Table of Contents
For Brooke, Sasha, & Romy
Eat or Die...
Introduction
There is no love sincerer than the love of food.
George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
Im haunted by mirrors.
Mirrors are like Kryptonite to a fat personas are cameras. Ive gained so much weight over the past few years, the last thing I want to do is see myself in a mirror or a photograph. I know how I look. I surely dont need my wife posting yet another jowly picture of me on Facebook for her 657 friends to enjoy. Ah, Facebook... how I loathe you.
Over the past four or five years, Ive become a doughy, antisocial, anxiety-riddled, gray-haired monster. Ive had the gray hair since college. Its the least of my concerns. Worrying about gray hair when your weights soaring out of control is like mowing your lawn while your house is on fire. Its just silly.
Im thirty-six years old as I write this Introduction, but I look much older. Weight does that to you. I feel old, too. Not crazy-old-man-yelling-at-birds-oldbut old. Im too young to feel this way.
Thus, the Fatty Project is born. Simply put, Im attempting to lose fifty pounds over the next fifty weeks. For those of you with math skills similar to mine, thats a pound a week2.28 ounces a day. Can I lose fifty pounds? Who knows. But I feel pretty confident about losing a few ounces a day.
The Fatty Project is a last-ditch attempt to salvage my body from the throes of obesity. As a food lover and passionate cook, Im dreading it. As a father and husband, I know its well past time for me to get my act together. Why now? My doctor has just informed me that Im on a collision course with death. My wife, Brooke, is starting to panic. I can feel her fading away. Shes too worried about my health to pretend that my fervent relationship with food is okay anymore. Enough is enough.
The truth of the matter is, food is more important to me than just about anything else. Project or not, Im not sure I want that to change. Now, before folks go waving their Tony Robbins CDs at me and start ranting about the wonders of changing who you are and all that jazzlet me stop you before you lose a Birkenstock. I know I can change. I get it. Im changing, Im changing. Yes, anyone can changeeven me. Whoop-di-do.
Right now, I simply want to lose enough weight so I dont drop dead. Everything else is of secondary importance. Im not starting this project to look good with my shirt off. I stopped believing I could feel comfortable at the beach a long time agonever have, never will. When it comes down to it, for me food trumps having a great bodyor even a pretty good one.
But as much as I love food, I love my wife and two daughters more... I think. I want to be healthy so I can watch my girls grow up. I want to grow old with my wife. I want to be there for all of them as long as possible.
That said, I have no intention of growing old by eating nothing but whole grains and steamed broccoli. I simply refuse. Food makes me happy. Were a package deal. I live to eat. I love to eat at restaurants. I love to cook. I love the social component of eating. To me, food is cultureat least its my culture. I cant be happy without being a social eater. And, if I could, I wouldnt want to be. I need food in my social life, more than I ever thought.
I grew up thinking that getting healthy or going on a diet was an all-or-nothing proposition. My familys diets were always urgent. Diet or else. I never grew up hearing anyone say that they were going on a manageable, realistic diet. I carried that mind-set with me into adult-hood. Thus, Ive spent much of the last decade breaking epic diets. Each new diet was going to be the one that changed everything, the one to make up for the previous six during which I was weak and undisciplined. Every diet Ive ever started had so much pressure on it to be a smash hit, it was doomed to fail.
Every time Ive started a diet, its been with the same thought in mindlose every ounce of fat on my bodylook like I did back in high schoolshock my friends and family with my stick-to-itivenesshit the beach without wanting to wear a burkaget into my skinny jeans. Yes, men have skinny jeans.
This all-or-nothing mind-set has had a ruinous effect on meboth as an eater and a dieter. I cant just have one or two scoops of ice cream. Not me. I eat the entire pint. A little hasnt been good enough for quite some time. Just one slice of pizza? Yeah, right. Forgo the appetizer tonight? What are you, a Commie? Its as if Im having an affair, but my mistress isnt that redhead from Mad Men, its two bowls of ice cream and a wedge of cold pizza. I havent always been like thisso obsessed with eating. Why now? What happened?
My goal this year is to figure that out. I want to relearn how to eat. I want to continue to cook and eat interesting food, but in normal, or even small, portions. There are worse things than small portions of delicious foodlike huge portions of steamed asparagus and skinless poached chicken breast. I think I can live by these rulesliterally and figuratively.
For years, Ive been rewarding myself with food. But until now, I never really asked myself what I was rewarding myself for. If Ive been healthy for a few days, or a few weeks, I can feel the pressure mounting in my mind... its time for a reward. If Ive been good, Tubby needs a treat. Conversely, if Ive had a bad day, if Ive already gone off my latest diet, why not give in to the little voice in my head convincing me that its already too late? Go ahead... have a little something... have a lot of something .. eat, Bubbe, eat.
Before I dive too deep into my story, I should let you know a little bit about me. I grew up the middle of five children in Rockville, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC, in a typical suburban neighborhood called Flower Valley. My father is a doctor and my mother was a teacher but stayed at home with us until we were in high school. Our backyard had a pool, a garden, and a giant weeping willow tree whose wispy branches would scrape against the window in the bedroom I shared with my brother Phil, scaring us silly throughout our childhood. To this day, every time I see a weeping willow, I feel the urge to crawl into bed with my brother or wet my pants.
I was a lifer at a local Quaker school, Sidwell Friends School, meaning that I attended from kindergarten all the way through the twelfth grade. It was there that I fell in love with books, art, drama, and storytelling. I also learned how to sit in a silent Quaker meeting for forty-five minutes without passing gas. Other than turning me into a foaming-at-the-mouth pacifist, the biggest impact the school had on me was introducing me to my wife.
Brooke and I have known each other for most of our lives. She is two years younger than me. I was an old, salty-dog first grader by the time she arrived in kindergarten. We dated a bit in high school, but we werent exactly high school sweethearts. To the contrary, we both dated other people for most of high school and college. Yet, somehow, we always came back to each other.
Brooke can see the beauty in everyone. She has such a big heart that it just slays me. I barely like anyone. And, while I play the role of distracted, antisocial grizzly bear to rave reviews, shes taught me how to live in the present and enjoy the blessings I have. (Im a work in progress.) Shes a psychotherapist now in private practice here in Bethesda, Maryland. She spent years working in public clinics with folks who otherwise couldnt afford therapy. During all those years when I was out there trying to make a buck, she was in the community trying to make peoples lives better.
