Free The Heavy by Dara-Lynn Weiss

I headed to the supermarket and stocked up on diet-friendly foods. I bought pounds and pounds of fruit: oranges, apples, bananas, strawberries, grapes, melon. I filled the refrigerator with carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers. I chopped up vegetables and cooked them in broth to make a “free” soup. It was time-consuming. And pricey.
    I learned, for the first time in my life, what kinds of apples I liked and didn’t like. I’d eaten them infrequently and certainly never bought them, so it was interesting to learn that they offered so much variation. The green ones were too tart for me, but Bea loved them. I preferred the sweet Galas. Honeycrisps were David’s favorites, but they were hard to find where we live. Who knew that comparing apples to apples was so complicated?
    In response to some consumers’ desire for portion control, snack manufacturers have begun meting out their cookies, chips, and crackers into individually packaged 100-calorie snack packs. Pleasantly surprised to see that any one of them was a green light, suitable for Bea’s allocated morning or after-school snacks, I began to rethink my lockstep disdain for foods that come in sealed bags within cardboard boxes. In a world where Bea was going to have to hear the word
no
a lot, it dawned on me that these little doctor-sanctioned doses of nutritional vice could help keep her from feelingdeprived. I threw aside my ingrained cultural shame about feeding kids processed foods and bought a wide array: fudge-stripe cookies, chocolate-covered pretzels, Doritos, Cheez-It crackers, Honey Maid cinnamon thin crisps. Packaged foods I would have been ashamed to be seen buying previously now held a certain uneasy place in my heart, and in Bea’s diet.
    Here is how our daily meals started to evolve:
BREAKFAST
    We all had two green lights to spend, and Bea and I generally invested them in high-fiber cereal and skim milk, a mini bagel with low-fat cream cheese, or, when we had time to actually cook something, oatmeal or an egg and whole-wheat toast. David continued to eat his preferred bagel and cream cheese, cereal and skim milk, or baguette slices with light butter. He insisted on being served a larger portion, which I acceded to since he always left some of it over, with the result that he ate the same amount we did. Jeff made himself eggs and toast.
MORNING SNACK
    Bea and I would have a 100-calorie pack and a piece of fruit, she at school and me at home. David didn’t have a snack period at school, so I applied his green light to his after-school snack.
LUNCH
    An ever-evolving project, lunch for Bea tended to contain one serving of protein (salami, turkey bacon, chicken), reduced-calorie bread or a small tortilla, a piece of fruit, some raw vegetables, andsome little “extra,” be it a wedge of low-fat cheese or a few crackers.
    David ate five pigs in blankets, an orange, cooked carrots, pretzels or breadsticks, and a 90-calorie Rice Krispies Treat. Every day. He’s a creature of habit.
    I would eat a toasted light English muffin with melted nonfat cheese and a poached egg, with a slice of tomato and onion. Or a Smuckers Uncrustables peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Or a six-piece tuna sushi roll with no avocado, since the avocado jacked up the meal another traffic light.
    Given that he was eating on the go at work, some days Jeff had a salad for lunch, and other days he ate a large restaurant meal. He claimed that either this diet would work for him or it wouldn’t, but given that we ate so many meals apart, he felt it was impractical for me to manage his choices too much.
AFTERNOON SNACK
    David usually had a slice of pizza or a frozen fruit bar. For Bea, I innovated green-light s’mores, using two chocolate graham crackers, a marshmallow, and our toaster-oven broiler. They were delicious and she ate them almost every day. Plus fruit.
DINNER
    Dinner was a challenge. More so than ever before, I became a short-order cook to suit everyone’s needs. I