Chubby Hubby or One Cream Tea Too Many

Life is one huge balancing act.  You're always up on the high wire wearing little ballet slippers on your feet and desperately trying to keep the long narrow balance pole level, aren't you?  No, you're not?  Lucky you!  I always have the high wire visual in my mind's eye. 

The immediate balance act is husband's weight.  We spent fifteen nights on a five star cruise ship.  A lot of people go on cruises for the food.  There are many overweight people on cruises.  It's hard to figure out what came first, the chicken or the egg.  Are the overweight people are on cruises because they're all about the food available twenty-four seven or are they on cruises because they are already too heavy to travel in comfort any other way?  I don't know.  All I do know for sure is that all everyone ever discusses on cruise message boards or on the ship itself is THE FOOD.  It's always about the food.  Now, anyone who knows me in the slightest knows that I am a Foodie.  Just look at this blog.  But, I am a Foodie in the conceptual and constructive sense.  I love food intellectually and creatively, not so much or to such a degree physiologically.  I love thinking about food, reading about food, experiencing it as art and making food as an exercise in creativity.  I like to eat what I cook and certainly have a palate that appreciates the subtle nuances of flavors, but I eat to live rather than live to eat.  I live to cook.  There is a distinction there.

Now that we've returned home, husband is beside himself.  He has gained eleven pounds in the six weeks were were gone!  I've gained three or four,depending on the way I stand on the scale.  I knew I had gained that weight because I weighed myself daily while in England, carefully converting the kilos on the UK scale to pounds.  I weigh myself daily at home.  Husband does the same.  But for six weeks he didn't weigh.  I'm surprised he gained so much because on the ship he did an intensive cycling/spinning class every morning while I stayed in bed.  Of course, that was only for two of the six weeks. 

 A huge difference between us though is that husband controls his weight through exercise.  I do not exercise in any formal way.  Husband has maintained 174 pounds for the past twenty years.  He plays tennis and cycles about fifty miles per week.  I weigh about five pounds more than I weighed in college over thirty years ago.  I am  5'6" and weigh 136lbs.  Evidently my body metabolises what I eat the same way it did when I was younger.  Husband's body must somehow depend more on a high calorie burn off through exercise.  I just sort of realized years ago that this weight was the  weight that was proper for my body and it has settled at that and stayed there pretty much no matter what I do or don't eat.

I really don't think that we ate a lot on the ship.  We ate incredible food, but after my first two mornings of ordering and eating Eggs Benedict for breakfast, on the third morning just thinking about all that Hollandaise sauce made my gag reflex kick in.  We often just ordered oatmeal with banana, coffee/tea and orange juice.  Lots of times for lunch we just had cheeseand crackers and fruit or soup.  Really, watching all the heavy people walking past with huge plates of food from the lunch buffet line is enough to curb one's appetite.  We stopped doing the buffet and went to the main dining lunch where we ordered off the menu rather than  be tempted by the two mile long buffet offerings.  Sample  Ship menu below.

One final thought about husband's weight gain.  We were in England for four weeks of steak and ale pie, fish and chips, treacle tarts, and cream teas.  It might have been one cream tea too many that put him over the edge....