Fat and Unhappy

draft

Letter to my friend Andy about being overweight.

The situation about losing weight seems to be somewhat complicated. It doesnt seem to be so much about the "healthiness" of the food I eat, although that is part of it, but is probably about the amount/calories thereof. I have been cooking at home every meal for about 15 years. I am a lacto vegetarian (which means I eat cheese and butter, but avoid eggs and of course meat of any type). But I have decades of bad food habits, big meals, and medicating anxiety with food. I have a sweet tooth. My metabolism has changed with age (my father warned me of this) and my exercise per day has gone way down. If you subscribe to the calorie theory of weight loss (and I only sortof do), then you realize to your horror that one scone may be the total calories permissible in a day. To that add the interesting evidence of calorie restriction and life extension, and you realize that you (or me, rather) is / are fucked. I have a variety of different cost/quality equations that I use to control my expenditures and I am most excellently knowledgable about reducing cost in this area, but sadly that would reduce fresh fruits and vegetables and increase carbohydrates. Bad. So I increase costs and eat healthy home made soups, stews and salads. Non fat dressing. Olive oil when an oil is used. Try to keep a lid on the amount of cheese, use half the butter a recipe calls for. On the other hand, life is short, and food is a big part of the pleasure I am permitted to get in this disgusting world we live in. With the orange moron as president and my life and career a ruin, who would begrudge me a half a stick of butter to make blueberry ersatz scones once in a while? Is that so much to ask from life?

So I am fat and unhappy and that is not the way its supposed to be.

Add to that the local culture where all the people here look like they just stepped out of a Nike catalog (and possibly did) and the situation is worse. And everyone here eats kale and my feeling is that the only people who are qualified to eat kale are people from the South, probably black, and they use a lot of tasty pig fat when they do so, and cook the shit out of the stuff. I dont go with this healthy kale thing.