#44 The Hungry Years

William Leith’s memoir is a cutting, acerbic, smart, fascinating look at one man’s struggle with obesity and weight loss. Recently, the Globe and Mail featured Leith’s book in their Summer Reading Series, and then my friend Zesty wrote a very thoughtful post about the book on her own blog last week. Needless to say, the book has been “in the news” (in terms of my small circle of online wanderings, of course).

Ads for Leith’s book were all over London when I was there, great big posters with huge letters explaining how it was the “confessions of a food addict.” Explaining with a sub-title, how this book wasn’t about “the” diet, wasn’t about the latest, greatest get-rich-type scam in terms of losing weight, but about one man’s struggle to come to terms with his own struggle with the scales.

The very first chapter of the book finds Leith on the fattest day of his life. And, like Leith, I’ve struggled on my own with extra pounds these last few years of my life; like Leith, I wake up every day on the fattest day of my life. Now for a former girl who wouldn’t be caught dead eating anything bad in public, a girl who thought that the best thing about being deathly ill in high school was getting to be super skinny, that “pretty” ex-dancer and/or girl about town, it’s really disheartening to wake up everyday knowing that you are a tubby, chubby version of your former self.

I’m not fat per se, but I am overweight for my height, like so many “average” Canadians, and like Leith, I have an unhealthy relationship with the food like potato chips, candy and/or breads. I know I’m addicted, but I just don’t have the energy to change my eating habits. And on top of that, I’m now commuting to work, so I’m not even biking that much anymore. In the end, I’m afraid the next time I get on the scale, I’ll be well above and beyond my fattest day ever.

Annnyyywaaay. Back to the book, it’s a really great read, not unlike My Year of Meats or Fast Food Nation, it’s a hyper-personal, nonfiction look at the diet industry and its gurus, with the majority of the action surrounding Leith’s interview with Dr. Robert Atkins, of the Atkins Diet fame. On the cusp of finishing the book, licking the salt and vinegar off my fingers, remnants of the latest bag of Lays to grace our household, I’ve decided that I’m going to once again try to change my eating habits.

Every couple of months or so, I try to give up eating sugar, both for the health of my poor, overworked kidneys and so that I can train my body not to look for the insulin jump it’s come to consistently crave starting every day at about 10 AM. These days, I’m dying for a chocolate bar barely after even putting a foot to my tiled floor at 6:30 in the morning. It’s too much. Sure, I can make all kinds of excuses and, like Leith, can find all sorts of psychological and physiological explanations for my own food addictions, but when it comes right down to it, a commitment to being healthy means so much more than remembering to take my meds every day (which is always a bloody struggle).

I love books that make me think, that give me lots of ammunition to make a change in my own life, but more than that, make me feel less alone when it comes to facing a mirror that reflects a lumpy, dumpy aging version of myself. In the end, it’s really up to me whether or not I actually have the conviction for change. So, starting September 1, I’ll keep you posted in terms of how well the no wheat, no refined sugar annual attempt at eating better actually goes.