I can’t be trusted with food. Since the day I was born, I have fought (mostly on the losing side) a battle with bulge. When I was growing up in an Eastern European immigrant low-income household, the two staples we always had plenty of were bread and potatoes. Every meal generally had one or both of these starches. One of my lunch favorites in grade school was mashed potato sandwiches, which involved putting several tablespoons of cold leftover mashed potatoes between 2 slices of tasty Wonder Bread with a little gravy. Like a hot roast beef sandwich, except cold and without the beef. Lots of calories and lots of carbohydrates.
Food was a focus of many of my childhood memories. In the 1950s I would frequently accompany my mother to the local public assistance office to stand in line to receive our family allotment of free food for families in need. The 2 commodities most popular in our household were the rectangular blocks of cheese and the large silver can of peanut butter. These foods, commonly referred to as “surplus cheese” and “surplus peanut butter” were the precursors to generic foods that were introduced decades later. The flavor and texture of these items were passable, although not of the quality of items available at the local Giant Eagle grocery. The cheese was an odd semi-fluorescent orange color and had no aroma at all. The peanut butter was watery, smooth, and a slightly darker shade of brown than the more popular brands. There was no evidence of peanuts to be found. These two items became the other staples of my lunch diet, applied in large quantities to the ubiquitous Wonder Bread.
My diet as a youth was not too far beyond modern nutritional standards. However, I had several faults in my early eating habits that caused my weight to exceed the acceptable healthy range. I hated most vegetables. Potatoes, beans (especially lima beans), corn and carrots were acceptable, and virtually any other vegetable (especially if they were green) were to be avoided at all cost. The foods I did not like, I refused to eat, and there were so many foods I did not like. For the foods I did like, I had no willpower to limit my consumption. My mother made the best brownies, cakes and pies in the world. And I could make a meal consisting solely of her baked goods. I was known to eat 6 brownies or more at one sitting. Even if I wasn’t particularly hungry, I would eat them so that my sister couldn’t eat them and deprive me from eating them later when I might be hungry.
In the 50′s and 60′s, boys of my shape were called “husky” and that became the common term to describe a size or style of boys clothing. Husky clothes were shirts and pants for boys shaped like barrels. Even so, it was difficult to find pants that fit properly. Because I was not only very fat but also short, I needed pants with a large waist size but short inseam, so I needed the pants shortened considerably to fit my height. Clothes never fit properly or looked good on “husky” boys, and we would never take our shirts off or wear shorts because of the embarrassment of our physique, which tended to scare small children. As a child, I did not develop the awareness that my eating habits had any relationship to my weight. I only knew that when I was hungry, I ate. And I ate until I was no longer hungry. Which meant I ate frequently and I ate a lot. Pop psychology would theorize that I put on the pounds as a defensive or self-protection measure to withstand real or perceived threats. I belive I was fat because I liked to eat a lot of food that was fattening and didn’t give a damn about my appearance.
As an adult, my bad eating habits and limited list of acceptable foods continued, but it became clear that mass quantities of Ho-Ho’s, Ding Dongs, Twinkies, Snowballs, Moon Pies and other sugar saturated snacks were to be avoided if I intended to avoid looking like Jabba the Hutt and have any chance of a social life. I became more aware of my choice of foods and made an effort to stay active in an attempt to develop and maintain a less rotund shape. With varying levels of success, I have struggled to maintain a reasonable weight all my life. On many occasions I have resorted to dieting.
There are some fortunate bastards among us that have never had to diet in their lives. They can merrily indulge in whatever food they like in outrageous quantities and never add an ounce. These people are to be despised, as they are mutants and aren’t really human. I am not so lucky. I have had success and failure with many forms of dieting. The simple truth of dieting is that most diets will work if you do exactly what they tell you to do for the rest of your life. Sounds easy, right? Not that simple. Anyone can temporarily suspend the gluttony for a few months, but the will power necessary to turn a strict diet into an new permanent life style is rare, and is usually only found in Buddhist monks or prisoners in a Turkish penal colony.
Years ago I ballooned up to 227 lbs, which is an enormous amount of weight to carry when you are 5 feet 8 inches tall. In desperation and fear of having a fatal heart attack from the exertion of merely getting in and out of my car, I enrolled in Weight Watchers. This program literally saved my life as I lost 55 pounds in 16 months. It was not easy. I had to maintain a daily journal of everything I put into my mouth, down to every stick of chewing gum. I was given an allotment of “points” that I was allowed to eat each day, with all foods assigned a point value for a defined portion of that food. Once one consumed all their allowable points, one was to only consume water for the rest of the day, or go to bed immediately to avoid the temptation of the Oreos calling to you from the cupboard. Portion control was critical to success. This was very difficult for someone like me who considered a standard sized pie as containing only two pieces. I also had to attend weekly Weight Watcher “weigh ins” and meetings. Generally there were about 50 overweight women of varying ages and one or two men, including me, at these 2 hour meetings. Most of the women who attended these meetings were incredibly angry and depressed. They had more problems than any 6 soap opera characters you could name–her husband was screwing around with the local Avon lady, her trailer caught fire, her son ran off to become a rodeo clown, she swallowed her pierced-tongue stud, psoriasis had infected her entire bowling team. Sitting through these weekly meetings was a soul-sucking experience that made the actual diet relatively enjoyable in comparison. I was motivated to reach my goal weight as soon as possible in order to avoid the meetings and the menagerie of miscreants that attended them. But the diet worked and I kept my weight down for several years, in spite ot the painful process I had to endure to slim down.
As I aged and it became more difficult to maintain a healthy weight, I sought out a new diet. I had no intention of returning to Weight Watchers because of the constant journals of all food consumed and the Jerry Springer Show atmosphere of the weekly meetings. There were myriad types of diets that were promoted as the newest and best way to lose weight, many of which limited your food intake to only food that you bought from the company that developed the diet. Other diets focused on eating a narrow range of foods, such as cabbage soup, bananas, protein shakes or Styrofoam. As I stated earlier, most of these diets probably produce actual weight loss if you follow their directions forever. But I was looking for something a little more “normal” . I found the South Beach diet, which basically severely limits your intake of carbohydrates . I had success with South Beach the first time I tried it and have returned to it whenever I fell off the doughnut wagon. It was preferable to other diets because I didn’t have to write down all my food and I did not need to attend meetings with Neanderthals. It was difficult to go without all my old carbo friends like pizza, and pastries and even potatoes- the holy Eucharist of my childhood. But for several years, I maintained my weight fairly well and when I binged out on burritos, brownies or burgers and fries, I returned to the old reliable South Beach Diet and dropped the needed weight.
Then about 2 years ago as I began another round of the South Beach Diet, I experienced more success than I planned and much faster than I anticipated. I lost 40 lbs in 6 weeks. After 2 trips to the local emergency room and a month in the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, the good Mayo doctors stabilized my condition and informed me that I had celiac disease and put me on a very regimented diet to regain my health and prevent further destruction of my small intestine. The hospital dietitian visited me in the hospital and gave me an overview of my condition and the foods that I could no longer eat, and the few foods that were permitted in this new and very restrictive gluten free diet. She gave me a booklet of about 15 pages, of which 14 pages listed foods I could not eat. The remaining page identified foods that were allowable. Missing from the group of allowable foods were virtually everything I enjoy eating, with the exception of potatoes and chocolate. Thank the gods for small favors. The celiac diet made all other diets I had previously tried seem trivial and very liberal. The gluten free diet was unforgiving– don’t eat anything containing gluten or you will destroy your small intestine, probably develop cancer and die. Unfortunately gluten is hidden in most of the foods I like because it is in wheat, flour, oats, malt, barley, most soups, gravy, beer, pastries, pizza, pasta, etc, etc etc. I envisioned the rest of my life subsisting on a diet of vegetables that I hated to eat, fish and organic cardboard. It was a depressing number of months once I returned home from the hospital and reorganized the house to eliminate all gluten-bearing substances (virtually everything in our pantry). But I adapted, and found that the variety of gluten free foods had grown significantly in the past few years. I found brownies, bread, pizza, cookies, cereals, pasta, pie, cake, etc. None of it as tasty as the good old wheat flour variety, but pleasant enough.
Now, 2 years later, I have successfully adapted to a gluten free life style. But as the gluten-free food selection has increased, I have started to re-gain the weight that I rapidly lost to the illness two years ado. So now its back to the South Beach Diet. Pile on the protein. Hold the mashed potato sandwiches.
