DH is on a diet

[chowmama]

To be fair, he does need to lose some serious weight - diabetes, high blood pressure, trouble walking. So, I'm totally on board with this and hope he'll stay with it. However, it does mean I have to change how I do things.

It's one of those programs that have you eating 2 main meals and 4 prepackaged snacks every day. They sell the snacks and the dieter cooks the meals. The problem is that he doesn't cook, ever, and the timing of the meals conflicts with my work schedule. So we're already tweaking it past what the program 'allows'. The daily food is going to have to be every 3 hours, not every 2.5, or I won't be cooking for him. Even so, some evenings the 2nd main meal will be delayed till I can get home and get it ready. I have to be the one to organize all this, since he won't. If he gets frustrated, bored or feels too isolated, he'll just quit. Not good for his health and did I mention this shit is expensive? To the point where if I retired and stayed home to run the program, we couldn't afford the program.

The meals are healthy enough, but could get boring fast. A sizeable chunk-o-meat - I think their emphasis on protein might be excessive, but Americans have always worried about not getting enough protein. Healthier societies than ours go more towards the Mediterranean or Asian diet, with meat used more as a side event. But, ok. Big chunk-o-meat. This is accompanied by 1.5 to 2 cups of non-starchy veg. Everything baked or simmered, minimum fat. The only refined carbs seem to be in the processed packaged snacks.

Anyway, I now have to develop recipes to keep it tasty. Mostly, he'll use a frozen dinner mid-day when I'm not home - I found one brand that comes close to requirements, even if there's not enough veg. But I'm working on coming up with better stuff to make. Plain meat and veg simmered or baked with no interest is a recipe for cheating. If I get close enough to the specifications, I'm going to call it good, as long as it tastes like something you'd want to eat if you weren't on a diet.

My DIL gave me a spiralizer once and I've never used it. Sometime this week. I'll cook tomatoes, garlic, and onions into a sauce and cook zucchini 'pasta' in it. (I hope I can get the thing to work.). There might be a whiff of olive oil involved, but that's just another tweak. A large amount of fresh basil will be involved; half at the beginning and half to just warm up in it at the end. As far as I'm concerned, that's just as much a veg as spinach or lettuce. The chunk-o-meat (a baked chicken breast leftover from today) will be heated in it as well. That should work for one meal's requirement. I just hope it's also good - if it isn't, that idea will hit the bricks so fast...

Stuffed red bell peppers - I can use lean ground beef in it, but rice or breadcrumbs is a non-starter. I have blanched cabbage shreds in the freezer, so I'll mince them up to rice-size. That won't bind, so it's gonna need some egg, which will mean a reduction in the beef amount. Probably minced green onions, too. Bake the stuffed peppers, covered, in a dish with drained pico de gallo to cook into a sauce.

I can do a stuffed eggplant with veg and ground meat and might not have to add eggs. Broiled salmon with a little berbere spice sprinkled over it. Poached eggs on a bed of cooked spinach, or shrimp the same way. Kebabs. Lots of veggies.

We've been on this a couple days and he's already had to get an emergency breakfast bar at 3AM as his glucose alarm has gone off a couple of times. So, the PM insulin is getting dropped a little. He can nap during the day, but I have to stay awake at work. They kind of insist on that.

I'm going in on this stating at the front that I'm not the Food Police. I'm buying and cooking, but what he does with it is up to him. The only place where I will go to the wall is insisting he follow the rules about drinking enough water. For six months, this is going to be pretty short on calories and ketosis is nothing to be messed with. I was in a show once where one of the leads had crash-dieted to get ready and starved her way into a gruesome kidney infection. She had kids, so when she said that childbirth was less painful, I believed her. She rehearsed for the first week sitting in the front row next to the director, just supplying her lines and making notes about everything else. She was practically in a fetal position. We're not going there.