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blissfully unaware
that I was bending over backward to keep our home tidy and pristine. Meanwhile,
I was slowly losing my mind in my effort to be the unobtrusive girlfriend while
still maintaining an admittedly strictly clean home. Eventually, I threw a huge
tantrum about the issue, shocking Chuck and relieving months of my own pent-up
frustration.
    Once I was past my blowup, I calmly explained to Chuck my inordinately
high standards of home cleanliness. Since then, he’d tried – he really
had – to be better about picking up after himself and adhering to my
stringent home rules. (No wine in carpeted rooms, no outside shoes inside, and
the glass shower door must – at all costs – be squeegeed after each
and every shower. I mean, have you seen what hard water stains can do to a
glass shower door?)
    In any case, Chuck tolerated my neat-freakedness, and I tolerated the
precise opposite from then on out. After that, we basked in the newness of
living together, buying furniture and hanging photos on the walls. We embarked
on a culinary enterprise in which we spent many evenings composing recipes that
were nothing if not high calorie, high carb, high fat, high sugar, or all of
the above.
    It was during this time of food-indulgence that I started my blog, Nicky Eats . Once I’d been talked into it
by Chuck, I reasoned it was a worthwhile hobby for a person like me. I enjoyed
long trips to the grocery store, slowly perusing the aisles for things I’d
never tried. I enjoyed concocting new combinations of flavors, and, I daresay,
I was good at it. Sometimes I fell back on tried-and-true recipes that
everyone’s mom has been making the same way for decades, but most often I’d
take a traditional recipe and try to improve upon it.
    Like baked macaroni and cheese with roasted red peppers and Italian bread
crumbs. Bacon added to any recipe was an automatic improvement. Cilantro added
as a topper on a spicy soup had a magical effect I was addicted to for one
entire rain-soaked winter.
    A year after I started working at the law firm, Chuck and I were still
happily living together and my weight had crept just over the two-hundred pound
mark on the scale. I’d stepped on it in morbid curiosity and, horrified,
promised myself it wouldn’t go any higher. But I didn’t do anything differently
to ensure such a thing wouldn’t happen, and Chuck seemed not to notice at all.
    Romantically, Chuck and I still interested each other, but our encounters
under the sheets were becoming less and less frequent. We never spoke of it,
and on the few occasions I let myself think about it, I blamed myself and my
increasingly chubby body. It wasn’t just that I didn’t look the way I used to;
I didn’t want to be touched or looked at, looking the way I did. When we did
have sex, I went to great lengths to ensure the bedroom was as dimly lit as
possible – ideally, pitch dark. If I caught a glimpse of my own nude
body, my zeal for the act would fade. Chuck protested all of my switching-off
of lights, initially, but gave up after several well-lit evenings ended in
tears on my end and frustration on his.
    Our love life continued in this fashion for three more years after I
first tipped the scale at two hundred pounds.
    Chuck had never suggested I lose weight, even though I’d baited and
switched the poor man. He probably thought he was hooking up with a hot college
student and instead he’d ended up with an obese legal secretary who couldn’t be
bothered to wear makeup most days and refused to wear high heels.
    Now and then I’d complain about my weight and Chuck would good-naturedly
volunteer to take walks with me or suggest we cut out ice cream in the
evenings. These attempts lasted a few days before fizzling out.
    Chuck himself had gained weight in the six years we’d been together, but
nowhere near the damage I’d done to myself.
    He was pudgy but not overly-so. It’s one of the most irritating
double-standards in American society, but