The reluctant eater experiment begins...

The husband is now 2.5 days into his healthy eating plan. Unfortunately, I will still be stuck cooking separate meals for the two of us since I'm trying to make his meals as palatable and not as "weird" as possible. This may include things that are normally not used in strict ETL such as salt and sweeteners, which I am trying to avoid.

For the first meal (breakfast), I tried to make a delicious bowl of oatmeal. It was steel-cut oats with vanilla soy milk and maple syrup, topped with blueberries and chopped, toasted pecans. I would have loved to have eaten this.

Oh the faces he made.

"It's sooooooooo mushy!!!!!"

It was like trying to feed a child. He could only stomach about half of it before he turned it away. That was unfortunate. I thought this might be a nice step between fat-and-sodium-laden breakfast sandwiches and the funky green smoothie. Luckily, I had also made mighty muffins that morning as snacks and he ate one of those instead, despite having over-baked them and being dry.

Lunch was slightly better. I made him a whole wheat wrap consisting of fat-free refried beans (I didn't tell him they were beans -- I just told him it was a "sandwich spread"), sauteed mushrooms for the meaty texture, and chopped raw spinach (one of the few greens he eats) wrapped in a whole wheat tortilla. I don't think he loved it, but it was acceptable and he ate the whole thing.

Since I wanted to reward him by at least trying everything, I opted to make a dinner with foods he liked. He loves anything BBQ-flavored, so I found a recipe for BBQ lentils and made this. It was served with a side of cooked broccoli and crispy oven-baked potatoes. He looked at the plate I made him and said he was happy to recognize potatoes and broccoli (the other veggie he'll eat) but didn't know what to make of the lentils. He ate the potatoes and vegetables first and tentatively tried the lentils.

"Not bad," he proclaimed.

He even went back for seconds.

I would call that a win!

I'd say he did pretty well the first day, having eaten no animal products. He complained a lot, but did try everything, and didn't run to McDonald's when I went out in the afternoon (I really did fear this).

Today was worse.

Breakfast was a mighty muffin and a PB+J sandwich. Lunch was another veggie/bean wrap. But we had to go to a family BBQ that afternoon. He picked up a cheese and prosciutto appetizer that he consumed claiming he didn't know it was cheese (an unlikely story) and had one rib and a brownie. Then we had a dinner to go to at a Mexican restaurant where he had a chicken appetizer and fish as his main entree. No dairy at least, but not exactly high on the health scale.

I'm hoping today will be better. I imagine it will be hard to break those habits and not let the car gravitate toward the fast food joints, but I'm hoping sending him away with plenty of healthy options will deter that.