I love my Wife. I love my food. I am a man of simple pleasures but it doesn't get much more pleasurable than that. Sadly though when my wife and I first got together I realised that she didn't have a healthy relationship with food. It was obvious to me when we went out and about that she loved her food. But it was a love that was guilt ridden at home. A meal at home could consist of a salad that would take a couple of days to eat. I never have been much good at eating like that. Once I get started I tend to have a very healthy appetite, and as much as I love eggs, I don't think I could put up with many more eggs than we had in the first few weeks we were together. It seemed early on in our new relationship my wife was eating for the sake of eating and not for any enjoyment. I could understand why, she worked hard to lose some weight before we met and had no intention of putting it back on. After years of feeling like the fat girl since her teenage years she was finally feeling like she was in a shape that she was proud of and here was I coming along trying to spoil it.

I of course was trying to do no such thing. I just love food. I love my wife. I love seeing her enjoy something as much as I do. I wanted to see her enjoy her food again without vilifying it or having a sort of Jekyll and Hyde dysfunctional relationship with it. Food for me wasn't about counting calories (granted I am flaco) but about flavour, about combinations of foods that we enjoy and crave. I wanted to see my wife enjoy food for its flavour and not worry so much about what calories it may contain. Granted though I don't just love food I love good food, as much as I like eating out I love a good home cooked meal. A meal where I know what's in it. I wanted her to introduce me to Chilean food  and the months that followed she did so. It might have taken a few weeks to finally stop eating eggs at home, but 3 years in my wife's relationship with food as grown in leaps and bounds. Her love for food, and cooking,  has come on so much that she has ambitions of kicking the day job aside in a few years and opening her own restaurant.

Even today though she will have issues with her body. There are good days and bad days and sadly in the bad days she doesn't see how far she has come form her earlier adult years and how she is no longer that girl that she still sees in the mirror. I can be impatient at times when she sees one girl looking back at her and I look to the photographs of her bigger days. She left that body long ago. Whereas there are times when my wife struggles to love her body I love my wife's curves. I would much rather watch her enjoy her food and stay the shape she is than starve herself on eggs or yoghurt and cottage cheese and watch her lose 30 lbs. I would much rather watch her ambitions fly than see them trapped inside a cocoon. I am proud to watch her grow and proud that I have in my small way nurtured it.

Happy Birthday my dear, we're both far from perfect but I'm proud of and love the journey we have taken together the last 3 years or so. Let's keep travelling, improving, growing and aging.