My News and Thoughts
Kids & Obesity & the Obamas
Michelle Obama ratcheted up her battle against childhood obesity this week, conducting a live video chat in connection with her “Let’s Move” campaign and web site and going to a huge N.A.A.C.P. meeting in Kansas City and (more or less) telling the gathered people: You’re too fat. We’re too fat. As African-Americans. As Americans, period.
Her signature issue as First Lady is timely, and less predictable than some of the signature issues of her predecessors. But it’s also very, very tricky. As a kid who was something close to obese, and as an adult who was--for at least a few years--in the starter stages of obesity, I can attest to how complicated any kind of solution to overeating and excess weight can be.
In exhorting people to MOVE-—to be more active-—the First Lady is indisputably on the right track. There can be no quibble with that prescription. Activity equals the burning of calories; the burning of calories equals the shedding of weight. Plus it has other health benefits, mental as well as physical. Let’s move, indeed.
And in urging people to eat more natural, nutritious, less sugary foods and using the White House garden as a beacon and example, again, she and her campaign are irreproachable. True, there are a great many people in this country who have neither a patch of soil to cultivate nor the kind of discretionary income to purchase fresh organic produce, but the First Lady is showcasing an ideal, not issuing a command.
From that point on, though, it gets murkier, more difficult. Not long ago I spoke at a small conference of mental health professionals, a few of whom were upset-—really upset-—with some of what the Obamas were doing and saying. They felt there was, in the Obamas’ talk about sweets and treats in their own family as well as others, too much demonization of pleasurable but unnecessary foods and too much demonization of a few extra pounds. They felt that a path was being paved toward the kind of anxiety-—and the kind of undue obsession with appearance—-that can make a child’s or adult’s relationship with food less healthy, not more.
I’m not sure. But I DO know that there’s a maddeningly delicate balance and fine line between exhorting people toward better eating and making them feel shameful and panicked and such about hungers and habits that aren’t optimal. I also know that I’ve met many skinny kids with parents who have loose rules about food, snacking and such. And I’ve met many fat kids whose parents are vigilant and voluble when it comes to healthy eating, limited snacking, etc.
So what should parents do? I chatted about this with Campbell Brown on her CNN show early this week; Campbell, a dear and longtime friend, has two adorable sons under 3. And I told her what I’d learned or gleaned from a little reporting on childhood obesity and from my own experience as a fat kid.
Children emulate their parents in matters of eating as in so much else. If they see their parents exuberantly and compulsively pigging out, they may well consider that behavior a kind of privilege, a desirable indulgence. If they see their parents riding a weight roller coaster and lashed to a cycle of gluttony followed by extreme deprivation followed by abandon punctuated with the latest fad diet-—well, they’ll take a lesson from that.
And if their parents never get up from the couch and exercise, they’ll be less likely themselves to do as the First Lady would like them to-—and move.
Inner Peace? Nah. But Fewer Binges.
A reader who had just finished "Born Round" recently wrote, "I find myself reflecting on my own struggles with weight, which have dogged me for as long as I can remember. To manage my tendency to yo-yo between thin and fat, I too found fitness and healthy living three years ago. Still, as well as exercising and eating right have helped me manage my outward appearance, the internal struggle to avoid a major binge remains. Do you still fight this internal battle, or have you found the inner peace that eluded you for so long?
Wow. Great question. Big question. Answer: not exactly. Not fully. The desire to binge has never gone away, and one of the things I've done is make peace with THAT. I think it has been with me so long, and was with me from such an early age, that it's hard-wired into me, either as a matter of genes or as a matter of such an ingrained pattern of thinking, and such a frequent behavior (in the past), and there's no saying a complete good-bye to it.
But you know what? I've stopped feeling so ashamed about it. I view it the way I might a limp: it's this disadvantage and inconvenience that I have to work around, but that's a part of me to be managed, not a part of me to be deplored. I don't view it as a character flaw. I view it as a bummer: because I'd rather not binge, and having the urge to do it leads, well, to doing it, and I don't like the effects of that on my appearance or my health. But because I'm honest about the existence of my desire--my impulse--to binge, and because I stare it in the face, I can approach the management of it more rationally. I can pause and say: where will that binge lead me? And will I really be happier or sadder on the far side of it?
In my case I'll be sadder--maybe not the minute it's over, when my belly is full and humming and whatever great chemicals the eating released in my brain are still pinging about, but the next morning, for sure, and the next afternoon, when I can feel the cinch of my pants. I focus on that unwanted consequence, that uncomfortable aftermath.
I had an impulse to binge just tonight. I'd eaten little during the day, so was famished by dinnertime. I had a full dinner in a restaurant. Nothing crazy, but definitely more than enough. But I was so happy eating it that I found myself bummed, really bummed, when the eating was over and I was on my home.
After getting out of a cab right near my corner bodega to use its cash machine, I walked to its freezer case, brimming with ice cream. I thought: a pint would be nice. A pint would be heaven. Then I adjusted my desire downward, reasoning that a bar or cone would be a sensible and justified alternative. But then I asked myself if any ice cream at all made sense. Or was necessary. Or was a good idea.
It wasn't, and I held that thought and walked out the door.
I don't always have that clarity and that success. But I have it more often than I did a decade ago. I wouldn't call such progress the dawn of inner peace. But I'll take it.
From Chicago to Brooklyn
I was privileged to talk and read and answers questions on Tuesday night at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, where I got a quick peek at the amazing Calder exhibit. That's not a food-related thought or detail, I know; Calder and mobiles have nothing to do with the joy of eating or the pain of dieting or the rigors of exercise in the Mexican heat. But the exhibit deserves to be flagged, because the exhibit deserves to be seen.
I almost missed it. The talk had ended, I'd signed some books and chatted with some terrific people, and I was on my out the door for a glass of wine with a few new friends when one of the museum's officials urged me to take at least a short look at the Calder exhibit. I'm not a museum-y person, to invent an adjective, so I'm not frequently wowed. But to see so many of these mobiles--modest ones, extravagant ones, in various colors, in various sizes--hanging so closely together in one big, white room, so that they created a whimsical and kaleidoscopic canopy unlike any other, was giddy-making. I could have wandered beneath them for a solid hour.
At the Chicago talk one of the people wanted to discuss why overeating and obesity are, by all appearances, much more prevalent in America than in western European countries like Italy and France, and I was glad he brought that up: it's a topic that fascinates me. In the book I devote most of one chapter to living in Italy, and the chapter is framed by the question of how Italians can be more devoted to food than we are and yet slimmer, too. I think the main answer is a humdrum one. They have a totally different sense of portions, and a totally different relationship with snacking (which they don't do as frequently and heedlessly as we do). In Italy I didn't see signs for "all you can eat" buffets; the prospect of eating "all" that you're capable of--of stuffing yourself to the gills--wouldn't be an appealing one there. It would be less come-on than turn-off. I don't recall "Big Gulps" or many promises of super-sizing. While we in America are obsessed with quantity, Italians (and the French) are obsessed with quality. That's the major, consequential difference.
The next night I was back in New York, doing a Q-and-A with Gail Simmons of Food & Wine magazine and "Top Chef." She's a relatively new friend and a lovely, lovely person, generous of time and spirit, humble and approachable. She agreed to share the stage with me and to lob some questions my way before we let people in the audience ask whatever they wanted.
One of the many great things about having Gail there was that she could weigh in (pardon the phrase) on a theme I've explored several times, which is why "professional eaters" like her aren't, as a class, heavier. And here I get boring again: portions! Well, portions and exercise. Gail is like so many of the food personalities, food writers and chefs I know, in that she has developed a fierce discipline, realizing that a life amid so many temptations would be a path to poor health and plus-sized clothing if there wasn't constant vigilance, constant effort.
But she's no killjoy, not at all. The Q-and-A was in DUMBO, which put us near Vinegar Hill House, and we had dinner there immediately after. I made her and our other companions get the restaurant's Red Wattle chops, which are some of the best pork chops in the city. And Gail cleaned her plate.
OK, that's a lie.
Her plate was clean, but I was an accomplice in that. Little bite by little bite, I pilfered 20 to 25 percent of her chop, to supplement the beef shin in front of me. I was in a meaty mood. And went home in a happy, meaty daze.
Muggy in Mexico
In “Born Round” I write more than once about the importance—for those of us who really need to stick to some exercise regimen, who have histories of broken resolves, and who must always shore up our willpower and motivation—of creating exercise rituals, settings and circumstances that are as appealing as possible. That turn working out into less of an arduous grind. That don’t give us readymade reasons to beg off.
From that standpoint, my vacation week in Mexico was a total screeching nightmare.
I had pledged, along with my brother Mark, to run every morning, as a way to sweat out the previous night’s indulgences and make the coming day’s eating a little less perilous. And I had figured we’d have to run in some pretty bad heat and humidity. But I hadn’t figured it would be quite as overwhelmingly muggy as it was, and I hadn’t figured on such a bumpy, rocky road with such forgettable scenery.
We were vacationing—19 of us—in a beach house about 30 minutes by car from Cancun. The house faced the water, and the view in that direction was beautiful. But on the other side, between the house and the main highway, was just dusty, weedy, unkempt blah. With the sand too slippery to run on, even right along the water, these dirt roads off the highway were our only option.
And the dirt roads had views of . . . nothing. At their edges, in places, was smelly trash; random chickens wandered to and fro, clucking at us. Those were just odd distractions, though. The real problems came in the form of pebbles and potholes in the road that meant it was impossible, or at least dangerous, to zone out. You had to pay constant attention. And even doing so, you would wind up twisting your ankle slightly or banging up the bottoms of your feet.
Mark and I would set out at 7 a.m., hoping to catch a bit of a break from the heat. We didn’t, not really. I’m guessing it was in the upper 80s or lower 90s even then. And it was so humid that, during the course of the vacation, my iPod frequently wouldn’t work, Mark’s laptop wouldn’t work, and anyone with a Blackberry found that the tracking ball—or whatever that nub is called—moved in a sticky, gummy, reluctant fashion that made its use exceedingly difficult.
I never ran so slowly in my life. Or with such constant utterances of discomfort and disgust. The air was so thick and our shirts so immediately wet that this exercise blurred the line between running and water aerobics. I’ve seen seniors standing in the water at a Y.M.C.A. move faster than we were moving—or than I was.
Mark loped ahead. I trudged far behind. A quarter mile of running, then a quarter mile of walking. Another eighth of running; three eighths of walking. Brutal, brutal, brutal.
I wish I could say I nonetheless managed to run 3 to 4 miles a day, which is, easily, what a given day’s consumption of food and wine and beer (and margaritas!) demanded. I didn’t. But I DID set out every day, right around 7 a.m., and do SOMETHING. One day it was a mile and a half of running, with one mile of walking. Another day I ran a bit longer. Another day a bit shorter.
I did what I could tolerate. It was less than I could have reasonably pushed myself to do. But it was more than I might have done during many prior periods of my life, when I existed, as I describe in “Born Round,” in a lulling, roiling, dishonest sea of excuses and broken promises: I’ll exercise tomorrow instead of today. I’ll stop after 10 minutes and, in return, confine myself to just 800 calories until bedtime. (Yeah, right.) Etcetera. Ad infinitum.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I brought with me to Mexico some supplemental exercise inducers/equipment. I never did use the push-up bars. I only twice used the yoga mat. But-but-but: the jump rope? Used it every day. Found a patch of shade, made sure to have water nearby, and did anywhere from 250 to 600 little jumps, usually right after the pathetically truncated run.
Those jumps, too, weren’t really enough, not in relation to the amount of guacamole coursing through our beach house at all hours and the number of chips conveying it to my lips; not in terms of the bacon-and-egg breakfasts we had every morning.
But, again, the jumps, like the runs, were more than nothing. And if the roller coaster I rode for so many decades taught me anything, it’s to be grateful for the more-than-nothing, to acknowledge it as something, not to get depressed and panicky about it and to try, without too much self-recrimination, to improve on it.
It was with that thought that I returned to New York and—wouldn’t you know it!—sticky, 95-degree heat.
At least I belong to an air-conditioned gym here.
The Annual Family Vacation
Packing up for the annual family beach week, I find myself making sure I bring several pairs of running shorts, lots of sweat socks, etc. It's at this moment that I always vow to earn the vacation's inevitable excesses of food and drink with at least short bursts of daily exercise. And it's at this moment that I always wonder how likely I really am to keep that vow.
I have a great, loyal, loving family. That's a major theme--and they're major characters--in "Born Round." So that we have ample time together, we all carve out a week every June, right after the kids are done with school, to steal away to the beach for seven days, no matter what else is tugging on our time.
To be clear: the EXTENDED Bruni clan (a sprawling entity indeed!) doesn't go away. That would require a military degree of planning and strategizing. No, the group bound for the beach comprises Dad, my two brothers, my sister, everyone's mates and 11--yes, 11--kids, the oldest of whom is 14. We somehow find, and somehow pack into, a house with eight or nine bedrooms and as many bathrooms. It's a noisy, chaotic, awesome situation.
And the nights are laid-back and long: cocktails, dinner, more drinks after dinner, while we play board games or cards or pool or such. Many, many calories are consumed. So in the mornings, my brothers Mark and Harry and I try to wake up before the kids and run. I say "try" because I don't always succeed in yanking myself out of bed, and even when I do, the heat of a beach community in June--we did the Dominican Republic last year, and are headed to Mexico this year--isn't conducive to running. Sometimes I start and then, a mile in, stop. I'm a panting puddle by that point.
But if keeping your weight down is the kind of challenge it's always been for me, as chronicled in "Born Round," I think it really is crucial not to give yourself too many respites from caring or too long a period of retreat from exercise. String together enough free-pass weeks and you're 20 pounds heavier.
A few free-pass days? Sure. But a week-long free pass? For me, that's dangerous. Making a point to do at least SOME exercise on MOST days reassures me. It makes those boozy, heavy-eating evenings more pleasant, too, because there's more hunger (and looser pants) at the start of them. And it lifts my mood. Exercise always lifts my mood. I just sometimes have to remind myself of that, as a way of stoking the proper motivation.
Back to packing: I just put in a yoga mat--for sit-ups and such. Doesn't take up that much space. And two push-up handles or grips or whatever you call them: the kind that let you spread you arms wide for deeper push-ups. And a Pilates circle. And two jump ropes. Lately I've found jumping rope to be one of the most portable, convenient ways to burn up a small quantity of calories quickly. I've come to enjoy it. And in Mexico, I can seek out a patch of shade, or maybe even a patch of air-conditioning, in which to do it. So if the runs are too hot and debilitating, there's SOME alternative.
Finding alternatives, doing little things, not taking big breaks: it's with all of these measures together that I try and hope never to return to the 270-pound apogee of my mid-30s. The fingers are crossed. The jump ropes are in the bigger of the two duffel bags.
Changes to the Web Site; Hello After a Long Time
Over the last six months, I haven't been updating this site as regularly as I meant, and would have liked, to. After lavishing a bit of attention on it and on "Born Round" around the time it was published late last summer, I had to focus anew on my 9-to-5 job (so to speak) at the Times; I wanted to write about a broad range of topics (I've always been a journalistic dilettante); and I needed to attend to relationships I'd been giving short shrift. There were siblings I wanted to visit; nieces and nephews I wanted to play cards with; a father who deserves much, much more from me than I can ever give. I'm in awe of my friends who, on top of all else, raise children. If I added kids of my own to the rest of what I juggle, I'd never, ever make it through the week (or day).
I'll be back on this web site a bit more in coming months, to update the schedule of where I'll appear to answer questions and such in coordination with the paperback release of "Born Round." It gratifies and pleases me beyond measure that every week, I still get an email from someone who has just read the book and has seen in it some reflection of his or her own life. Maybe the reader recognizes my sprawling Italian-American family as a mirror of his or her own, even if that family is Eastern European or Jewish or whatever. Maybe the reader recognizes the syndrome of compulsive eating, or maybe the reader just recognizes that feeling of being so deeply in love with, and in thrall to, food. I love these missives. Thank you for them, and for reading the book.
It had been my hope that with the now-defunct "Ask Frank" section of this web site, I'd begin a sort of public dialogue/web support group/something of the kind for people struggling to balance a love for food with concerns about health and fitness and even vanity, which isn't such an awful thing. But most of the questions submitted weren't really questions: they were just thank-you's for the book (which I appreciate!), and they didn't really get into the questioner's life or experience in a way that was beneficial for anyone dropping by the "Born Round" web site. The bigger shortcoming, though, was that "Ask Frank" became a Spam magnet. Whenever I went to see how many new questions had come in, and whether they were fit for posting, most of what I found there were pharmaceutical links, erotica, mail-order brides: you name it. There'd be 100 of those for every question that I could post. I didn't have the time, in the end, to weed that garden.
With this new "My News and Thoughts" section, I'll combine the occasional Journal entries I posted before with occasional other updates about the book or my Times work or such. I want in some way to keep in touch with those of you who took to the book, found the themes in it universal and have reached out to me.
To anyone of you who picked up a copy of "Born Round," thank you. It's obviously a very personal bit of work that I felt (and feel) strongly about. I wanted to lend words to what it's like to struggle with body image and appetite; I wanted to memorialize two great women, my mother and grandmother, who were at the center of my eating life. It has moved me to tears when readers of the book tell me that they fell in love with Adelina Mazzone Bruni or Leslie Frier Bruni through the pages of "Born Round." When I set out to write the book, that was something I hoped fervently to accomplish. To the limited extent that I did, well, I'm a happy, happy, grateful man.
Questions that Go Unanswered
I've been away from this site for too long, partly because I manage it from my home p.c., have never really gotten the hang of dealing with it from my laptop or New York Times computer, and in recent weeks I wasn't home much: a major kitchen redo turned my apartment into a dusty, disheveled wreck. Like most Manhattan-ites, I don't dwell in a huge amount of space, so having to clear one room of everything and distribute its contents to other rooms renders much of the apartment unusable. I've been toggling between the homes of others. And slowly losing my mind.
I mention the new kitchen because it really isn't that far afield of themes in "Born Round." I want to cook more, I want to cook better, I want to enjoy my time in the kitchen, and for all of those reasons --- plus the aged, decrepit state of my old kitchen, where the tiled floor was coming loose in a way that made walking across it like crunching on sea shells and sea glass on the shore --- a kitchen renovation made sense. I think I avoided cooking in the past because I thought: let's not find a NEW way and another way to obsess about food. But that was before I realized, both prior to, and during, my critic says, that an obsession about quality can be a healthy redirection of an obsession about quantity. Now I'm ready to cook.
But that's not the point of this post. For anyone who's made it this far, I want to apologize for any questions submitted to this web site that went unanswered. That "Ask Me" function attracts hundreds of Spam messages, and at times they so outnumber real ones that the only thing to do is a blanket deletion, during which some real questions from real readers may wind up expunged. I have to talk to the designer who set up this site; in the meantime, my apologies. Now that I have more regular access to the computer at which I manage these things, I can check the questions every few days and weed through the Spam. It's only when I turn away for weeks at a time that the forest of Spam gets so thick I can't take the time to separate the trees, so to speak.
The kitchen's not done yet. But the dustiest part is over. Within a few days the cabinets will all be in, and I decided to buck the trend and go with a very dark-stained oak, so now I have to decide on countertops that brighten the whole deal up quite a bit. I feel certain I screwed the whole thing up. In a few weeks, when it all comes together, I'll know.
And I'll cook.
Odds and Ends. Or Perhaps I Should Call Them Scraps!
So I actually ate one of the Cookie Diet cookies. I saw two packages of them on the counter at a friend's house. I have gullible friends. I have friends obsessed with losing weight. This friend falls into both categories. She's prime cookie-diet prey.
I had somehow thought that these cookie-diet cookies were valid, true cookies, and that their consumption in the absence of other food was the secret: limit food quantity severely enough and you'll limit food calories, even if the little bits of food that you're eating are calorie-dense.
But these cookies are drier and less sweet than others. They're calorie-shaved cookies. And they're awful. Within them they've got some rice or something that, when combined with water, is supposed to create an impression of fullness in your stomach, I think.
You know what creates an impression of fullness in MY stomach? REAL food, and lots of it. You can't fool me with a tiny, specially engineered cookie.
I'm not sure, because I avoid scales (as noted at length in the book), but I think I've put on a few pounds of late. Nothing drastic, and I'm not freaking out: that's the whole point of my journey, or rather my destination. I don't give in to panic. Panic was what always got me gorging: panic about the rigors of the diet in the offing, about the deprivation around the bend.
I mention the pounds, though, because with them, if they're indeed there, has come a growing awareness that weight maintenance gets trickier as you age. Five years ago, a worry about weight gain would prompt six miles of running instead of four. That took effort, but was doable, contingent on making the time and summoning the motivation more than anything else.
But now my knees scream if I push them too hard. I can't always do six miles, or even five. There are limits to my exercise I can do---to just how many calories I can burn.
Sure, I can switch from running to something else, and from something else to something beyond that, but it's clear that, as the years go by, the containment of portions is going to have to get more emphasis than the amplification of exercise. Have to wrap my mind around that.
My Meat Loaf, Myself
These posts to date have perhaps too often involved guilty eating or thoughts on dieting, and while that's true to what frequently goes through my mind and defines my days, it's only part of the picture -- and only part of the book.
I celebrate and wallow in food at least as often as I feel nervous about overdoing it, and to that end I have lately developed a bit of fixation on meat loaf: on my mother's simple, retro, cheesy (not literally) but strangely yummy meat loaf, to be exact.
I'm not much of a cook, but her meat loaf (probably a recipe adapted from something on the back of a soup can) was one of the first "entrees," to be generous to it, that I succeeded in making when I began to try my hand in the kitchen in my early 20s.
It was also the dish that sort of put me off cooking for a good long while, because it's what was in the oven during an Oscar night dinner party 9 years ago when my inattentiveness and sloppiness led to a kitchen fire, an electrical short and, all in all, culinary disaster. My guests left hungry that night.
So it was with considerable trepidation that I returned to this meat loaf a little more than a week ago. I rounded up the ingredients -- ground beef (I went with sirloin, and definitely NOT the lean variety), tomato sauce, a big onion to be minced, and many other, lesser players --- then came home and, right away . . . problems! I forgot the bread crumbs. I didn't have the right size baking/casserole dish. Etc.
But I improvised, and found on the tail end that my improvisations, most of them intuitive and logical, worked. The meat loaf was terrific. My two dinner guests had seconds. So did I. No one left the table hungry.
Last night I loafed anew, this time trying to correct the mistakes that necessitated the improvisations and this time trying half pork with half beef. The combination definitely created a meat loaf with more flavor, more character, but it wasn't as tender and smooth and luscious at Meat Loaf No. 1.
Was the pork the difference? Or, in terms of the less tender and coarser quality, were the bread crumbs to blame. ONCE AGAIN I forgot to buy any, and while I'd adjusted the first time around by toasting slices of innocuous white bread and then smashing the toast into crumbs, this time around I had only a thicker multi-grain bread at hand. So I toasted and turned IT into crumbs. Did it substantially affect the resulting loaf?
It's a meat loaf muddle, a meat loaf mystery! But since I'm planning to press on with my loafy journey, the answers could well reveal themselves. Before I go back to this basic meat loaf, however, I'm feeling the tug of a whole new recipe, and I'm in the mood for LAMB. I could be loafing for many months at this rate.
And Now . . . the Cookie Diet?
Oh, yes! You have to read this story in the Times, linked here (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/fashion/22Skin.html?em), because it says so much about the nature of dieting, especially fad dieting.
Why is the cookie diet popular? Because it presents itself as an antidote to the deprivation and joylessness that accompany and torpedo many diets. It says: you needn't banish a favorite treat! In fact, you can subsist on it! Make indulgence itself your best weapon in the battle of the bulge! The path to thinness is paved with chocolate chips!
OF COURSE you can lose weight eating cookies, if you only eat a limited number of them and not much else, because at the core of every successful diet, be it a grapefruit-based diet or a cabbage soup diet or whatever, is a diminished calorie count. The Crisco Lard Diet would work if your daily measures of lard added up to just 1,100 calories. A tablespoon of lard every three hours! Bon Appetit!
But is the Cookie Diet encouraging a healthy relationship with food and a healthy psychology about eating? Will the Cookie Diet alumni keep their weight off?
They've followed a regimen so monochromatic and extreme it likely can't be sustained, a regimen that hasn't created good long-term eating habits. They've bought into the notion that you can manage your weight through a nifty, fun cheat (through cookies!) when you probably shouldn't, from a nutritional perspective. And the whole premise of the diet (an evil, outlawed food redeemed!) buys into a good-bad, embrace-avoid approach to thinking about eating that doesn't serve many people well. It never did anything for me.
