Don't Try to Sugar Coat It

The Harsh Reality of Numbers

I like words. I've been accused by my husband of "using big words" or "using too many small words together" to confuse him. (He didn't know what rubenesque meant and didn't appreciate the humor/irony of Ruby N. Esque.)

He prefers numbers. They are constant, they are predictable, they always turn out the same.

Of course, the down side of those numbers is that they don't give. Especially in the case of points.

Right now I'm getting the hairy eyeball because I had a few points leftover towards the end of the day and he didn't. While I ate manacotti and washed it down with Mt. Dew (again) he was stuck chomping on celery and carrots. We have some salad that's ready to eat, but he didn't want to eat it without some kind of dressing. I happen to be his point-recording secretary so not only do I have the upper hand when it comes to knowing how close I am to crossing the line, but I also have to bear the bad news of what value each food is and how close it's bringing him to the end of his daily allowance.

We differ on one point, however. I incorporate the "extra" points into my daily limit so I don't suffer under the delusion of "oh, hey, I'll take them out of the 'extra' at the end of the week," and then on Sunday decide I need to kill myself because I don't have any points left. It makes the effect of eating or overeating feel more immediate for me to have to account for the "extra" on a daily basis.

My husband doesn't want this done. He doesn't want to eat all of his daily allottment, let alone tap into his "extra" reserve. He doesn't want to use the extra. At all. No. No extra. Not at all. We went around and around about this tonight. NO EXTRA. Got it boss.

So tonight while I was completing my secretarial duties (the point ones, not the naughty secretary ones) he was hanging over my shoulder to see what each food was worth and how he was doing in terms of his daily total. We looked up manacotti before we ate (11 points), but I didn't take into account the meat (oops, meat, add 4 points). He ate 2 manacotti, which according to whatever screwed up source I was looking at was worth 15 points.
Put that together with the garlic bread and his dinner was about 27 points. I don't know if he was thinking that he would have lots of extra points because he was 14 points under yesterday, but he was pretty peeved when we figured out that he was at the limit.

I think we both have the same sort of eating styles, slightly overeating at meals (or massively overeating if it's a super-favorite food), and then grazing until the next mealtime. He, however, drinks a lot of 0-point coffee while I opt for sugary badness. I think he likes a bigger variety of food than I do (um, pickels are gross) and he is also exposed to different foods at his work (pizza, leftover lunch/banquet foods, 'bake off' desserts, etc.). His family members are all food-loving and comfort-eaters. I would call myself more of a bored-eater. Is that the same as a comfort-eater? I don't know. I don't consider myself a food lover. I have a couple of foods I like, but my overeating is really tied more to availability than it is to sheer love of food.

So, I'm not going to pat myself on the big ole back for being only 1 point over for the week, despite indulging in regular Mt. Dew or having a ridiculously over-pointed gyro (man that gyro was effing good). Oh, sweet delicious sinful regular Mt. Dew....
I'm hoping I'll do a little bit better next week, more water, less soda, and diet soda instead of regular Mt. Dew. Mmmm Mt. Dew.
We'll see.