Who is eating for two?

Let me start out by saying this: I have gained more weight than my wife during this pregnancy.

She takes great pride in that. But really, isn’t that sort of like Carrot Top celebrating beating Russell Brand in a weightlifting contest? No one is really surprised.

The reasons are two-fold. One, I love to eat. In any nine months, I am going to gain a lot of weight anyway. Why would this period of time be any different?

Two, she has gestational diabetes. She can’t eat carbs!

Believe me, I am not celebrating my wife having GD. It sucks. She has to give herself a shot each night. She has bruises all over her thigh. I couldn’t do it. I am a wimp around needles. I leave the room when she does it.

As tough as that is, her diet may be tougher. What are pregnant women supposed to do? They are supposed to gain weight. It is healthy for the baby. But if you can’t eat carbs, how do you gain weight? It is quite the dilemma. Sometimes she is in tears after eating something that barely has any carbs and then seeing her blood sugar spike to dangerous levels.

Brooke can’t eat a lot to begin with, because she has a medicine ball resting on her stomach. So she has to snack all day. But now she can eat only meat, cheese and nuts. She has had more grilled chicken salads than Rachel Ray has made in her lifetime.

She craved fruit early on. Now that is a no-no because of the sugar.

The doctors say GD is just something that happens to some women and there is not much my wife could do about it. Hopefully, all will go well. But, in the end, she might be the only pregnant woman to ever lose weight during her pregnancy.

Eating healthy can do that to you. She was never one to pass up the hors d'œuvre plate pre-pregnancy. I think she was looking forward to nine months of carbohydrate bliss. Not so fast, sister!

I, on the other hand, can eat whatever I want. And that is pretty much what I have been doing for the past 45 years. I am a male Kirstie Alley.

Look, when we were young, food was a luxury in our house, not a given. I didn’t grow up in middle class America. I was looking up at middle class. Way up. If we had a pack of hot dogs and a box of macaroni and cheese, that was dinner.

Eight hot dogs come in a pack, right? Fastest one done gets seconds. Look out Kobyashi and Joey Chestnut, here I come!

I remember in sixth grade I had to keep a food journal. It coincided around either my brother or sister’s birthday and someone had bought us a huge cake, one of those sheet cakes. I had that for breakfast every morning, along with some Kool Aid. I wasn’t smart enough to note any different in my journal, so at some point my teacher pulls me aside and asks me whether I have enough food in the house. I wised up enough to give some kind of story that saved my mom from being reported to Children’s Services. 

Occasionally, when we hit rock bottom and really needed to stretch the paycheck, mom would cook a GIGANTIC pot of either potato soup or ham and bean soup. Picture a pot just a little smaller than a dumpster. We would eat nothing more than that for two weeks. I realize now what she was doing and love her for it. She did her best to provide for her kids and she was stretching what we had. But believe me, I grew to hate soup. I wouldn’t eat it in a restaurant until I got in my 40s. And you’ll never get me to touch potato or ham and bean.

So, when I got a chance to eat, I ATE. In my teens, I had a job as a traveling salesman, selling products made by the blind. Great gig. I was a helluva salesman. I could sell a comb to Vin Diesel. I could sell a snack to LeAnn Rimes. Made over $200 a week in the summer. No taxes. As a 13-year-old!

They would pick up the crew of teenagers in the morning, drive to town a few hours away, sell all day, then drive home when it got dark. I worked 14 hours a day, six days a week. But I had money. Paid for all my school clothes and anything else I needed.

And when you can afford to eat and are on the road and are a teen-ager, what do you eat? Fast food, baby.  Breakfast, lunch, dinner. With snacks in between. Believe me, we thought we were kings. Had no idea what we were doing to our bodies. I once bet Gerry Simons I could eat a cheeseburger in one bite. Pay up, Gerry…as soon as I am able to breathe again. And don’t get in the way of the Big Mac I am having for dessert.

My eating habits have followed me throughout my life. The foods you like when you are young, you like when you are old. Macaroni and cheese. Fried potatoes. Pizza. Burgers. Burritos. Wings. Show me a sports bar where I can have a plate of wings, some potato skins and six beers to wash it down and I’ll bring a blanket and pillow so I can get a good rest in between meals.

I have never been skinny, but only in the last ten years has it become ridiculous. In my 20s, I played basketball every day and softball three times a week.  I remained active in my early 30s, but somewhere around 35, I adopted a…sedentary lifestyle. That doesn’t go well with my eating habits.

Something’s gotta change. A diet is coming. A lifestyle change is coming. That’s what they call it, right? But it ain’t easy. Drug addicts and alcoholics who hop on the wagon never have to touch the stuff again. Try that with food. You gotta eat.

My wife says that breastfeeding can make women lose weight. Another point of proof that pregnancy is tougher on dads.

We always want our kids to have life better than us, right? Sydney may not ever get the chance to eat at McDonald’s. I’ll treat her like Marv Marinovich treated his son, Todd, while trying to make him a pro quarterback. That kid went to birthday parties and had to bring his own slice of HEALTHY cake.  Now, he’s a drug addict. Go figure.

Seriously, Sydney’s plate is going to be filled with broccoli and kale and carrots and other food only Nicole Richie could love. She won’t even know what a pizza looks like.

That way, when I eat all the food she can’t finish, at least it will be HEALTHY food.