all of the selves we Have ever been
It is an anxious time. News of the world gnaws at my soul. Worry gnaws at my mind. I am hungry. I wear a path to the refrigerator. But it’s a trick. The hunger I have isn’t for food, but all of that nervous energy leaves me restless and depleted. It propels my feet into the kitchen. Unfortunately, my mind is never satisfied with broccoli or Brussel sprouts. Oh, no! My mind screams for sweets. I am not the first to turn to baked goods in the face of a revolution. History provides precedent. Marie Antoinette is credited with saying, “Let them eat cake.” Perhaps she understood that cake calms shattered nerves. In the meantime, I fear we are in for the long haul. Revolutions take time to gain momentum and time to quell. Man may not live by bread alone, but this gal is thinking of giving it a try. I will be wedged into my apartment like a Macy’s Day Parade balloon by the time the revolution is over. What to do? I turn to sliver theory: calories fall out of baked goods when baked goods are sliced. This vital information was passed down to me from my ancestors. My mother grew up with six sisters, and I grew up listening to these sisters endlessly converse about weight and diets. This frequent topic of conversation usually took place in a busy kitchen full of women stirring, baking, and tasting. It is where I learned a corollary to the sliver theory: tastes are calorie-free. By the time all of the cooking was done and the main course devoured, the proper response to an offer of dessert was, “Just a sliver.” It was a way to earn self-esteem and actual brownie points for a place in heaven. Baked goods are the only foods that can be divided into slivers. How much is a sliver? That can lead to some disagreements because a sliver is a concept, not a specific measurement. How much is a sliver? The answer remains in the eye of the beholder. Too large, it allows the recipient to say, “Oh, no! That’s too much for me.” (This could make it awkward for the ones who really wanted a slab and not a sliver.) Offer a sliver too small, and that might be interpreted by a sister as an insult, an indirect commentary on her figure. I have been known to use the ancient and debunked sliver theory to convince myself that I am in charge of my appetite. I typically call upon the sliver strategy when under duress. I once ate an entire Snackin’ Cake during work on an important graduate school assignment. Or should I say, while avoiding an important graduate school assignment. I got myself so worked up about the project that I was convinced I was starving. I mixed up and baked a yellow Snackin’ Cake. When it was out of the oven, I told myself I would have “just a sliver” and get back to work. Each time I re-approached the assignment, I returned for another sliver. Pretty soon I had finished the entire cake, but not the assignment. I will never forget John Maynard Keynes. Or Snackin’ Cake. Turning troubling events over in my mind is strenuous exercise. It requires carbohydrate loading and a mood elevator to get me to the next floor. When I think about what to eat next, those thoughts give my mind something other than my worries to chew on. In our current circumstances, I am hoping that I am burning a lot of calories by walking back and forth to the kitchen, standing to eat over the sink, and all of that opening and closing of refrigerator and cupboard doors. I fear that I will be in a diabetic coma by Inauguration Day. If I am, someone please… tell the National Guard to throw cupcakes at the mob.
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I continue my battle with inertia. Wintry weather and rich holiday food have not helped. It is a profound truth: a body at rest does remain at rest…I am searching for that outside force that will get me moving in the right direction. Stuffed with Thanksgiving Day dinner leftovers, mostly desserts, I rally the strength to lift a finger and find myself again climbing the tree of knowledge. Health experts and influencers abound on the internet. Surely, there is one who is right for me. I survey the literature. It turns out that a square meal is not a brownie and a well-rounded meal is not a pie. Who knew? I need a new program. Diet? Exercise? Both? I scroll down looking for a name I recognize, someone with history and credentials. I see something familiar: “Did you ever eat a pine tree?” No, Euell Gibbons, I did not--not even a pinecone. I did try Grape Nuts once. I’m pretty sure that was a close encounter. Upon further reading, I discover that dinosaurs considered pinecones a delicacy. I’m not sure that piece of news is a selling feature with dinosaurs being extinct and all. Folklore suggests that a woman should place a pinecone under her pillow if she wants to become pregnant. At my age, that’s one more reason to keep pinecones out of the house. Not the abs I’m looking for. Euell Gibbons was one of the first health food advocates I can recall from my youth. He was a well-known outdoorsman famous for eating pine trees, cat tails, and other bits of nature. I was pretty fascinated by the man when I was a grade schooler, but now I wonder: can the pinecone spokesman really be trusted? He died at the age of 64 with the cause of death in dispute. Some say he died from heart attack or ruptured aortic aneurysm. Others suspect he died from eating bad food. Bad genes were implicated as well. Maybe not the approach I am looking for… I move on to another health guru of my young adult years: Jim Fixx. He started a revolution in exercise, making running a very popular sport with the publication of The Complete Book of Running. Fixx turned to running as he attempted to turn his life around. I guess gravity and inertia had gotten to him as well. A history of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day probably hadn’t help. Again, genes were not in his favor. Jim’s father died at a young age from heart disease. Despite his dramatic turnaround, Jim Fixx died of a heart attack during a daily run. He was fifty-two years old. This is not looking good. I have already outlived the health legends of my youth. It was not through any conscious effort on my part; it was the luck of the draw. I had better genes. I narrow my search. I need a guru with good health advice and good genes. Enter Jack LaLanne, of course! He was a staple of daily television beginning in 1959, and he lived to the age of 96. Until his final brief bout of pneumonia which he refused to treat, LaLanne continued to work out each day and operate his fitness empire. As a kid, I admired LaLanne’s jumpsuit and ballet slippers. I thought he might be one of Santa’s more handsome elves. LaLanne started out with a fifteen minute morning program. Well, I’ve got fifteen minutes. Things are looking up! And Jack wasn’t so fancy. Low-tech all the way. My kind of guy. He used basic household items like a kitchen chair for his equipment. I’ve still got one of those, and there is not a week’s worth of clothes hanging off the handlebars. Jack was focused on serving stay-at-home moms of that era. What a perfect time for a comeback. Stay-at-home moms are back in business and looking for curriculum for those remote learning gym classes. Jack LaLanne referred to body parts as “porches.” The behind was the back porch, the abdomen the front porch…With all of this outdoor social distancing, it’s a perfect time to work on the porches. I go to YouTube and pull up a couple of his workouts. Not too bad. I dig for his diet tips. The tide turns. It’s a bummer. (Or should I say porcher?) In his real life, LaLanne worked out two hours every morning. After that workout, his breakfast consisted of hardboiled egg whites, a cup of broth, oatmeal with soy milk, and fruit. His only other meal was a dinner of raw veggies, egg whites, and fish. Sounds like prison food. And yet, prisoners are allowed to wear comfortable, loose clothing. They are not tortured by tight waistbands and spandex. An exchange of freedoms… Maybe I’ll stick with my program. Inert and alone on my big back porch seems like the patriotic thing to do in a pandemic. Diet was my first four-letter word. I can recall fifty popular diets faster than I can name the fifty states. Go ahead, give it a try. I bet you can do it too. Here’s a head start: Fletcherism, also known as chewing your food until it becomes liquid. That would slow me down! I could probably fit in one meal a day if I went light. But I don’t have the patience, and I do have a life. Then there was the 1950s Pray Your Weight Away Diet. Self-explanatory. These two early diets posed no real hazards except wear and tear on your teeth and maybe taxing the Lord’s patience, but all that changed with the Sleeping Beauty Diet made popular in 1966 by the book, The Valley of the Dolls. I would not have been allowed to read such scandalous literature when I was in grade school, but from what I understand, the Sleeping Beauty Diet encouraged the use of sedatives to sleep up to twenty hours per day. A dieter might be able to get in one quick smooch from her prince, but there wasn’t time for much else regardless of how thin or beautiful she became in the process. Enter eating disorders. Exit Elvis Presley, a proponent of the diet. The first actual diet book I saw in my home as a child was the 1961 bestseller Calories Don’t Count. It was a hopeful thought, but turned out to be the first popular no-carb, high-fat, high-protein diet that was supplemented by the use of safflower oil in cooking and in capsules. I was curious about the book’s appearance in our home but too young to be thinking about diets. I did notice that my extended family became spokespeople for safflower oil. I always wondered how folks from the Middle East turned on olive oil. Now I know. By the time I was ten years old, I was nearly my full adult size and shape. It was rough going always lining up next to the teacher. And I became very self-conscious about my proportions which I confused with weight. In addition, I grew up with a grandmother whose motto was “food in proportion to the love.” You can see where this is going… My grandmother ran a grocery store and managed to feed her entire community throughout the Great Depression. She was an artist in the kitchen. My grandmother also had seven daughters who had the gift. In my extended family, women outnumbered men by at least three-to-one. When we were all together, the men watched TV while the women chattered about food and diets. Talk about a mixed message: Food was love; it was also poison. To make matters worse, food was always available. There would be pie or raisin bread on the counter top, kielbasa on the stove, flank steak in the oven…No need to bother looking in the refrigerator. In my grandmother’s house, the words, “taste this,” were said more often than “amen” was uttered in church. A spoon was held to your lips like it was Holy Communion. What good Catholic would turn down a free sacrament? By the time I was a teenager, processed convenience foods had flooded the market along with vending machines. There were so many new ways to eat and still remain starving. As teens, we worried about our immediate satisfaction, not the long run. Today, my long run is significantly shorter. Now, I worry about the long run! But back in high school I teetered between junk food and the latest diet craze. A frequent lunch was a drink and a sandwich. That would be a sugary orange ade in a container that looked like a milk carton and an ice cream sandwich. If we had Home Ec class earlier that morning, I might also have eaten my share of a cherry pie. In my defense, I was in a hurry at lunch time. My friends and I grabbed something quick and headed up to the French classroom where our after-lunch class was held. We would talk and eat and prepare for the entertainment. When Peggy finished her red hots, the box became a kazoo. Peggy accompanied Angele as she stomped her foot, clapped her hands and sang: “She was ten feet tall and had one purple eyeball. It took eight of us to milk her every day. She had twenty-seven spigots, and the neighbors all bought tickets just to see us milk her and to hear us saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay-ay: Pass the udder udder over to my udder brudder…” High on sugar and our own cleverness, we howled with laughter. I still remember that song, but don’t ask me to say anything in French. We all lived through high school in spite of ourselves. I don’t know what happened to Peggy. Angele went on to Phi Beta Kappa status in college and later became a distinguished writer and poet. I reached mid-life without developing diabetes. Basketball season meant hanging around after school waiting for the games to begin. Parents weren’t able to drive you back and forth. Such an occasion usually meant sharing a bag of watermelon candies with my friend Patricia until we got home later that night and devoured real food. Patricia went on to become a physician. I suppose I ate far more of the candy than she did. In the summers, when I had more control over my day, I either read about or tried many of the fad diets: the Grapefruit Diet, Cookie Diet, Slim Fast Diet, Scarsdale Diet, and the Cabbage Soup Diet. I guess I did not get too extreme because my parents never interfered. I usually managed to lose weight and return to school in September as a slimmed-down version of myself. Following high school graduation, I went to work in the city. I continued my love-hate relationship with food. I didn’t make much money starting out, and McDonalds had arrived on the scene. For eighty cents, I could get a hamburger, fries, and small soft drink for lunch. More diets came and went through my adult years: Beverly Hills Diet, Jenny Craig, Liquid Diet, Low-Fat Diet, the Zone, Medifast, Blood Type, the Subway Diet, Atkins, South Beach, Master Cleanse, Raw Food, Nutrisystem, Special K, Apple Cider Vinegar, Gluten-Free, Paleo, Keto…am I at fifty yet? Now I’m older and the metabolism is set on slooooooooooooooow. The lack of activity during this pandemic isn’t helping. I could probably get by on three meals a day each comprised of a communion wafer and some water. Maybe I’ll write a book about that… PS: If you are considering the Juicing Diet, think about it: |
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