No.
(I get that search a lot. Just thought I'd save everyone some time.)
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(I get that search a lot. Just thought I'd save everyone some time.)
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Progress
After last Thursday's Weight Watchers meeting, I brought home my weight charts going back to January 2002, when I started. I've been feeling a little less than motivated lately and thought a graphic representation of my downs and ups would be in order. Here they are, one hundred and ninety-fourish weigh-ins on a graph. Click to enlarge, if that's what you're into.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Weight Watchers works.
(Dear Weight Watchers. Please pay me for loving you. Thanks.)
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I've said it before and I'll say it again. Weight Watchers works.
(Dear Weight Watchers. Please pay me for loving you. Thanks.)
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Seasoned
I was washing our cast-iron skillet tonight and noted the surface, which is a little rough. Not sandpaper rough, but it’s not super-smooth. My parents’ two cast-iron skillets—I think they got them for their wedding fifty years ago—have interior surfaces that are the envy of baby’s cheeks, so smooth they are. If you enlarged the cooking surface of one of these pans ten thousand times so that it was 2.36 miles across, the largest imperfection would be the size of a grain of sand. That’s smooth, brother.
Years of cooking for a spouse and five children and uncountable relatives and friends will do that to a pan. Scraping hard steel spatulas across the comparatively softer iron wears slowly away at the dark metal. Mountains of eggs. Continents of tomatoes, zucchini, hamburgers, grilled cheese. How many turns of wrist, how many flips of pancake, to burnish the metal until it becomes that featureless iron plain?
At Weight Watchers we talk about how easy it is to equate food with love and acceptance and how easy it is to make food the shortcut to feeling loved and accepted. And how that’s not the best way to go about things. But look at the evidence of the skillet. How many hours, how many accumulated years spent before that hunk of metal, scraping, scraping, scraping it smooth in order to provide for loved ones? How is that texture not a message of love?
Our pan is new, just four years old or so. The tiny jags in its surface make the steel spatula ring like an old Western Bell telephone when I cook. It’s already incrementally smoother than when I bought it. But I’m in no rush. It’s not about always being able to cook on a perfectly smooth surface. It’s about making the surface smooth.
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Years of cooking for a spouse and five children and uncountable relatives and friends will do that to a pan. Scraping hard steel spatulas across the comparatively softer iron wears slowly away at the dark metal. Mountains of eggs. Continents of tomatoes, zucchini, hamburgers, grilled cheese. How many turns of wrist, how many flips of pancake, to burnish the metal until it becomes that featureless iron plain?
At Weight Watchers we talk about how easy it is to equate food with love and acceptance and how easy it is to make food the shortcut to feeling loved and accepted. And how that’s not the best way to go about things. But look at the evidence of the skillet. How many hours, how many accumulated years spent before that hunk of metal, scraping, scraping, scraping it smooth in order to provide for loved ones? How is that texture not a message of love?
Our pan is new, just four years old or so. The tiny jags in its surface make the steel spatula ring like an old Western Bell telephone when I cook. It’s already incrementally smoother than when I bought it. But I’m in no rush. It’s not about always being able to cook on a perfectly smooth surface. It’s about making the surface smooth.
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Once a year
“It’s only once a year,” we say as we tuck in following a moment of poorly feigned reluctance. And it’s true: for those controlling their weight, as for everyone else, the obscene feast that is modern Thanksgiving happens only once annually. Once annually. So why not?
Other once-annual feast days you might observe:
I don’t know about you, but I’m going out for a run. I’ve got some once-a-year chowing down to do later.
To all of you, a healthy Thanksgiving, and my gratitude.
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Other once-annual feast days you might observe:
New Year’s Day
Your bonus arrives
Superbowl
Valentine’s Day
St. Patrick’s Day
Your significant other’s birthday
Your best friend’s birthday
Passover
Your birthday
Easter
Your particular once-a-year feast day…with “the guys” or a sibling, your sorority, etc.
Memorial Day
Graduation
Your anniversary
Your kid’s birthday
July 4th
The weekend after July 4th
Vacation!
Labor Day
Ball game!
The harvest
Your sibling’s birthday
Rosh Hashanah
After the play
Halloween
Thanksgiving
Company Christmas party
Holiday party
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
New Year’s Eve
I don’t know about you, but I’m going out for a run. I’ve got some once-a-year chowing down to do later.
To all of you, a healthy Thanksgiving, and my gratitude.
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The First Time I Ran
Two of the most important elements of my first attempt at running were fiber-based. One was the fabric of the outfit I was wearing. This was a thick "fleece" of the polar-tek variety, although not specifically Polar-Tek™. I think it had been purchased at Target, and was a generous gift from my in-laws. It had mildly sporty racing stripes on it, but it was hearty, and thick. Not like your basic fall hiking fleece, but more the type Joe Pesce would have worn in an early-90s film wherein he whacks people. It was a pullover, but with a half-zipper, presumably for temperature control and/or cubic-zirconium nameplate visibility. In any case, I chose it because it was the closest thing to a "sporty" garment I owned.
That hunter-green non-gym-standard garment would have been, of course, an Extra Large, if not the dreaded XXL. The date was roughly February 1, 2002. I had begun Weight Watchers two weeks earlier and knew that, in order to seriously lose weight, I'd have to begin exercising. Running seemed easiest.
The other important fibrous mass was my beard. Always of questionable quality and cut, it remained red after the rest of my hair had gone brownish, except that now, after a particularly harrowing year at work, it sported two vivid white patches, one on each side of my chin. But I kept it on like an old beloved pet or a stuffed animal—and nothing hides (and emphasizes) spare chins quite so well as a thick beard. I don't know whether you have a beard, but, well, beards are great on cold days, and they're terrible with sweat.
I trundled my ass out of bed early that twenty-degree morning, put on a truly humungous Carhartt coat over my Thick-n-Hearty Fleece™ and stalked down Austin Street to the New York Sports Club I had chosen for my triumphant debut. I believe I may have been "pumped" at the time, although I would only have recognized it then as a vague feeling of doom.
Is it really a memoir if you don't remember anything? I don't truly remember anything after entering the gym. I know I didn't use the locker room, because I lived up the street. I know I was in an upstairs room with open windows facing the street, staggering along on a treadmill with a gray dawn outside, feeling an icy slice of cold air on my throat, which was (by the second or third minute) emitting the sounds that Czech scientists recently reported hearing from the throats of Aral Sea sturgeon in their death throes. I know that I set the blasted machine for fifteen minutes, but it may have been twelve and I hope the truth is not in a database somewhere waiting to destroy my career. I leaned forward and pushed off, and ran for whatever time and at whatever slow pace I had entered.
Fleece is supposed to "wick" moisture. Wicking. Heh.
So I do remember not wanting to put my Carhartt back on, because I had sweated so profusely that the fleece clung to me like a paper-thin wifebeater, and the Carhartt was my "good" coat (that was the style in them days). I remember feeling the sweat freezing, slowly, in my beard as I shambled home up the street. I remember how hot my face was, after running for the first time, despite my frozen beard, the frigid air, and the freshening breeze that came up with the pale winter sun.
And this morning, almost six years later, I noticed again the heat in my clean-shaven face, finishing a short four-miler in my size-M shirt, feeling that same warmth, which I now know is the flush of victory.
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That hunter-green non-gym-standard garment would have been, of course, an Extra Large, if not the dreaded XXL. The date was roughly February 1, 2002. I had begun Weight Watchers two weeks earlier and knew that, in order to seriously lose weight, I'd have to begin exercising. Running seemed easiest.
The other important fibrous mass was my beard. Always of questionable quality and cut, it remained red after the rest of my hair had gone brownish, except that now, after a particularly harrowing year at work, it sported two vivid white patches, one on each side of my chin. But I kept it on like an old beloved pet or a stuffed animal—and nothing hides (and emphasizes) spare chins quite so well as a thick beard. I don't know whether you have a beard, but, well, beards are great on cold days, and they're terrible with sweat.
I trundled my ass out of bed early that twenty-degree morning, put on a truly humungous Carhartt coat over my Thick-n-Hearty Fleece™ and stalked down Austin Street to the New York Sports Club I had chosen for my triumphant debut. I believe I may have been "pumped" at the time, although I would only have recognized it then as a vague feeling of doom.
Is it really a memoir if you don't remember anything? I don't truly remember anything after entering the gym. I know I didn't use the locker room, because I lived up the street. I know I was in an upstairs room with open windows facing the street, staggering along on a treadmill with a gray dawn outside, feeling an icy slice of cold air on my throat, which was (by the second or third minute) emitting the sounds that Czech scientists recently reported hearing from the throats of Aral Sea sturgeon in their death throes. I know that I set the blasted machine for fifteen minutes, but it may have been twelve and I hope the truth is not in a database somewhere waiting to destroy my career. I leaned forward and pushed off, and ran for whatever time and at whatever slow pace I had entered.
Fleece is supposed to "wick" moisture. Wicking. Heh.
So I do remember not wanting to put my Carhartt back on, because I had sweated so profusely that the fleece clung to me like a paper-thin wifebeater, and the Carhartt was my "good" coat (that was the style in them days). I remember feeling the sweat freezing, slowly, in my beard as I shambled home up the street. I remember how hot my face was, after running for the first time, despite my frozen beard, the frigid air, and the freshening breeze that came up with the pale winter sun.
And this morning, almost six years later, I noticed again the heat in my clean-shaven face, finishing a short four-miler in my size-M shirt, feeling that same warmth, which I now know is the flush of victory.
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The Hours
"We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems."
Apparently Lee Iacocca said that. I vaguely remember Lee Iacocca as some kind of 1980s presence, an avuncular but untrustworthy corporate magnate, often confused in my pre-adolescent mind with John DeLorean. In any case, Lee had long been off my mind until he was brought back via Weight Watchers, when my leader recited the quote above. Each meeting has an "inspirational close," you see, and this one came early in my weight loss. Not very long afterwards, we moved upstate and I began commuting to my job in Manhattan.
Throughout the four years that I commuted via bus and train, two hours at a shot, toting a laptop, I tried to apply Lee's wisdom to that particular problem. Not just Lee's. Anyone's wisdom who would listen. My Twitter bio explains it: "I talk about commuting almost as much as I talk about not commuting." My cell phone was always handy to call a friend and complain. When the bus was too crowded to call, I'd whip open the laptop and write about it. And write letters to friends. And write personal essays. Do a little work. Look through old pictures. Listen to music. Outline novels. Begin humor books. Read. Nod off. Always in search of that elusive "opportunity" presented by an hour and a half trapped in a metal canister moving painfully slowly along New York's motorways or rails. What, oh what, was the hidden treasure inside this soul-sucking disguise?
With my new, shorter commute, I have noticed something: it's hard to write when you have so much more time. Time to sleep, at home, in your bed. Time to play with the kids. Time to help with the chores. Time to go to sleep, at a reasonable time, at home, in your bed.
This time, at least, I'm in no doubt as to my opportunities. They're not very well disguised.
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Apparently Lee Iacocca said that. I vaguely remember Lee Iacocca as some kind of 1980s presence, an avuncular but untrustworthy corporate magnate, often confused in my pre-adolescent mind with John DeLorean. In any case, Lee had long been off my mind until he was brought back via Weight Watchers, when my leader recited the quote above. Each meeting has an "inspirational close," you see, and this one came early in my weight loss. Not very long afterwards, we moved upstate and I began commuting to my job in Manhattan.
Throughout the four years that I commuted via bus and train, two hours at a shot, toting a laptop, I tried to apply Lee's wisdom to that particular problem. Not just Lee's. Anyone's wisdom who would listen. My Twitter bio explains it: "I talk about commuting almost as much as I talk about not commuting." My cell phone was always handy to call a friend and complain. When the bus was too crowded to call, I'd whip open the laptop and write about it. And write letters to friends. And write personal essays. Do a little work. Look through old pictures. Listen to music. Outline novels. Begin humor books. Read. Nod off. Always in search of that elusive "opportunity" presented by an hour and a half trapped in a metal canister moving painfully slowly along New York's motorways or rails. What, oh what, was the hidden treasure inside this soul-sucking disguise?
With my new, shorter commute, I have noticed something: it's hard to write when you have so much more time. Time to sleep, at home, in your bed. Time to play with the kids. Time to help with the chores. Time to go to sleep, at a reasonable time, at home, in your bed.
This time, at least, I'm in no doubt as to my opportunities. They're not very well disguised.
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Cult-Like Programs I’ve Embraced, Part I: Weight Watchers
The transformative event for me came about halfway through my first meeting. Surrounded by puffy women applauding one another for losing eight ounces, addressed by a relatively slim, excited older woman in extremely tight pants, I was about to lose my shit and leave. Like I’d left French class sophomore year, after six years of study: just up and left and never went back. This was not for me.
In 2001 I had taken stock and realized that I was at least 60 pounds overweight, pale, flabby, and tired easily. My digestive system was a nightmare; I ate nothing healthy, no matter how often I resolved to do so. My feet hurt. My knees hurt. I had had to go to physical therapy for weak ankles. My lower back was giving out alarming twinges. And I was only 32.
A confluence of events led me to Weight Watchers in January 2002. I woke up especially hung over and bloated one morning after a late night. My wife and I had started talking about having a baby. Murderers had attacked my city, and it occurred to me that life was too short to stay fat. A colleague was attending a nearby meeting and encouraged me to come with her. Another coworker, a man, had lost a lot of weight through the program the previous year. I went.
It was horrifying. Clapping, I thought, is not what I need. Little star stickers were not going to help me. And they talked incessantly about dessert – my problem was cheese and ribs and beer and General Tso’s chicken, not chocolate. Cake and cookies were for the weak. Even the way chocolate was talked about, with this faux reverence — an ironclad excuse masquerading as an object of worship in whose presence my bovine companions were powerless. When they mentioned it, I could hear the glutinous melted gunk blurring the consonants in the word itself…schawglit.
My cousin once tricked me — bait: job opportunity/switch: Amway meeting. They sat the new recruits in the front row and proceeded to attempt to break us down by asking if we wanted to get rich. That had been like this. Later, when I emerged with my psyche intact, he’d said “don’t think about it, just do it.” That was anathema to me.
I was fat, but I was no joiner. I was a dinosaur explainer, and I wore black clothing and lived in New York City. I’d traveled the country by car for six months. I’d read Atlas Shrugged AND A Fool’s Progress. I had a hip, hot wife in the record industry and we went to extremely cool shows. I was a cynical and proud atheist who hated sports and swore never to go to Disneyland. And above all I was young! What the hell was I doing in the room with the fat women salivating about doughnuts?
And then the transformative event: I let go. For one second. I shut off my brain and clapped, with a big smile on my face.
Why? Because nothing else had worked. I’d been gaining weight for ten years. I was miserable. If I thought I was too young to be in that room, I was certainly too young to keel over and die on a subway platform. And everyone said that Weight Watchers worked. So somewhere I found a switch and shut off the part of my brain that was saying “no.”
It was just enough for them to get their hooks into me.
That year, I transformed. I journaled, I counted my points, I drank water, I measured portions, I tried recipes received at meetings, I read the Getting Started book religiously and I attended my weekly meeting. I realized that I’d been reverentially saying General Tso’s schickun. I sat up front. I raised my hand a lot. And it worked. I immediately began losing weight.
Suddenly, running seemed possible. A natural complement to Weight Watchers. I started slowly during Week Five. After fifteen minutes on the treadmill, I knew one thing for certain: I was going to die. But I didn’t die that particular day, and I went back two days later. I started counting activity points.
By October I lost 68 pounds. Five years later, I go every week to keep it off.
The women — and some men — in that room are some of the bravest and dearest people I know, struggling against unimaginably deep-seated personal and cultural roadblocks, trying to find out if they’re real beneath the weight. They are, they are, they are. My leader from that first day has been one of the most – and you can imagine how using this word hurts a deeply independent and cynical thinker – inspiring people I’ve ever met. I mean, she helps people get well. How cool is that?
So I’m a convert, an acolyte, a Weight Watchers zombie who for a long time could only talk about POINTS and the POINTS system. Letting go that day was one of the hardest — and best — things I’ve ever done.
But I still don’t buy their products.
•
In 2001 I had taken stock and realized that I was at least 60 pounds overweight, pale, flabby, and tired easily. My digestive system was a nightmare; I ate nothing healthy, no matter how often I resolved to do so. My feet hurt. My knees hurt. I had had to go to physical therapy for weak ankles. My lower back was giving out alarming twinges. And I was only 32.
A confluence of events led me to Weight Watchers in January 2002. I woke up especially hung over and bloated one morning after a late night. My wife and I had started talking about having a baby. Murderers had attacked my city, and it occurred to me that life was too short to stay fat. A colleague was attending a nearby meeting and encouraged me to come with her. Another coworker, a man, had lost a lot of weight through the program the previous year. I went.
It was horrifying. Clapping, I thought, is not what I need. Little star stickers were not going to help me. And they talked incessantly about dessert – my problem was cheese and ribs and beer and General Tso’s chicken, not chocolate. Cake and cookies were for the weak. Even the way chocolate was talked about, with this faux reverence — an ironclad excuse masquerading as an object of worship in whose presence my bovine companions were powerless. When they mentioned it, I could hear the glutinous melted gunk blurring the consonants in the word itself…schawglit.
My cousin once tricked me — bait: job opportunity/switch: Amway meeting. They sat the new recruits in the front row and proceeded to attempt to break us down by asking if we wanted to get rich. That had been like this. Later, when I emerged with my psyche intact, he’d said “don’t think about it, just do it.” That was anathema to me.
I was fat, but I was no joiner. I was a dinosaur explainer, and I wore black clothing and lived in New York City. I’d traveled the country by car for six months. I’d read Atlas Shrugged AND A Fool’s Progress. I had a hip, hot wife in the record industry and we went to extremely cool shows. I was a cynical and proud atheist who hated sports and swore never to go to Disneyland. And above all I was young! What the hell was I doing in the room with the fat women salivating about doughnuts?
And then the transformative event: I let go. For one second. I shut off my brain and clapped, with a big smile on my face.
Why? Because nothing else had worked. I’d been gaining weight for ten years. I was miserable. If I thought I was too young to be in that room, I was certainly too young to keel over and die on a subway platform. And everyone said that Weight Watchers worked. So somewhere I found a switch and shut off the part of my brain that was saying “no.”
It was just enough for them to get their hooks into me.
That year, I transformed. I journaled, I counted my points, I drank water, I measured portions, I tried recipes received at meetings, I read the Getting Started book religiously and I attended my weekly meeting. I realized that I’d been reverentially saying General Tso’s schickun. I sat up front. I raised my hand a lot. And it worked. I immediately began losing weight.
Suddenly, running seemed possible. A natural complement to Weight Watchers. I started slowly during Week Five. After fifteen minutes on the treadmill, I knew one thing for certain: I was going to die. But I didn’t die that particular day, and I went back two days later. I started counting activity points.
By October I lost 68 pounds. Five years later, I go every week to keep it off.
The women — and some men — in that room are some of the bravest and dearest people I know, struggling against unimaginably deep-seated personal and cultural roadblocks, trying to find out if they’re real beneath the weight. They are, they are, they are. My leader from that first day has been one of the most – and you can imagine how using this word hurts a deeply independent and cynical thinker – inspiring people I’ve ever met. I mean, she helps people get well. How cool is that?
So I’m a convert, an acolyte, a Weight Watchers zombie who for a long time could only talk about POINTS and the POINTS system. Letting go that day was one of the hardest — and best — things I’ve ever done.
But I still don’t buy their products.
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