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Cooking is one of my favorite ways to unwind, which probably explains why I find it so very difficult to diet. After all, chopping vegetables for a salad just isn’t as rewarding as, say, putting together individual Beef Wellingtons with a side of mashed red potatoes with garlic and Parmesan.

Oh, man, I just made myself hungry.

As far as my husband’s concerned, if it’s not red meat it’s barely worth sitting down for. He’d gladly live off PB&J sandwiches rather than actually eat chicken and fish for an entire week, and I can pretty much count on one hand the number of times he’s eaten a salad in the nine years we’ve been married.

So when I told him a while back that I planned to cut all fried food, gluten and sugar out of our diets — while bringing our fruit- and vegetable-intake up to the recommended levels — he immediately went out and stocked up on ready-made “man meals”. You know the kind: congealed, gravy-topped blobs of stuff that calls itself meat and sits nestled in a compartment that ensures it will never touch the tiny portion of limp vegetables that come along with it.

Come dinnertime, he’ll pop a couple of those into our microwave ovens then sit nibbling chips and dip while they cook.

I, meanwhile, find myself standing in the kitchen trying to come up with a way to make yet another salad somehow interesting, then eventually abandon the effort because I’m so darned hungry. While I’m nibbling on a boring green salad spritzed with a low-fat dressing, he sits down next to me and starts sucking down something claiming to be Salisbury Steak which he washes down by drinking egg nog directly out of the carton.

The man has lost nine pounds in the past two weeks eating this way. Nine pounds.

Me? I’ve gained one. Eating salads. How on earth did that happen?

But I’m not angry. Nah, I’m not even bitter. As far as I’m concerned, the more weight he loses, the smaller the grave I’ll have to dig.