On occasion, and this was such an unsettling surprise to me, my polite refusal of the aforementioned yummies was even sometimes met with down right anger, as if my attempts to curb my calories was an affront to the natural order. Some friends got their feelings hurt when I refused to eat some sweet delight. Several colleagues rolled their eyes when I passed on the pastry. Even my husband lost patience with me in the beginning. I can remember a particular shopping trip to our favorite store, Walmart.

We were having a cookout that weekend and were looking for hot dogs and frozen burgers to make our lives a little easier. While I searched the freezer section of the store for a box of turkey burgers that didn't look completely tasteless, he picked up box after box of all-beef burgers for my approval.

"Nope. 20 grams of fat each." "Uh-uh. 30 grams of fat" "No, sweetie. Those have 27 grams of fat a serving." "Honey, are you kidding? These are ridiculous! 45 grams of fat? For a burger? Please! After several attempts, I told him, "Babe, just let me get a box of turkey burgers and you can get whatever you want."

That's when my sweet, loving, patient, considerate husband lost it. Right in the middle of Walmart, no less. "Just never mind!" he said, throwing the offending box of angus burgers back into the freezer. "This is freakin ridiculous! I don't know why in the hell you just can't eat what I eat. We don't have the damn money to buy different food for the two of us!"

Needless to say, we left without said burgers. He was not a happy camper. I didn't know if he was irritated about the money or it was something else. He was right, though. This healthy eating thing was a lot more expensive than eating fast food and microwave meals. It didn't help that the recession and fuel costs have driven the price of food up already. Our grocery budget had gone from under $100 a week to around $125 from economy issues alone. Now, with this experiment of mine, I was adding anywhere from $25-$50 a week to our grocery bill. This was really a hardship, too, considering my husband's new job paid considerably less than his last.

Anyway, it took awhile, but as the pounds started to fall off my incredibly large ass--truly; it was enormous. It was scared me in a parking garage one night! Thought someone was creeping up behind me when really my behind was creeping up my back--he started to come around. That's not to say he doesn't still get irritated when I make him a baked potato with all the trimmings and I make myself a sweet potato with spray butter, but now he just sighs and eats his food.