quick fix

"dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es"
"tell me what you eat, and i will tell you what you are."

brillat-savarin's master-work wasn't published until two months before his death, but he already had gained a certain renommee as an epicure, and now lost in the truffled mist, a bit of a scold. he was far more impressed by a simple meal prepared with thoughtful artistry than by a groaning board of ortolans and foie gras; he was an advocate of more veggies/less meat and a harsh critic of refined flour. (although that last bit may have been a philosophical hedge to sever associations with the "let them eat cake!" crowd so recently of the rolling heads {i KNOW she never said it, but go with the flow here, ok?})

what many also miss is his more holistic inference. the excesses of the ousted aristocracy still loomed large, and most french lived a never-ending cycle of back-breaking toil, poorly fueled by gnawing hunger. he who consumed recklessly was not just disregarding his own self, but affecting the greater whole by selfishly wasting scant resources. at that point, gluttony remained a sin of the privileged class.

it took only a few decades for the industrial revolution to create a new prosperity (the 1st american skyrocket ?), a whole new paradigm for labor and leisure, and with it, burgeoning waistlines. this quickly spawned a new batch of scolds like rev. graham (he of the crunchy cracker), horace fletcher (the great masticator) and dr. kellogg (cereal AND enemas -- whooosh!)

fast forward to earl butz, a mandate for cheap food and the rushing flood of high-fructose corn syrup. et voila, welcome to the fattest country on the planet.

as referenced in my last post, we're bombarded by quick-fixes: pills, powders, frozen trays of who-knows-what; low-fat ice cream, coke with protein, oat bran cookies. add a seeming endless stream of conflicting medical studies: high-fat diets cause cancer, but low-fat regimens don't prevent it; being underweight adds years to your life, but being overweight doesn't seem to diminish longevity; south beach, atkins, ornish; the french paradox, the mediterranean diet, the 100+ year old women on that japanese island -- it could be head-spinning.

trouble is, it all lacks context and americans are all about the quick fix. i work with a woman in her 50s. last year she quit smoking (yeah!), but has since gained about 50 pounds. (uh-oh!) her son bought her a treadmill. she admits it's a clothes rack, but she keeps talking about going on jenny craig first, cuz she saw how much weight tony orlando (!!) lost. she was complaining her skin and scalp were very dry. i suggested she drink more water. "i don't like water." uh, ok. her doctor then prescribed fish oil capsules, which cost $20 a week. a regular customer was extolling omega-3 capsules, so she will buy them this weekend. it occurs naturally in many foods, but why eat salmon or eggs when you can pop a pill ?

all sorts of things can get us to a place we never thought we'd be. despair, depression, non-accountability and self-loathing all made me just lay down the reins, and the results produced a decidedly unpleasant "before". now i'm working towards the "after". the old grey mare certainly isn't what she used to be, and my metabolism and muscle memory are no longer short quick-snapping rubber bands of response. however, i don't dread going to the gym like lots of folks do and am happy when i am there. my irregular schedule makes a *set* routine impossible, but as long as i get in a certain amount of time plus each week, i feel accomplished. although my progress seems to disappoint certain observers, i can feel the changes and see improvements. i am trying to be reasonable. i no longer expect to fit into the jeans of that anorexic/bulimic 24-year-old, but there's no reason what i could wear a few years ago should remain on the rack.

a certain person is fond of reminding me i am not the person i like to think i am. what that makes me in his eyes, i'm never totally sure, but in this case, with something i really can control, i'd like to get closer to what i thought i was. ne c'est pas?

stop cancer

trapped on an exercise machine, with no beneficent tivo to edit my viewing, i see all kinds of adverts aimed at not-me. over these last weeks, i have seen tony orlando toss away his fat pants at least a hundred times. clearly i am sweating during old-lady tv time, because i heard valerie bertinelli has also thrown away her fat pants, yet i've never seen that. tying a yellow ribbon must resonate better than the hottie from a long ago and for-the-time racy sitcom. (divorced mom! 2 crazy daughters! in the city!) a show i loved (even though their clothes were decidedly mid-western and not as cool as mine, ahem) and i wanted to be valerie bertinelli and i liked her tv mom better than my real mom and then she went and married a guitar god and, well...

anyway...

over the course of my course, i see dozens of ads for diet plans and pills but none for gyms or at-home machines, so presumably the folks watching at home are fat and disinclined to exercise, but sufficiently guileless to buy a months' worth of delivered diet meals, along with "free silver serum powder" (or some such crap, sweat is in my eyes, ya know?) even though all the before and after model pics have a disclaimer: "RESULTS NOT TYPICAL". i know those jenny craig meals are tiny, so i'm guessing lots of folks just sneak around to snarf up the ben & jerry's later in the night, then bitch their diet isn't working.

i also see lots of dysfunctional penis ads, so some retired tired-out men must be watching cnn in the late morning. or maybe those ads are for the wives too? although, without the sound, those ads aren't nearly as hilarious. we all know few men would call their doctor about a 4-hour hard-on. they'd more likely call everybody but their mother to brag about it. (would i call the md on his behalf? better ask me in a few more years, cuz right now if i met a guy who could keep solid for that long, i might just request a contract amendment.) an inability to distinguish between blue and green would be a mere trifle with such relentless wood. (brand new meaning to the "splendid splinter.") the dizziness and fainting might be a bit more troubling, but hell, just stay horizontal with your perpendicular manhood. without the sound, it's hard to tell what they're all on about. there is one with this couple sitting in side-by-side bathtubs, holding hands, on a hilltop, watching the sunset. wtf? is there water in the tubs? wouldn't it get too cold to enjoy unless it was over 100 degrees outside? (we all know for me the ambient temp would need to be upwards of 120, in which case my partner would be the holder of a badly poached sausage.) is that foreplay when you're 60? sunbeams, porcelain and pollen?

sandwiched between the ads and the promos are the shreds of news. one of the *top* stories today was of a prostate cancer study. did men not formerly live long enough to get this ?

recommendations for prevention (bullet point lists hold far more gravitas {as do latin words}):

• eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grains
• eat less meat
• stop smoking
• exercise regularly

other than the not-ready-for-daytime-tv advice of more fucking missing from the list, i ask you, is this not the kind of thing that makes you go "DUH!"? even homer simpson knows he *should* exercise, lol.

i think from now on i'll bring a magazine. or at least for 2 weeks until i can gloat watching looped espn highlights of the pats kicking the giants' collective ass. :)

trapped in amber

memory plays cruel tricks, and one of the worst is that in our heads, everybody remains as last we saw them. this can be misty and kind, as in the friend or lover we never picture with 10 (or) more years on him. i'm not one for criss-crossy karma paths and such, and "oh! maybe we weren't quite ready in a former reincarnation, but this time..." over is over, no matter how pink the mist and how fondly we remember what-have-you. yet i think partners/lovers/fuckers need to give each other credit for possible growth. i've never liked milk, but that doesn't mean the rest of me is carved in stone too, ya know?

i don't think we shift our core. rather, it's that we learn or choose to change our responses, to better suit that center. that part that we gradually learn to accept and honor, without false choices, without guile.

"remember when i did x, which made you do y?" yes, i do, but that was years ago, and i'm not certain i'd react quite the same way, so why are *you* ?" (generic/royal you, of course.) in *your* head, am i that limited ? there is no room for change or growth ? i see *you* behaving in new ways. i know that i am too.

do you see?

i can no longer just stay still.

attack of the blobs

previous posts have been whiny bitch-fests about the dire quality-time i spend on the t. the personal equivalent of chinese toy-factory rejects that get shipped gratis, chipped lead paint and all, to botswana. all those hours, all week, i'm exposed to an excess of humanity, both in their excesses and excessiveness. the i-pod so loud i can hear the throbbing spanish 5 seats away, the backpack that's bigger than a marine's in kandahar immobile in front of both opening doors, the surreal slo-mo of doped out oxy dudes, the retarded couple's slap fight, the kids released from the confines of school carrying on like crazies, the puking, the broken arms...

but this one is about the bigguns.

previously i wrote about the incredible traveling breakfast buffet girl. in 30 minutes she consumed 3 distinct masses of mess from dunkins', each with its own heavy sticky schmear. it was an amazing feat of consumption. well, i saw her again this week, on the platform. if she hadn't been stuffing her face, i'm not convinced i'd have recognized her. but she was gnawing at something in the brown dd bag. i took the next train, so only got the preview of her lunch-time performance.

yesterday, not one, not two, but THREE parties who initially insisted on sitting in a booth at the restaurant subsequently asked to move, "because the booth was too small." i'd initially headed towards tables, seeing their girth. i watched with embarrassment while they tried wedging themselves in and even their sweat couldn't grease 'em up enough.

last night i watched (well, out of the corner of my eye) 2 people who took up 4 seats on the t. shoelaces undone because their feet were so fat. gender utterly uncertain because they were just so big. incredibly obese women can become hirsute, and really porky guys just get so soft and rolly, you're not sure they have a package down there. initially, i thought they were siblings, but then disturbing strokes of affection started happening and i got squicked. face piercings, neck tattoos, ear stretchers... um, you hate your appearance how much?

this morning, 2 girls (pink coats...) sat one behind the other, but each took up both seats. no way even nicole ritchie at her most bulimic matchstickiness could have perched on the other seat. i marveled at how they were stuffed in their puffy coats. they were extra loud, but both had very pretty eyes. one had an elaborate face tattoo, snaking down into her coat. they both had lots of face jewelry.

not long ago, i saw video of a girl down south who was about 10 and so fat she had to crab and scutter around the house. too fat to get on the schoolbus or in the car, she weighed close to 400 pounds and hadn't left the house for months. a dear friend sent me the article on the 8-month old chinese baby who weighs nearly 100 pounds. he can't crawl or turn himself over. their parents keep feeding them and just remain amazed at their ever-growing appetites.

the upsurge of the obese and their cousin the super-obese is no news. hell, there are web-sites that sell leg straps to pull your thick unmanageable thigh out of your car and brushes to scrub away the unknown from between your folds. what's fascinated me these last few encounters is how they become so big their gender is rendered naught. is that why they grow themselves so much? they manifest their self-loathing to the degree that nobody, literally, can get close?

why is there no "off" switch? i know food is cheaper, relatively, than at any time in our history on the planet. i know bad calories are cheaper than good calories. in other words, you can get full on big macs way before you get full on the dollar-equivalent of carrots. but when was that zeitgeist moment when it became ok to be enormous? in my school we had 2 girls and 1 boy like that. now i see them pile on the train in the afternoon and i wonder if they all have their insulin pens?

when i become empress of the universe, i will atomize all the corn fields -- presto-chango, no more hfcs. ok, not all of 'em, cuz i'll still want corn on the cob, but nearly all of them and that good eating corn is a different breed anyway.

yesterday i read that the wic vouchers mothers receive have a monthly allowance of $6 for fresh fruits or vegetables. you can buy boxed pudding or a supermarket cake with that gritty waxy frosting (how do they make something that should be smooth seem like it has mica in it?) and packed in a plastic dome or shrink-wrapped baloney, but precious few apples and broccoli.

so i'll end this on another giant wtf, and a bit less surprise at the 400-pound kids of color i keep seeing.

quotable

“the infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists — that is why they invented hell.”

~~bertrand russell

l'avoir tout

president sarkozy married carla bruni this weekend. she of the staggering cheekbones and he de le poids petite.

his marriage to another former model was over when he was elected, but this has been a whirlwind even by french standards. they met in november, she is rumored to be preggers and the french are hating the whole thing -- and not for the american faux-reason of bitter wife left in dust.

let's see: bruni was born into a wealthy artistic family, heiress to a tire fortune. she is expensively-educated and speaks three languages fluently. she is gorgeous. at 19 she was the star of a guess? jeans campaign and went on to become one of the 90s super-super-models, working for dior, givenchy, and yves-ste-laurent. she was arm candy for clapton, jagger, costner and well, er, trump. (shudder to think, but who knows. big schlong? magic tongue? maybe just the billions, dunno.) she retired gracefully and began a singing career. her albums have been commercial successes. did i mention she is gorgeous?

at one point she was involved with an older writer. they joined his son and daughter-in-law for a holiday. the son left with bruni and divorced his wife (daughter of bernard levy). the spurned wife wrote a memoir as purported fiction in which the female enemy is described as a "preying mantis with a terminator smile." she behaved "as if the world was hers, and guys as well." the real-life bruni revels in her rep as a man-eater and a year ago said: "everyone knows that husbands are rarely stolen; you either know how to keep them or you don’t." no need to drag my crispy feet over those hot coals right now, lol, but i think we know what she meant.

and that, my friends, is the crux. she is someone who has everything. if she doesn't already have it and decides she wants it, she gets it. wives, lovers and the press can go fuck off. *everybody else*? those who can no longer smoke at the cafe, but play patanque on saturdays and dutifully make love to their epouse a few times a month when she says ok, marvel at the latitude. that resentful pruned-up epouse? she hates a self-determined woman like bruni and thus hates sarkozy for wanting her.

me? i have had my man-eater days. i have cut my swath and have nothing left to prove. i have willingly lain on blazing brimstone and then got what i thought i'd never have -- the perfect man for me. one who always wants more. :)