The End of Fat

And Maybe Fascism.

I used to think I would never be fat again.

I would look back toward college graduation, at my all-time high weight and see it distant in the rearview mirror. By now the vehicle of my life had circumnavigated the globe many times over. Distant too, was the polar opposite, a blissful blip at thirty-six, when I, a one-time marathon runner, was actually thin.

In recent years my weight steadied into “acceptable.” It even occurred to me that I was no longer fat. Really, not even overweight.

That was when alarms should have sounded.

I thought I had arrived, been granted a reprieve—deemed a victor in a battle against appetite. I thought that despite a lifetime of frequent forays into overeating, I had found a remedy—intermittent fasting, where the long interval between yesterday’s final morsels and today’s first bites forces the body to metabolize body fat. For me, intermittent fasting had finally allowed the numbers on the scale to be acceptable, within reason. With that came peace of mind, like that of the child who never again wakes up having wet the bed and who can now overnight at an aunt’s or at neighborhood sleepovers without shame or worry. (Cue Sarah Silverman’s marvelous memoir-turned-theater-piece The Bed Wetter with Adam Schlesinger’s exquisite music.)

During my respite from obesity, I believed that despite the occasional nighttime frozen pint (or once, even two)— the next morning I could climb back into the saddle of acceptable behavior and good health without the numbers on the scale betraying me. This homeostasis was thanks to intermittent fasting. I believed I could exit the grocery store at night, sit behind the steering wheel of the parked car, consume an entire bag of Snyders of Hanover cheddar cheese pretzel sandwiches, press the ignition button, and exit the parking lot with no consequence, all because I was going to delay my first meal the next day until the afternoon.

I was getting away scot free. Even when countless trips to the kitchen led to the eventual consumption of an entire box of whatever junk food resided in my cupboards, save for my inevitable dip into remorse, God was still blessing me with an acceptable BMI.

Until, He wasn’t.

I had become complacent. Seemingly no longer necessary, any past vigilance toward food dissipated. Emotional eating was simply an occasional (or nightly) activity that I engaged in without consequence. The hell of seeing a fat person in the mirror was no longer my fate. I finally earned my badge of normalcy. God had blessed me, and the Universe had relented.

Until it hadn’t.

Turns out I was playing with fire. The tide had turned. Everything started to catch up with me. It began with a couple of pounds on the bathroom scale. The digit in the tenths place went up, then the ones place, and finally, as if to confirm I was in trouble, the number in the tens place went up, and my weight entered a new decade. I was in new territory. New “old” territory.

I finally understood. The war with food had not ended after all. There was, in fact, no cease-fire. Skirmishes flared left and right, and I was the casualty.

This go-round, though, I discovered something—maybe for the first time, or maybe it was for the fortieth—my “enemy” in the decades-long conflict was never food.

Of course it wasn’t.

When you finally face the fact that the problem is not the food, it’s like you wake up to discover that all along you’ve been reading the wrong genre. The answers are not where you thought they would be. Exit the health and well-being section. Find your your way into the history aisles. Dive deep. Trust your breath. Exhale very slowly, kicking the fins with straight and powerful legs. Breast-stroke your way down, pausing to clear your ears as needed. Have a look around. Kick back up to surface for air.

History is our best teacher. I tell myself to study my own and to listen to other trusted teachers. The explorations could lead to breakthroughs. Maybe the draw to food will subside. Maybe it won’t. Still, it would be good to understand the why of it.

That is a work in progress.

Meanwhile, speaking of breakthroughs—My country needs an intervention.

Right now.

Me? I want to wave a wand and convince everybody who thinks that what is going on is alright to look closely at history, read some books. A good place to start might be books about the rise of fascism in the Twentieth Century. You don’t want to read the books? Listen to the audio versions. Can’t do that? Watch some movies about the Holocaust. Roundups of people. Deportations. People losing their humanity. Study the rise of Hitler post World War One. If after you do so, tell me how Hitler’s message to the people of Germany compares to Trump’s message today.

It’s the same outrage and victimhood. The same hate.

Read up on the fall of the Roman Empire. Learn how political instability, civil war, and corruption led to its demise. While you’re doing all that, a small request.

Could we just turn off Fox for a month? Talk to each other instead? Can we put aside our distractions? Put down social media and stop binge-watching shows? All that behavior (raising my hand as first in line, except for Fox) contribute to our dopamine addiction and unwillingness to engage in what is difficult.

I hope we can somehow put down the damn phones, get busy, and even, in my case, stay away from the junk food.

Good luck to us.