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.
