Journal Entries for Week 36
Into the Mouths of Babes
I wrote a piece in the Times's Week in Review section on Sunday that was prompted in part by some of the questions I've received from interviewers and readers of "Born Round." Here's a link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/weekinreview/30bruni.html?em.
The article wonders: what can and should parents do to spare their children from eating/weight problems/obsessions down the line, as adults?
Could my parents have done things differently? Would it have made a difference?
I ponder that implicitly in "Born Round," and think there's probably a lot of grist for the mill in the book. But I don't raise the issue explicitly, and I'm not sure what to say in regard to my own case, my own story. I certainly don't sit around stewing and fuming that Mom had me join her on the Atkins diet when I was 8.
For one thing, it was me, at that age, already, hankering for a solution to my appetite and to the taunts of "fat boy" from other kids. For another, my mother's steadfast love for me and all the positive contributions she made to my life far, far outnumber a possible mistake when it came to regulating my appetite.
And finally, as the Times pieces suggests, this is a complicated, complicated issue. I hope to return to it, journalistically, in the future.
Pesto at Midnight: Almost
Old habits die hard, and big hungers never really fade. So there I was the other night, at the stove, putting fusilli in boiling water. It was around midnight: way past the hour when I should be making myself a dish of pasta. But I'd become fixated on the notion that I was owed the dinner I'd skipped, even though I really hadn't skipped dinner. And what little genuine hunger I felt had bloomed, in my mind, to a much more intense hunger, and the idea of eating became an imperative to eat and . . .
For a longtime overeater, I don't think that psychology and that sequence/mechanism/whatever go away entirely.
To backtrack: I hadn't exercised on the day in question -- I hadn't had time -- and I resolved to have only a light dinner, maybe the salmon sushi/sashimi plate at a neighborhood place with very reasonable prices.
Then a friend asked me over for wine, and she put out a tray with olives, almonds, hummus, pretzels, etc., and I picked and picked, in an absent-minded fashion, until I'd definitely had MORE than a dinner's worth of calories. That's that, I thought. Dinner.
But two hours later, at home, I got pulled into this feeling of having deprived myself, and persuaded myself to boil some pasta to go with the homemade pesto in the refrigerator.
The difference between me 10 years ago and today was that I pulled back at the last minute. Maybe 45 seconds after pouring the fusilli into the water, I snapped to, turned the burner off, dumped out the water and the pasta (luckily, dried pasta is inexpensive) and went to bed. I wasn't really, truly, meaningfully hungry. I was just dissatisfied with the night's intake. I reminded myself of that. I drilled that into my head.
And I reminded myself, too, that snacking instead of dining is the precursor to one of those stove-at-midnight moments. If you don't let yourself feel shortchanged, you won't react like someone who's been shortchanged. It's one of many reasons to have a real meal.
A Reader with Similar Roots, and a Similar Struggle
After too much time away from this blog and updated Journal posts, I share this recent reaction to the book from a reader. Her Italian-American upbringing echoes my own in so many ways, and was fun for me to read, as I hope it will be for you, too.
More important, her eventual approach to weight-management -- portion control, plus using vigorous exercise as a down payment on culinary indulgence --- is one that has at times worked for me, and that I heartily endorse.
Without further ado, here's what the reader wrote, saying I was free to share it with you:
"First, the parts about your parents and family history really made me laugh
at times because there are so many similarities. My parents and family are also from the region of Puglia. They grew up in Molfetta and moved to northern NJ in the 70s. Food was, and still is, a big part of our lives, the cornerstone of any holiday, celebration, even a short, impromptu visit! Not only is there an abundance, but it's all so delicious. My grandmother has tried to teach me how to make strascinati, but I could never really get the technique down.
"We also make fritelle on Christmas Eve. They're these little pockets of deep fried dough filled with mozzarella and tomato or this awesome onion-mortadella filling. It sounds very similar to the frits you referred to. They're awesome. It's become quite a production with my family because all of my cousins, my sister and I help. We gather early in the day at either my mom's house or my aunt's house (they take turns hosting duties each year) and we get a little assembly line going. My aunt also has a basement kitchen where all of the cooking is done. The one upstairs is simply for basic assembly and some plating. It's also next to the sitting area that has the "good" couches and furniture from Italy (you know with the claws, floral fabric, crazy carvings,etc) we were never allowed to sit on or play near when we were little.
"I have also struggled with my weight. Since I was little, I was always chubby. I played sports and was pretty active, but I also ate a lot. Through my high school and college years I tried to lose some weight here and there. I even gave the South Beach diet a try before the lack of carbs got to me. But I never saw myself as overweight. I saw other girls watching what they ate, etc but I simply concluded I was different, could eat whatever I want and still look good, I was just curvy and proud of it!
"On my 25th birthday, everything seemed to change. It was probably building up before then - an unflattering picture or two would get to me and I would resolve to eat better for at least the next few days. But all of a sudden I just didn't like what I saw in the mirror anymore. Nothing fit right, my face was round, and my butt was too big. I woke early up on a following Saturday and decided to start walking. That following week I joined Sparkpeople, a free site to help lose weight and stay fit.
"Walking on the weekends quickly turned into running and working out on a regular basis. Soon the pounds started coming off and I completed some local 5ks. A little over 2 years later I've lost about 50 lbs and 5 dress sizes and have kept it off for over a year now. I love to work out and challenge myself. I work out with a personal trainer and she really helps me stay accountable. I'm also training for a half-marathon in November.
"When I first started my journey to lose weight, I made a deal with myself. I'm not going to give up the foods I love, instead I'm just going to try to take some control over what I ate and how much of it I ate. This part was so important to me since food has been such a big part of my life. I love cheese and sweets too much to just turn my back on it. I basically still eat what I want, but in moderation. But in order to do so, I know that I have to give 100 (sometimes 110) percent when I work out. Some days, I plan out my long runs to end close to a local bakery for one of their delicious scones and a coffee.
"That's basically my story."
More Interesting Reader Response
Although I get at least one message like this a week, and sometimes as many as three, I sometimes don't have explicit permission from the message's author to post it, or I'm sometimes too tied up in other work obligations to do so. Luckily, this following message's author made clear that I could share her story, and it came to me on a week when I had a second to transfer that story to this public space.
I make it available to you for the same reason she made it available to me, and for the same reason other such messages are here: in other people's stories of their struggles with eating, weight and body image, we find some comfort, some encouragement to keep working to make ourselves better and a community of sorts.
"Dear Mr. Bruni,
Thanks to a full-time job, small freelance positions, and a deep commitment to a long distance relationship, I hadn’t read a book since the summer of 2009—a choice I didn’t necessarily make, but rather it just happened. A former English major, this is the longest dry spell I’ve ever been through. For some reason, no one ever tells you that 23 is intense and chaotic, though I’ve found hard work and tremendous tenacity yields moderately rewarding experiences. At any rate, I picked up my first two books in over a year over this past Labor Day weekend—two beautiful memoirs about coming of age with some sort of mental debilitation. They were John Elder Robison’s Look me in the Eye and your own exploration of adolescence, family, friends, ingestion, and mental maturation.
"I wanted to genuinely thank you, Mr. Bruni. To be honest, I came to my own conclusions about my relationship with food just recently, without any actual help from you or your book; but your writing—the elegant prose and quirky anecdotes that recall struggles similar to my own served as much needed confirmation that I’m not alone in this over-indulgent world. Yes, you can suffer from an eating disorder of the mind and test your own “food science” and obscure theories without formally not eating; yes, you can feel an extreme disjoint between your brain and your stomach; and yes, although you never become unaware of a partially great, albeit partially awkward, relationship with food, you can return to a sense of normalcy. All of this, as you write, takes both care and candor. But you know this already.
"Like you, I come from a family who appreciated food long before Dunkin Donuts became ultra calorie-cognizant. I like to think that my only true affiliation with my Jewish heritage is my appreciation for holiday meals equally for the company and for the cuisine. My greatest memories? Fall evenings when my dad returned home from work at his small-town chocolate store just five minutes from the house, promptly at 6:00, when my mom would serve my (much) older brothers and I golden chicken cutlets—meagerly blotted of their oils—and a hefty bowl of bow-tie pasta with Canadian bacon (bad Jews, I know) and pine nuts. Winters when my mom figured out how to continue to barbeque succulent sirloins from the butcher shop of my favorite restaurant, Bryant & Cooper—my preference over Peter Lugers for the simplicity of the salt-and-pepper seasoning and their exclusion of a cloying butter glaze. Even I had my limits. Butter on beef was one of them.
"During my middle school years I truly believed that the higher the calorie count, the better, if only to piss off my home-economics teacher who practically fainted when we were told to bring in the box of our typical breakfast to learn about nutrition. She scorned me for using two packs of frosting atop a single cinnamon roll, though I wasn’t sure what was so horrible about 700 calories a serving at the time. I was a growing girl! Plus (and I’ll give you a preemptive warning and request that you don’t slap me for this) I was skinny. A twig of a girl growing up, thanks to my family’s speedy metabolism.
"And we were lucky—because, while other indulgences didn’t trail far behind, chocolate was my weakness, of which we had an endless supply at all times. My dad is the 3rd generation of a 4th generation chocolate store, my brothers representing the latter era. So sugar was just part of my blood. Nut patties, dollops of fresh and homemade caramel, radioactively green marzipan enveloped in both milk and dark chocolate—I was impartial to what or how much I ate. For a while, it didn’t matter either.
"It wasn’t until I hit the years in which women inevitably grow out instead of up that I recognized the possibilities of weight gain. The outcome wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. While I’m not sure I have the capacity to quite balloon out, I could look great, or I could veer to the mushy side. College, with the delicious offerings of Ann Arbor, like craft beer, deep fried breakfast potatoes, post-football burritos, and, oh yeah, late night chicken ziti rolls to cure the drunk munchies, I certainly got mushy. The typical freshman 15, no doubt. The next four years would be a struggle to figure out how to find balance, and living abroad in Prague for four months, frequenting fried cheese sandwiches and pork knuckle, didn’t help.
"Ten pounds chunkier than healthy and twenty pounds beyond what I ideally wanted to be, I embarked on a journey I wasn’t prepared for. It lasted from the summer of my Junior year until I graduated, and it happened during a time that also entailed a terrible break up from a boyfriend/best friend, the loss of a close friend’s mom to breast cancer, and the daunting task of graduating and finding a job in this economically depressed city. I was sent into a whirlwind of consumption contemplations, because weight was something I needed to control. I should add that my mom and brother have ulcerative colitis, the Eastern European stomach affiliation which causes severe weight loss. Was it wrong to compare myself with the sickly-thin?
"Without boring you with too much detail and sounding like every other girl striving for a svelte figure, I can sum it up with the message I tried to relay in a personal essay I wrote for my English class during Senior year. I was unhappy with myself. The ultimate representation of myself is and always will be my body, which I had a rapidly deteriorating relationship with. But ultimately, I wasn’t starving for food—I was starving for stability.
"When life spirals out of control, I think that the most insightful of individuals are able to at some point find a clearing—a space in time when you can look down upon yourself and reflect. In so many ways, running was just this. It was, I like to think, a mix of endorphins and the chance to be alone with myself in nature, in the city, with music, in silence. It was my time, not anyone else’s. Beginning with a mile or two at first, I didn’t see any changes. One affliction women suffer is that it takes an enormous effort to drop five pounds, let alone ten or fifteen, whereas a guy can switch to Bud Light and run for the bus and drop a pant size. You saw it yourself—you could fluctuate somewhat easily if you put your mind to it. I started with coming up with my own comparable ideas about food, and how to eat it in order to lose weight. I tried things (though I hate the word things, I’m using it to refer to much of what you talked about) I’m ashamed of, though it didn’t last long. I now run between 3-6 miles, 5 days a week whether the air is humid or frozen. I do yoga. It’s my time, and it proved worth it in the end. I found mental and physical stability in just an hour a day.
"Like you conclude, there are relapses. There are self-doubts. There are good days, and then there are not-so-good days. To me, the strongest person can simply recognize this and admit to both the positive and negative, the good and the bad. It’s about awareness more than anything, which is why I have permanently iked on my hand as a reminder the Yiddish words ich bin, which translates to “I am.” You can fill in the blank from there in an effort to be mindful of every decision in life. You can be happy, tired, fat, skinny, purple, if that’s what you choose. Just be it, and be it really well.
"Your book, your writing, and your story unequivocally helped me not to close a chapter of my life but to reflect on it enormously."
