Food, Inc.

Watching Food, Inc. reminded me of things that I’ve learned in the process of losing weight but don’t always think about so much anymore. The primary one being that it’s expensive to eat well, particularly to eat the sorts of foods recommended for weight loss.

When I graduated college, I swore that I wasn’t going to eat any more fast food – a promise I’ve largely kept except for once in an airport where the only option was McDonald’s. (Although considering how I felt after eating it, I wondered if going hungry might have been the better option, and it’s part of the reason why I now carry ridiculous amounts of food with me when flying.) At the time, I didn’t make this decision out of any ethical or moral beliefs. It was simply that I was sick of eating it, since many times in college I had no choice but to eat fast food.

Instead, I reverted to how I ate when growing up, which involved cooking my own meals. Additionally, as part of my efforts to lose weight, I bought more fresh fruits and vegetables. And I watched with astonishment as my food bill shot up. Even now, I’m rather shocked at how much I spend on food, considering I’m just one person. Given the way our food system works, though, it’s not actually that surprising. As they pointed out in the movie, you can buy a hamburger at some fast food places for $1, but you can’t buy a head of broccoli for that. You’d be lucky to get a single decent-sized apple for that price. Of course if you go the canned/frozen route, you’re in better shape, but from a calorie/cost perspective, you definitely get a better bargain at the fast food places.

Or at least, you do if you don’t factor in all the hidden costs, and realize all the subsidies that farmers get for growing corn and soy, but not other vegetables. They’ve also been put into a position where many need to use pesticides and artificial fertilizers, all of which has a hidden cost in the amount of fuel needed to transport it and the impact on the human body.

It’s not just the produce, though. I’ve also made a decision, this time for ethical reasons, not to eat commercially-raised meat. But buying meat that’s been raised locally, where the animals are treated well, costs so much more up front than buying commercial meats. It’s one of the reasons that I don’t eat much meat these days, but even so, I was shocked to learn that the average American consumes 200 pounds of meat every year. That essentially assumes that you’re eating a 3 oz. portion of meat with every meal of the day. (And most people eat much more than the serving size of 3 oz.)

What angers me about this is that many people are put into a position where they believe they simply cannot afford to eat well. Partly it’s the cost, but it’s also a matter of time. Many of the people directly impacted work multiple jobs, may get home late, or not be home much at all, and don’t feel they have the time or the energy to make something nutritious but inexpensive, such as beans and rice, or a big pot of soup or stew.

The irony is that if they ate more healthily, they might actually have more energy to be able to eat healthily. Getting out of that catch-22 is the hard part, particularly given the nature of the food industry. They don’t want people to be like me, to have gotten to the point where they crave fruits and vegetables as much or more than they do sweets and fats.

I am therefore grateful, yet again, that my upbringing was such that I had knowledge of and interest in cooking, and that I make enough money on my single income to be able to afford eating in ways that support my ethics. I’m encouraged that more people are thinking this way these days, and I hope that someday things will be different, but I suspect it will be a long road.

A Litany of Food

Following up on my earlier post, I thought it might be fun to provide a list of the foods I've given and received for the holidays.

Given (and kept a little for myself, of course):

- little pumpkin breads/muffins

- caramels

- peanut butter fudge (made from my grandmother's recipe)

- ginger crinkles

- sugar cookies

- hot chocolate mix

Received:

- Wilbur's Chocolate Bits and Pieces

- hot chocolate mix

- homemade granola (from Alton Brown's recipe on the Food Network)

- cranberry bread

- chocolate chip cookies (from two sets of people)

- ginger molasses cookies

- butter cookies

- pretzels and nuts coated with chocolate and sugar

- raspberry squares

- two types of jam

- bread and butter pickles

- homemade mix for M&M cookies

- more to come from a friend on Tuesday

- I might get some of the yummy snickerdoodles my brother made

Plus, I brought home some of yesterday's dessert because at the time I was too stuffed to eat it, after the ham, rolls, roasted potatoes, salad, and green beans:

- mini Italian pastries

- needhams

- sugar cookies

- peanut butter kisses

- no-bake cookies

- Chex mix

I think between all of this, if I limit myself to one sweet per day (my current goal - we'll see how I do), I'll have enough to last me until summer!

Gifts of Food

We recently had our holiday party at work, and I have to say it wasn’t at all geared towards someone trying to lose weight (or to a vegetarian, but that’s a different subject). Any potluck where one of the “salads” includes cut-up Snickers bars is definitely not for the weight self-conscious. Even some of the healthier items, like cut up veggies and strawberries, were meant to be dipped into something far more caloric (ranch dressing and a chocolate fountain, respectively). Other items, like the cookies and sponge cake and pinwheels and sauce-laden meats, made no pretense of being other than what they were.

Then we had our Yankee Swap. (For those unfamiliar with the term, it’s an event where people open presents based on a randomly chosen number, and they can then swap with an already-opened gift if they don’t like theirs.) As always some of the presents were re-gifted from previous years, some were silly (the “Porn for Women” calendar being a prime example), some were alcoholic, but many were food-related. A box of chocolates, four bars of specialty chocolates, an insulated picnic bag, a pottery set of olive oil dispensers and dipping dishes, candy necklaces, and some scatological ones of penguins and bears that “pooped” chocolate.

And it got me thinking about the way most of us perceive food. Had our potluck consisted of only healthy dishes, many would have been very disappointed and not felt very festive. Yet as it was, I wasn’t the only one who ate some of my own food because the potluck offerings were too rich. A better balance would have been nice, maybe a good vegetable soup, or roasted root vegetables with rosemary and olive oil. (I have to admit that even I don’t find garden salads particularly appealing this time of year, not in Maine with the cold settling into my bones.)

As for the Yankee Swap, I amused myself by thinking what the reaction would have been to give baby carrots, say, or a colorful and festive medley of bell peppers. I have no doubt that gift would have been the pariah of the party, traded away the instant it was received. After all, who gives vegetables for Christmas, or wants to receive them? I actually do know someone who did this – one of my more vivid childhood memories is of getting cans of spinach from my grandfather, who apparently wanted us to be like Popeye.

Much as I enjoy spinach now, I confess it would never occur to me to give it as a present. The closest I come these days is to give people pumpkin – but it’s well-disguised by being mixed with eggs, flour, oil, sugar and spice (and everything nice) to transform into bread. And that, at least, seems to be an acceptable gift.

Inspired

I find myself in the rather odd position of being inspired to lose weight – by myself. My younger self, that is. I remember co-workers telling me before that I was their inspiration, and while I was flattered by it, I didn’t quite understand it until now.

You may be wondering why I want to lose weight, considering the nature of this blog. The short version of the story is that when I had met my goal, my hormones got thrown off, so a few years ago I purposefully gained back 10 pounds to see if that would help get my body back on track. Sadly, it didn’t, but I’ve been lax about trying to lose those 10 pounds again. I kept thinking that I should, and now and then I’d lose a couple of pounds, but then just gain it back because I wasn’t being deliberate about it. I’d forgotten how to lose weight, remembering only how to maintain it.

Starting this writing process, though, I’ve decided that I really do want to lose that weight back. It doesn’t sound like much, but in someone my height, it can make a difference. For one thing, I haven’t been able to comfortably wear some of my clothes for a few years now. With the example of my earlier thoughts and actions clearly before me, I have no excuse not to proceed.

I therefore began this new process a couple of weeks ago, and I’m down 3 pounds. That feels good, but more interesting is that I’m remembering, now, what it feels like to lose weight, and what it takes. Some of it’s obvious – slowly reducing the number of calories I consume, adding in a little more exercise – but still, I needed the reminder. The timing could not be more perfect. This gives me renewed insight into what it was like before, while also helping me now.

Some of the things I’d forgotten are that I actually feel better in many ways when I eat less. My energy is more consistent, and I can stay focused more easily. I realize that my body can survive quite well on less food, although it feels strange to not eat so much. I keep thinking that I should need more, which is a dangerous line to walk; if I succumb to the feelings of “should”, I forget what’s actually necessary. What helps is that after the first few days of my body being upset with me for decreasing its intake, I’m no longer as hungry, and I’m satisfied with lesser amounts. I’m also less tempted by sweets that happen to be around, or to snack in the evening.

All of this I knew intimately 10 years ago, and it’s a little disturbing how easy it was to forget. It makes me all the more glad that I am writing this, thinking that if it can inspire me, when it’s something I should already know, it will hopefully do the same for others.

Ballerina

I recently watched a documentary called Ballerina that looked at the lives of some prima ballerinas in Russia. They start quite young, at the age of 10, and the teachers were looking for girls with small heads, long necks, and who would develop a good figure. But as they also said, it’s hard to tell with a 10-year-old what figures they’ll grow into.

That caught my attention because I couldn’t help thinking that when I was 10, it was fairly obvious that I wouldn’t have that type of figure. Pre-adolescence, I wasn’t terribly overweight, but I was chubby, carrying a layer of extra padding that had been cute when I was younger but was less so as I grew older. Luckily, the ballet I did at the time was for fun, not for any desire of eventually becoming a ballerina myself, and my weight wasn’t a problem. At least, I didn’t think I was until my chiropractor at the time told my mom and I that we should keep an eye on my weight. It’s my first memory of that coming up, and as I wrote in my book: “I don’t recall the doctor's exact words, but I remember they made me feel ashamed of my body for the first time. I suspect they also set off warning bells for Mom, whose greatest fear was diabetes after having seen both of her grandmothers die from diabetes-related complications.”

My dance career didn’t last much after that. By the time I was 12, I weighed around 150 pounds, and exercise in general was no longer as easy, or something I enjoyed. Even had that not been the case, I doubt that I would have wanted to put myself through the pain and grueling effort involved in becoming professional. I had no desire to have my feet bleed, or spend all my time in practice, knowing that I was causing stress to my body that would lead me to a short-lived career at best.

Even so, I feel a twinge of sorrowful envy watching dancers. Seeing their beautiful, supple bodies, I am all too aware of the limitations of my own. I acknowledged some time ago that I’m not and never will be naturally athletic. That took a while for me to understand, having once believed that if I just worked hard enough, I could achieve anything I wanted. Even having accepted that, though, when I see dancers now, I’m all too aware of my lack. And it’s very specific to them – I don’t feel this watching other athletes.

An example of this was when watching the video The Old Religion when I was in high school. As I wrote in my book: “One part of the film showed a dancer – not a ballerina, but a woman performing more of a liturgical or sacred dance. Her motions were very slow, controlled, lithe, and graceful, arms weaving in deliberately sinuous and sometimes sensual motions. Seeing that struck me to the heart, reminding me that dance was one of the things I’d lost when I gained weight. I felt, at least briefly, that I would be willing to do almost anything if only I could one day move like that woman.”

Still, I remind myself that while I will never have bodies or abilities like those ballerinas, it doesn’t mean that I can’t move gracefully, or that my body is somehow deficient. How many of us, after all, would ever achieve that level? I content myself with being earth-bound, knowing that so long as I can walk and hike and climb, perhaps do more modest dance, and take joy in those activities, that is all I need – even if I wish sometimes that it could be otherwise.

Santa Claus

One of the things I’m finding most valuable in writing about my experience with weight is remembering what it was actually like. Even though I lived through it, I don’t often think about how difficult it was, how my weight and the issues around it pervaded my life. I viewed the world through a very specific lens, one attuned to comments and portrayals of weight. As a thin person, even one who has been fat, it is easy to turn a blind eye to the prejudice and connotations surrounding those overweight, all the little things that we simply take for granted as part of our culture.

Take Santa Claus, for instance. Many may remember feeling disillusioned upon learning that Santa isn’t real, and may agonize over what to tell their own children. Some might be bitter about that, or about the fact that perhaps they didn’t get a gift they requested. Some, like Scrooge, may simply disdain the whole concept. But I’m guessing most people don’t think about Santa in relation to how his weight impacts those who are themselves heavy.

To be honest, I haven’t thought much about it recently, either. Although I did notice that in a remake of Miracle on 34^th Street, Santa wasn’t actually all that round. Which was a good thing because if he was, he wouldn’t have had much of a lap for children to sit on. (The lap is a strange, magical thing in its own right, disappearing and reappearing in direct correlation to weight.) Then, when I was typing up changes to earlier chapters I’d written about gaining weight, I re-read part of a piece called “The Road to Freedom” that I wrote in early 1996. The section relating to Santa reads:

I think, if I weren’t so gross, I’d be an actress; I’m already so good at pretending. Fulfilling that stupid myth that fat people are jolly, like Santa Claus. Only Santa Claus doesn’t exist, and how should I be jolly when people call me a cow, or porky, or say I’m dull.

I’d forgotten how even a figure as representative of holiday cheer and joy conjured, for me, demons of self-doubt and bitterness because I couldn’t match that jocularity, and I wasn’t loved as Santa was. The sheer raw pain of it strikes me even now, but it was so much worse then. Our society is inordinately cruel, most of the time, to those who are overweight, and most people would not find a belly that “shakes like a bowl full of jelly” very appealing. It’s one thing for a mythical figure, but in reality? That’s another story, and a far less cheerful one.

I also remember Mrs. Claus in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer urging Santa to, “Eat, eat!” because the children wouldn’t want a skinny Santa. That, too, was hard for me to watch, knowing that my encouragement was the opposite; everyone wanted a skinny me, and no one wanted the fat one.

I realize this may sound extreme and over-sensitive, but at the time, it was my reality. Santa Claus was just one of the many barrages on my spirit and self-esteem. As further evidence of how badly damaged I was, this was how the piece I referenced earlier concluded:

I’m not dull; I’m actually too sharp. I’ve cut myself open inside with my razor edges, but as the wounds are internal, no one notices. It’s only a matter of time before I drown, the blood from these wounds pooling into my lungs. There are a few small channels that might carry away the pain, but already I am walling them off. People hurt too much. I don’t want to ever get close again. It’s funny in a way. When I was a kid I was so happy. When I imagined myself grown up, I thought I’d live on a farm with horses, be married, have kids. That’s a laugh. Who would want to marry me? I’m repulsive to myself, so it must be worse for others. No, I won’t even consider it. I won’t kill myself, but I won’t go outside, either. I will stay right here in the safety of my own heart so I will never again have to see that look in someone’s eyes, someone I thought a friend, that says I’m nothing. And if I choke on the blood – well, it won’t matter because I’ll already be gone.

With this memory now clear, I find myself again viewing the world through those old lenses – and it’s not pretty. I’m grateful that I can take them off, but I will keep them close to hand, because it’s important to remember. Even, or sometimes especially, when the memories are painful.