Free The Heavy by Dara-Lynn Weiss Page A

needed to make two full and separate meals every night. I would carefully research and craft a diet-friendly entrée for Bea, her father, and me, then throw together a pasta-based dish with some protein and vegetables for David. David might dine on meatballs and spaghetti, chicken cutletswith broccoli, or pasta and Brussels sprouts. The rest of us would enjoy something like chicken tikka masala, turkey meatloaf, or Korean barbecue beef in lettuce wraps.
    I know it was a failure of my parenting not to work harder to force David to eat what everyone else was eating, but my duty was to provide all members of the family with a meal they liked that met their nutritional needs. Getting David to accept a wider variety of foods was a nice goal, but there’s no way around the reality that it took a definite backseat to the more urgent requirement of helping Bea get healthy.
    I was exhausted by the arguments over food that came at me from all sides, so I tried to preempt at least some of them by not serving David anything that was “too spicy” (read: contained any seasoning other than salt) or in some other way didn’t meet the narrow preferences of his palate. It was easier to cook a second dinner. And he always ate a healthful, well-balanced meal. It was just usually a different one than the rest of us had. I told myself that once Bea’s eating was squared away, my focus could and would shift to addressing David’s pickiness.
    I’m no great chef, but I did sort of enjoy finding recipes that Bea and her dad would like and that could be served in a reasonable portion size but still come in under 300 calories. As if food wasn’t taking up enough of my attention when I was at home, it was also the focus of my work hours, as I reviewed that unedited cooking show footage. I was often so taken with the recipe being prepared on-screen that I’d be inspired to make it myself. And I noticed that while the chefs would sometimes talk about how healthful the dishes were, they were never specifically trying to make them low-calorie. So I started doing it myself—scaling down portion sizes and substituting ingredients so that these meals would be appropriate for a family with an overweight child.
    We tried some new recipes, with varying levels of success. Some things did not benefit much calorically from being made “healthful,” and the trade-off in taste was not worthwhile. The much-anticipated brownie recipe from the nutrition doctor’s book was a huge disappointment. It required pitted dates, which not only were nearly impossible to find but also gave the finished product the disturbing mouth-feel of what I imagine it must be like to eat roaches. So what if they were only one green light each? So were two Entenmann’s Little Bites brownies, which are far more yummy, or a small homemade brownie baked with the old dieter’s substitute of unsweetened applesauce for the oil. So why bother with the pitted dates?
    I also didn’t see the benefit of making chicken nuggets breaded in instant mashed potato flakes, as the nutrition doctor’s recipe dictated, rather than, say, panko or bread crumbs. But some new things we tried were winners. The black bean burger was a revelation, with complex flavor from cumin and cilantro and a satisfying chew. The turkey sloppy Joes I adapted from an online recipe, inspired by something in the doctor’s book, became a staple that I cooked nearly every week.
    Most of Bea’s dinners were about half the size of what they had been. And a difficult question came up that first official week on the program—one that would recur more times during the coming months. As I placed food in front of the children at any meal, Bea would regard the contents of her plate and compare it with David’s, instantly realizing he was getting twice what she was.
    “That’s not fair!” she cried. “Why does Dave get [insert inequitable food distribution allegation here]?” He would get two pieces of chicken and she would