diets and such

Speaking of gaining weight, which I was in my last entry, let's talk about my diet history.  
Cliff and I have gone for as long as two or three years eating properly and maintaining our weights.  After his open heart surgery, we were especially conscious of doing it right.  Then, little by little, we became careless.  
Oh, I still cooked the good stuff.  But we'd eat out now and then, which is something that people like us just should not do, especially not at buffets; before you know it, "now and then" became twice a week.  If we were eating out, or if we had company and I cooked fattening stuff, or if we went to someone's home for a meal, I didn't fill Cliff's plate for him; and I really didn't want to be telling him, in front of everybody, "You shouldn't have that."  
"I'm not your mother," I told him at home.  "You need to take some responsibility for what you eat."
I'd see him eat three plates of spaghetti away from home, or two pieces of cake or pie (I love to make pie, I'd whine to myself.  I never get to make pie because he shouldn't eat it.  Now here he is eating pie, and it isn't half as good as mine would have been).  
Then he'd mention he'd been hitting the snack machine at work, getting junk food.
Now remember, I'm getting plump right along with him, but I haven't had heart trouble, so that's OK.  
Marriage can be a slippery slope.  
Please realize I am not griping about Cliff.  This is a two-way street.  It will be a cold day in hell before I belly-ache about my husband to people I've never met.  I'm just trying to get you to see the psychology that is involved here.
Recently, once again, my husband said, "I can't even get up and down without difficulty; I have GOT to lose some weight."  
So I'm back to cooking 100% healthy meals, and only having pizza and McDonald's frappes when the oldest granddaughter spends one of those nights when Cliff is at work.  
Cliff's overalls had begun to get looser.  
And then they had a record month where he works, and they served a steak dinner to the employees, with all the trimmings.  
Last Saturday we went to a family reunion and fish-fry where the desserts were to die for.  
Today we'll meet with some of Cliff's cousins in Sedalia at Golden Corral.  Yep, a buffet.  
Oh, and there's another free dinner scheduled at work to celebrate all the money they are making.  Why don't they just share the money with us, and stop with the dinners?
I might as well have taken an ad in the newspaper saying, "Cliff is trying to lose weight, so would everybody please go ahead and sabotage his efforts?"  
We both know how to lose weight, and there's only one method that works for us:  calories in, calories out.  Diet and exercise.  
Over the years I've heard people raving about various fad diets, and I do see them lose weight.  Two years later, thought, they are fatter than ever.  If you don't believe it, just look at some pictures of Oprah over the years.  
Do you know anybody who ever went on the Atkins diet and actually KEPT the weight off?  Seems to me the Atkins diet makes people fatter in the long run.
I just can't help it, every time a yo-yo dieter tells me about his new, wonderful diet, I am saying to myself, "I wonder if it will last this time."    
The same is true for me and Cliff, with our sensible counting-calories diet (I write this as though I'm eating properly right now, and I'm not, except when Cliff is around).  
I think that's the one thing that causes me to stay overweight.  It has never lasted before, so why bother (one excuse is as good as another, and fat people must have excuses).  I may as well just enjoy myself.  I shall continue to try to keep temptation away from Cliff's door, though.  I would like to see him live to enjoy retirement.  
If only the universe would join with me in my efforts.  


By the way, I do know the real reason I don't try lose weight:  It's hard to deny myself, and I'm not disciplined.  I want what I want when I want it, and I want lots of it.  Those, my friends, are the cold, hard facts.