A question from OS
Hi Frank, I saw you at your book signing in Los Angeles. Let me say you look great! It's not just flattering author photos (as apparently was the case with your prior book). You are the real deal in person. As someone who struggles daily with weight and compulsive overeating, I know what an incredible achievement that is.
At the book signing, you shared that when you were a food critic, you had to taste everything at the table and, accordingly, you were very disciplined and only took a bite or two of everything. I am wondering if it is actually more of a struggle for you in restaurants now that you are no longer eating professionally -- i.e., is it more of a temptation just to dig in and eat with complete and total abandon? I love good food and I love eating out, but sometimes it just doesn't feel worth it to go out because it is just too tempting to overeat. Between bread or amuse bouche, appetizer, entree, dessert and wine with dinner, I think it is pretty easy (or at least easy for me) to consume some 2,000 to 3,000 calories in one meal.
P.S. I loved the anecdote you shared about traveling on the Vatican plane.
Answer:
Thanks for coming to see me in Los Angeles: really great of you! I'm too soon now into my post-critic life to know if it's going to be harder, but you identify an aspect of post-critic restaurant eating that could indeed make it harder. I think the false construct of a few bites of various things actually did help me. So far, in restaurants, I think I might be eating a BIT more. But I'm still not PIGGING OUT the way I used to in the past, and the few-bites critic construct actually led to a lot of food, because it was a few bites of ALL FOUR appetizers ordered, ALL FOUR entrees: it wound up being a sizable meal. I think most of my critic dinners probably were over 3,000 calories, well over, especially when factoring in wine, which I love.
Even before the critic days, I came to the conclusion that anything less than about 3,500 calories a day for me --- and I should add here that I don't keep precise count, it's one of my mechanisms for not getting panicked about food in a way that leads to dramatic under- and over-consumption --- is really, really hard for me to do on a sustained basis. So I try to do the four-mile run one day, the hour and 15 minutes of hard gym time another, and get in five hard workouts a week that way. With that much exercise, I can eat, say, 4,000 calories a day and not gain much weight. I don't lose weight, and for a while now have wanted to be 5 to 10 pounds below where I am. But considering where I was in the past, I can live with this. Maintenance of where I am is just fine.
