Every day, Chris acts more and more like a standard human being.  He has even been baking delicious holiday sugar-laden foodstuffs with me!

A few weeks ago, on a whim, we decided to make S’mores bars.  The recipe has five ingredients and is really hard to mess up.  The first step is to add one cup of graham cracker crumbs to a pre-made sugar cookie mix.  Chris started the recipe while I was in the bathroom, and I came into the kitchen to find this:

Chris was standing next to this bowl on the scale looking befuddled.  He finally asked me, “How do I weigh out one cup of graham crackers on the food scale?”

Because OF COURSE anything involving food preparation would involve the food scale.

I think he was a bit disgusted when I suggested that most people would use a one-cup measuring cup to measure one cup of graham crackers (what revolting imprecision!)…but he agreed to do it.

Measuring food the normal people way

I’m sure you thought the next thing I’d write was that we screwed up the recipe, but we did NOT!  The bars were impeccably delicious.

This was probably due to Chris’s watchful cook’s eye.

We made S’mores bars again for Thanksgiving.

Also on Thanksgiving, Chris agreed to run a charity-sponsored turkey trot with me.  To promote the charity, the theme of the turkey trot was “Hydrocephalus:  It IS brain surgery!” which was a pretty awesome theme.  I love people who have a sense of humor about hydrocephalus.  We now own hats and t-shirts with this slogan.

But I digress from the key point of this story which was that Chris ran with me!  For 3 miles! Our time was 26:30 which shocked me so much (based on Chris’s lack of running training) that we drove the course after we were done to confirm that it was really 3 miles; (it was). There was also a windchill of 11 degrees (F) that morning so perhaps that pushed his pace. He wore the following cold-weather running outfit:

No, he is not praying to not have to run; this is his favorite stretch (seriously).

Not too exciting of an outfit huh?  The night before, I did get him to try on some running tights but he rebelled against wearing them during the actual race.

That’s a finger shaking “no, no, these pants are not for me,” and unfortunately not a finger in the air proclaiming “these pants are number one!”

Sooo, if I got this right, wearing the spandex equivalent of women’s underwear on stage for a bodybuilding competition is totally cool, but full-coverage spandex pants are not?  Okay Mr. Modesty…

Actually, I believe his main objection to the running tights was that they squished his thighs uncomfortably.  He couldn’t pull them up correctly and I was mocking him as a silly man who doesn’t know how to pull up tights correctly but then I tried to do it for him and tried to find loose fabric to grab to pull the tights up his quads and there was none.  His thighs were encased in those tights like a sausages in pig intestine.  As I failed to find any bunching fabric on his quads, Chris smiled and said, “Wow, I guess my quads really are big!”  He said this as if this fact had never before been established.

So in addition to cooking S’mores bars twice over the last few weeks, we also made oreo cookie balls.

Our blender was having trouble crushing the oreos on its own so, naturally, Chris picked up the blender, while it was on and blending, and vigorously shook the thing to help it out.  The shaking was so vigorous that his arm veins stood out.

He did successfully crush all of the oreos in this manner though which makes me think cooking for the very muscular is an area that really should be better explored.  Imagine a cookbook entry:  “Should your blender get clogged, palm the lid in your over-sized, muscular hand, and violently jostle the blender using all of your strength (arm veins should be visible); your goal is for you and electricity to contribute equally and as one to the blending of the food.  For best results, shake food until muscular failure or until food is well mixed.”

After all our baking, Chris and I needed some take-out.  Chris suggested we again try the wings and Mexican food place; that’s right, THE wings and Mexican food place; there’s only one wings and Mexican food place.

This time, he ordered 14 wings and ate only his 14 wings.

And he felt much, much better afterwards this time compared to last time.  He has successfully learned the societal reintegration lesson that 14 extra large wings are okay for his stomach, but over twice that number of extra large wings are not okay.  Way to go Chris!

And that’s what we’ve been up to.

Last Saturday, I had just posted about how well Chris’s reintegration into society was going when an reintegration glitch occurred.

If you read last Saturday’s post, you know we hiked up Mount Monadnock.  Hiking up Mount Monadock made us hungry.

As Chris is now a normal human being in society who can eat a variety of foods, we decided to order hot wings from a local place specializing in “super wings and Mexican food”, a common food specialty pairing.

Chris ordered 24 hot wings.  I ordered 12.  Our order came with fries and (naturally) Mexican rice.

The vast quantity of food excited Chris.

In Cape Cod, after his first show, he ate 24 hot wings and, although he then wasn’t hungry again for the next 8 hours that day, he had felt alright.

We thought these 24 hot wings would be an innocent indulgence.

We neglected to account for the superness of the “super wings”.  Apparently “super” meant “huge”.  These were the biggest chicken wings I have ever seen.  I enjoy food and I could only eat 6 of my 12.  Non-dieting Chris, who thinks it’s a crime for a hot wing to go to waste, decided he better eat my remaining 6 along with his 24 … and some french fries.

I couldn’t believe he could eat that many, but then, he had dieted for 6 months and hiked up the mountain with me earlier so it sort of made sense.

Once he finished, he stood up, rubbed his belly, and said, “Wow, I thought I might have really overeaten for a minute there but I feel okay.”

Five minutes later, his stomach was visibly distended and he was groaning in pain.  For the next four hours, he alternated between lying in bed not moving and well, doing what you do when your stomach is visibly distended and upset.

Eventually he fell asleep and was fine the next morning.

And that was the reintegration glitch.

Dieting bodybuilders who compete and then are no longer dieting, often have trouble with the desire to binge.  I don’t feel like what Chris did was exactly binging though; he wasn’t eating everything in site.  As a man of numbers (see all posts related to his spreadsheets for proof), I think he just got hung up on the 30 wing thing without examining details of the 30 wings; he’s eaten 30 wings before so, in his mind, he should have been okay eating 30 wings this time.  His fatal flaw was neglecting the subjective information; namely, that these wings were huge, and his stomach wasn’t yet adept at handling 30 wings and some french fries after its six month imprisonment in the yogurt dungeon.

He will now know for the future.  When a wing is labeled “super,” it means “super.”

The reintegration continues.

Chris is done dieting!!!  Hooray!!!

He is currently in the shower loofah-ing off the tanner.  He, uncharacteristically, switched his plans and we did not go for wings in Amherst but instead are going to the local Texas Road House.  We are going out to dinner!!! Hooray!!!

Thus, this post is brief.

The show was excellent.  Chris did not place, but he did not expect to place.  He looked better than two weeks ago and came in the best shape possible.  He left contented and really, really thrilled that he can eat anything he wants now.

As a teaser for the upcoming show recap post (which I’ll do in the next few days), here are two pictures from today.

His back looked like this (that’s tanner mixed with sweat bunching up at the top; it’s not some skin disease, don’t worry):

And I wore a t-shirt all day with a picture of him in his posing trunks on it.

And that is all I am going to write today because I have to get to a dinner date with my fiance at a restaurant where we are both going to eat food together and we are not going to count its macros and then afterwards both of us may eat ice cream!!!  Hooray!!!!!!!!

As this second show is only about an hour’s drive from our apartment, we are leaving for the show tomorrow morning.  Chris has his bags packed and food organized and we are ready.

There are 30 professional men’s bodybuilding competitors at this show, something like 10 professional women’s bodybuilders, and a gazillion bikini and figure competitors so the show is supposed to take all day.  It’s on the UMass Amherst campus and the show promoters sent Chris an email saying that this weekend is UMass homecoming so alumni may be around popping their heads into the auditorium; that should be interesting.

Chris woke up this morning weighing 187 lbs.  It is kind of crazy that he’s still losing weight. As I’ve stated many, many times before, he looks so lean.

That’s him in a side chest pose and a farmer’s tan.

Today was a much calmer day before the show than last time.  Chris’s plan was to calmly get things ready for tomorrow and to focus on relaxing.  He was doing well staying calm until I left to run an errand and when I returned he was out-of-it and not talking much and clearly agitated and when I asked what was going on (assuming he must be getting stressed about tomorrow) he told me he was working on addressing reviewer comments to a paper he’d submitted and I told him that was the most ridiculous thing to do ever the day before a big bodybuilding show when you weigh 187 and have stated that your objective on this day is “to relax” so then he said something like, “Oh right, addressing reviewer comments on papers is stressful!  Thanks for reminding me of that!” and then he stopped addressing the reviewer comments.  He spent the rest of the day watching “Pumping Iron” and ESPN jabber, and lying flat on his back in bed, which is what he is doing at this moment.

And because it’s Friday night and it’s looking like it’ll be a me-and-my-laptop kinda night, as Chris is still lying flat on his back in bed, I decided to compose a short poem:

Twas the night before the second show

Of men cut like sculptures in galleries.

The lean, yet massive, creature was not stirring

Because he needed more calories.

Tomorrow is the big day

The day he will compete

And we cannot wait for tomorrow

Because finally, lots of food, he will eat.