I was a chubby kid.
I was a chubby kid but I wasn’t the chubbiest kid. That was my friend Arthur, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude because he bore the brunt of the teasing that has been the lot of every chubby kid since the invention of Mallomars.
To counteract the shunning, Arthur’s parents shrewdly got a swimming pool, which greatly increased their son’s popularity, at least during the summer months.
I actually liked Arthur, though if I’m honest, I liked him better once he got the pool. His mother’s lunches were also a draw. They always included a side of potato chips because, amazingly, a Charles Chips van regularly pulled into their driveway to deliver a tin of chips the size of a hat box.
Another attraction at Arthur’s house was his dad’s nose. Fred had been an amateur boxer. He invited us to press his nose with our thumbs because from bridge to nostrils it was all squishy, either because the cartilage was gone (gone where?) or had been punched into peanut butter. Big fun.
Anyway, I was a chubby kid — or “husky,” as the boys’ clothing department more delicately put it — and except for a brief shining period in my early 20s when I came back slim and trim after six months of wandering around Europe, I’ve weighed more than I wanted to ever since. Like lots of people.
Which means that, like lots of people, the pleasure I derive from meals and snacks is oft diluted by shame: Whatever sweet, salty, buttery thing I’m eating, I probably shouldn’t be eating it.
Sometimes, when I’m disgusted with myself, I ask myself, haven’t you eaten enough cookies/cake/chocolate/ice cream/fries/bread/cheese, etc., for one lifetime?
Shouldn’t considerations of health/fitness/hotness/bank balance/duty not to deplete the Earth’s resources, etc., outweigh (so to speak) the momentary pleasure you get from whatever you find in the fridge or the pantry when you’re bored or fretful or want a break from wordsmithing?
Doesn’t over-indulging seem particularly obscene when you read about famine elsewhere in the world?
Yes, yes and yes, and yet the thing about that chew-taste-and-swallow pleasure is that, fleeting as it is, it’s reliable. And aren’t all pleasures fleeting? Isn’t life itself fleeting? Who can blame us for wanting to savor whatever is within our grasp to be savored?
Another thing about food, at least in the more prosperous sectors of this society, is that it’s abundant. Do you ever wander down the snack food aisles in the supermarket or in a gas station minimart and marvel at the sheer variety of treats we can soothe ourselves with?
What a shift in human history, from having to spend most of our waking hours foraging, as our feathered and furry friends do, to always having something to nibble near at hand!
Factor in how much more sedentary our lives have become and it’s no wonder so many of us are pudgy.
When I was younger I thought I had this all figured out. Forget bunny food and treadmills. Given a choice between living long and living well, I decided, I’d rather live well. And living well meant, in the words of an old Schlitz beer commercial, going for the gusto. Praise the Lord and pass the hot fudge sauce.
As I age, though, I realize that it’s hard to live well if you feel, as a crusty old guy I knew in California so vividly expressed it, “like a turd that’s been hit with a board.” And one decreases one’s chances of feeling well if one eats unwisely. Duh!
A few weeks back, I got my annual blood work results. Nothing hugely alarming, but glucose and cholesterol numbers were slightly high. Goodbye, hot fudge sundaes; hello, beans and greens.
For the past two weeks, I’ve mostly given up what Italian gerontologist Valter Longo calls “the poisonous five Ps — pizza, pasta, protein, potatoes and pane (or bread).” In other words, all my favorite foods. (I assume il dottore would have put gelato on his list if it started with a P.)
I didn’t think eating thus would make me miserable. It was more a sense that, at the end of the workday, there wouldn’t be as much to look forward to.
If health/fitness, etc., were not a consideration, I’d probably eat a hot fudge sundae every night. (During COVID’s quarantine phase, that’s just what I did. They were small, but still…)
To my surprise, giving up my favorite foods hasn’t been as hard as I expected it to be. For one thing, we’ve made some good beans-and-greens meals (yes, it is possible to do so).
For another, I’m coming to the end of the most draconian phase of the diet I’m following. Starting this weekend, I’m allowed to reintroduce some of the forbidden foods, to a limited extent. Half a bagel here, a slice of pizza there.
All things in moderation, right? Including abstemiousness.
“The idea,” said the anthropologist Ashley Montagu, “is to die young as late as possible.”
