our differing eating habits.

Yep. This is dramatization is pretty spot on.

I am not much of a cook. I mostly, prior the James moving in, grilled a skinless chicken breast on my trusty George Foreman Grill and boiled me some delicious Brussels sprouts. BOOM! Healthy dinner done! If I was lazy it was a Lean Cuisine French bread pizza. I am not fussy and can eat the same thing every day. I'm basically a food Spartan. At the time of James moving in, he had been living 7 years on his own and eating fast food for lunch and dinner with a bowl of sugary kids cereal for dessert. (As I type, there is a box of Capt'n Crunch Berries on top of our refrigerator.) His meals were high in processed goodness, strong taste and fat. A healthy dinner for James equates to a Chipotle chicken burrito - light on the sour cream.

For the past year and a half I have been trying to cook for both of us. My limited skill set and James love of carbs, cheese and variety has made it difficult. It has been extremely difficult to try and introduce quinoa and kale into meal time because will either refuse to eat it or gag in disgust as he chokes it down. I have high anxiety and a need please, so when he doesn't like what I cook, it makes me get all discombobulated.  Due to this, dinner is generally a quasi-healthy affair with emphasis on the quasi. Since the co-habitation has occurred, I have gained weight. Not all of it is due to James' influence on my eating habit (my good friend gin is also to blame), but it is a significant factor.

I have made several attempts at "making" James agree to eating healthy for the sake of our mutual need to be healthy and fit. Each time has failed in less than a week. I feel guilty for making him eat things he doesn't want to. He's not a child and I assume that he is just eating behind my back. Which is frustrating due to it making me feel that I can't cook good enough for him and that he is wasting money since I made a completely acceptable meal at home. After a year and a half, I have decided to give up.

Driving home from an indulgent family vacation I told James that going forward, I am cooking for one. I am going to tell him about the dinner I plan on making and then give him the opportunity join me or get his own dinner. If he chooses to get his own dinner, then he has to eat it at the fast food restaurant and not bring home any evidence.

The reason for not allowing him to eat at home with me is simple: I have no self control when it comes to food. James is a sweetheart, indulgent and kind. If I ask for a french fry, he will give it to me without a second thought or condescending look. That is a huge problem! Yes, a loving and generous boyfriend has a downfall, ladies! If I am there eating a dinner of a no-oil chicken and kale stir fry and he's eating a pulled pork BBQ sandwich, I will inevitably ask for a bite. I will feel deprived of delicious saucy meat and then try to compensate somehow. My crazy brain will fixate and I will be depressed no matter how good my dinner is. I will need a mouth full of saucy meat. (Yes, I realize how that sounds. . .perverts. . .)

For the non-pervs, here is basically what they were seeing in there dirty minds.

Cooking for one started tonight. I made the aforementioned stir fry and James had a microwave pizza. For lunch, he had a meat sandwich at the fast food restaurant and I had a  natural peanut butter and chocolate Shakeology at home.

I can't make James like super healthy and I am done with trying. Sometimes compromise isn't in eating the same meal, but eating meals apart. Instead of conversations over the dinner table.

 I guess we will just have to settle on yelling at the pro-wrestling matches on the TV after dinner.