Читать книгу The Philosopher's Diet - Richard Watson - Страница 4

FAT. I PRESUME YOU want to get rid of it. Then quit eating so much. No normal, healthy person on the good green earth ever got thinner without cutting down on caloric intake. Do a few exercises, don't eat so much, and you will lose weight.

Ah, but it's not so easy. Else why would there be such a market for diet books? The reason is a secret I intend to tell.

There are a lot of good things about fat. For one thing it tastes good, especially in ice cream or dripping from hot barbecued ribs. More important, you could not live without it. Your body is working all the time, heart beating, blood circulating, lungs breathing, and unless you eat all the time, fuel must be stored to keep the body working. Fat is fuel. Human bodies are superb organisms for storing fat, presumably because our ancestors evolved through times of feast and famine. There is nothing wrong with having a little store of fat right now. When you read in the newspaper about people marooned in Alaska by an airplane crash, you find that the fat ones survive. And it is always good to have some fat in excess in case you get sick and lose weight. Once the fat goes, your body starts eating up your muscles and organs, and then you are really in trouble. Fat helps keep you warm, too, in case the airplane crashes in cold water. Skinny people starve and freeze a lot sooner than fat people. That's why many Americans who lived through the Depression and Germans who lived through World War II are fat today: they don't trust tomorrow. As for today, there is always unemployment, and it could happen to you, My brother-in-law, who is an ex-air-traffic controller, particularly advises anyone who intends to strike against the government to fatten up first.

So what are diet books for? They provide light reading for moderately heavy people. Just reading a diet book relieves some anxiety about one's weight. This is because most people who buy diet books aren't really fat. They fret about it a lot, but these diet groupies are seldom more than 20 or 30 pounds over the average healthy weight recommended by doctors and federal agencies. Suppose you are a man who "ought" to weigh 150, but you weigh 175. Or a woman who "ought" to weigh 110 but weighs 130. You may look pudgy in comparison with fashion models, but you can carry it. Listen, the government gives you some leeway when it comes to fat. The Feds set a standard, but you have to be fat to get turned down by the Army. Consider someone with high standards. The painter Peter Paul Rubens would not have looked twice at most of today's self-designated overweight women. And he did not love fat women: his models were voluptuous. A lot of us have a thing about voluptuous women. They have always done all right, they are doing all right, they always will do all right.

Really fat people seldom buy diet books and seldom go on diets. Some of them are not very healthy, some of them have quite serious problems, and some of them don't care. Not one in a thousand of the obese thinks a diet book will help, so they don't bother. Still, there are always exceptions, and my book could be for one of them, too.

Let's get back to your average "overweight" American. People usually fret about fat because of vanity. Deep down, of course, most of us know that we will never look like a fashion model. We are not built that way, we cannot afford that kind of clothing or would not wear such a bathing suit. We know it would be a lot of trouble, even if we were, could, or would. On top of all that, we keep growing older. Still, we can dream that we look like the beautiful ones. Just going on a diet makes you feel better about your looks, and there is the added pleasure of boring your friends by talking about your diet.

The diet industry (philosophical analysis reveals) is part of the entertainment business. It belongs to the specialized branch that manufactures unnecessary things to do. Going on a diet is like playing solitaire. But unlike playing solitaire, dieting is approved by most people as an activity requiring moral fiber. To attain this preferred status, start a diet and (most important) tell people you have. You can talk self-righteously about dieting in any company. Almost nobody takes off a lot of fat and keeps it off. If they do, serious dieters ostracize them. The only socially acceptable thin dieters are those who write the diet books, although you will find that they have few fat friends.

Dieting is a serious business, but most dieters are not serious about maintaining the weight they reach after they have taken off a few pounds. They gain them back, and then lose them again. "Oh, here I go again," they say.

What if you do want to take the fat off and keep it off? That's an interesting question. So is the answer. But it will take a while. Hang on.

Let's start like a philosopher, with another question. Are many Americans as overweight as they think they are? Consider a government formula for determining the average weight of American adults who range from about 5'0" to 6'4" tall. For men, you count 110 pounds for the first 5 feet and add 51/2 pounds for each inch above 5 feet. For women, you count 100 pounds for the first 5 feet and add 5 pounds for each inch above 5 feet. Thus, the average weight of an American woman 5'3" tall is 115 pounds. This is dry, nude weight. Weights more or less on this order are "right" for normal healthy people. A lot of people fit in that range. (Where do you think they got the average in the first place? By weighing a lot of Americans, adding up all their weights, and averaging them out.)

There are many healthy men 5'8" tall who weigh anywhere between 134 and 174 pounds. What if you dressed them all in three-piece suits? They would all look much the same unless you stood a pair of the extremes side by side. If you check in at the average weight, do you get a prize? No, all the weights in this 40-pound range are normal.

Indeed, there is no reason why the average should even be healthy. Dr. George Sheenan (who wrote a column for Runner's World) claims that the healthiest weight is 10 percent below the average. Thus, the healthiest 5'8" male (all other things being equal) would weigh 138.6 pounds, and the healthiest 5'3" female, 103.5 pounds. That's where the squeeze begins. Suppose you are a perfectly comfortable 5'8" male weighing in at 174 pounds. If you want to be at the national average, you must lose 20 pounds. But if you want to be healthiest according to Dr. Sheehan, you've got to lose 30.8 pounds.

You need not stop there. Dr. Ernst van Aaken (who also wrote a column for Runner's World) says the best running weight is 20 percent off the average. So a 5'3" woman weighing 130 pounds, though perfectly within the normal average range, would have to lose 15 pounds to match the abstract American average, 26.5 pounds to be healthy according to Dr. Sheehan, and 38 pounds to run for Dr. Van Aaken.

I know people who have the magic weights, but almost none of them dieted to get there. In fact, most of those who fall below the American average are trying to gain weight to reach it.

If this is beginning to seem pretty silly, that's just the point. Because you don't fit the government's figure for average weight exactly does not mean that you should fret about fat and dieting or that you are overweight or unhealthy. The average figure is simply an abstract measurement and has no necessary connection whatever with health or being overweight. If everyone were really unhealthily overweight, then the average would be unhealthy. As it turns out, the American average is perfectly healthy according to most of the medical profession. If you want to get down to Dr. Sheehan's figure, fine, it probably won't hurt you. Unless you want to be a world-class runner, however, or you just naturally weigh very little, stay away from Dr. Van Aaken. Furthermore, if you do have to lose weight because of a heart problem, diabetes, or whatever, your doctor will either scare the dickens out of you so you stay on your diet, or he won't and you might die. I would stick to my diet if my doctor told me I would pop off otherwise.

Now does all this rather ridiculous fretting about your weight do you any harm? Nah. Or, let's put it this way: if you have anorexia nervosa you might starve yourself to death, and if you have bulimia you might eat yourself to death. If you are not sick, fretting about your weight is probably better for you than fretting about something you can't do anything about, such as whether or not someone will push a button and start the nuclear holocaust.

My sister Connie, who is a radicalized housewife and "part-time" employee in one of America's major service industries ("part-time" in quotes because although she works full-time, they won't designate her as such, for then they'd have to pay benefits), points out to me that being overweight in America has nothing to do with health, but everything to do with fads and fashions. Women who are much above or even at the average figure are perceived as being overweight. This perception, usually more by other women than by men, is what is important. You might conclude that if you don't want to be seen as a fat slob, then diet. I'm opposed to this kind of argument. You shouldn't diet just because the clothing industry hires emaciated models. Let's try to rise above that kind of pressure.

Still, I know that it doesn't help to be told that Polynesians and Turks and Peter Paul Rubens love fat women. Or that Lillian Russell, the toast of the 1890’s, weighed 200 pounds and was thought to be a sylph. Today, you don't have to be as thin as Twiggy or David Bowie to get admiring comment from your friends. All you have to do is stay on the low side of Roseanne Arnold and Marlon Brando.

You could just wait. Styles are bound to change, but what about all the subtle peer pressure that is so pervasive now, however faddish? Well, all right, there is a way. You can lose weight and keep it off if you want to do the necessary work.

It is very hard to do, but it won't hurt you (or anyone else). In the long run it probably will be healthy for you — if you succeed and stick with it, that is. Don't keep gaining and losing a lot of weight over and over; that's not good for you. So stay up or down, one or the other. You want to go down? Right.

I don't want to bother with you unless you are serious about losing at least 20 pounds. If you want to lose 30, it will be even more fun. If you want to shed even more, I might get you down, but it would be awfully hard to keep you there. Let's be reasonable. Suppose you're a woman 5'3" tall, weighing in at 130 pounds, and you want to weigh 110 pounds. One hundred and ten pounds forever! Let's do it. (If you are a man, make the necessary changes in the example, mutatis mutandis, as we philosophers say.)

How? Without mincing words: eat less. But that alone is not enough, for you also have to learn how to eat differently from the way you are eating now so you can stay at 110 when you get there. You must modify your eating behavior. You begin by reading inspirational literature. I'll provide my share in these pages, but I can't begin to provide enough. So the first thing you must do is go out to buy or borrow some books on dieting, calories, fat, salt, fiber, sugar, exercise, fasting, and natural foods. It does not matter which books you get — go for quantity not quality. And do go out. As you'll see, leaving the kitchen for exercise is part of the program. Lots of books. Put some in the bathroom, some by your bed, some in the kitchen, and a couple in your briefcase or backpack or purse, and some in your desk at home and some in your desk at work. You will read these books over and over again. It feels good to read them, even when you are off your diet. Inspirational literature assures you that somebody cares, that there is a way, and that you can be saved.

Ready? Now you must face the primary truth of dieting. Losing weight means cutting down on the food you eat. Across the board. Food fad diets lead neither to health nor to permanent weight loss. Those nutty diets are fun to read about, and some of the craziest books are the best inspirational reading, but you certainly cannot live the rest of your life on grapefruit or steak. People who take weight off with crank diets may be highly visible dieters, that is, they do a lot of dieting in public, but they are not serious about taking weight off and keeping it off. To do that, you have to establish a balanced diet that you can maintain after you reach your desired weight. You can find out about the normal healthy balance of foods by reading almost any book on health and nutrition. I'm just going to assume that you know. Then you cut down, keeping the healthy nutritional balance, until you start to lose weight. I know you are in a hurry, so let's start with a 900-calorie diet. That's 900 calories a day, and it isn't much.

Memorize the figures in one of your calorie counters (you need several of them, of course). This is not hard to do because you can lump the foods in categories and fairly soon learn that a large apple or orange or a medium banana is about 100 calories, most cheeses are about 100 calories an ounce, and so on. Just take your normal balanced diet and cut it down to 900 calories.You can look in any number of books that provide balanced 900-calorie diets of normal food. Step one is to get on a 900-calorie diet and stick to it.

Parenthetically, let me now give a crucial instruction. Always count your calories. You will soon learn to keep track in your head, but if you tend to cheat unconsciously, write them down. You might as well get used to counting calories, because you will probably have to do it the rest of your life. Calories are additive from day to day, so if you eat 100 too many one day, cut off 100 the next day. Does that mean that if you fast for two days on a 900-calorie diet, you can gorge on 2700 calories the third day? I suppose, but that is not exactly what philosophers mean by either a balanced diet or a balanced life.

It may take a long time for you to reach your desired weight, but when you do, here is step two. Go to a 1500-calorie diet. Try it for a week. If you continue to lose, increase it to 1800. You may have to juggle it back and forth, but at 5'3" for a woman, trying to hold firm, you might reach a maintenance diet of between 1800 and 2200 calories. For a 5'8" man, it might be between 2000 and 2400 calories.

After you establish a maintenance diet for your desired weight, you are ready for permanent step three.

You must always eat your maintenance diet to stay at your desired weight. Eating exactly the right amount to stay trim may be something rats and raccoons in the wild do instinctively, but we humans are domesticated animals, like pigs, and most of us will eat whatever is put in the trough until it's gone. You must continue to count the calories. Cut down on the morrow what you over-ate the day before. Keeping the faith is keeping count.

Not so easy?

I agree. The program I've outlined is too reasonable to be easy. It isn't radical enough. What's more, it won't work.

It won't work because you are still eating all the stuff you like, the sort of food you have always eaten. Once you get down to your desired weight and ease off, you will start eating more and more of the same old things again, and whammo! you will soon be bloated again. It isn't radical enough to work because it does not change your eating habits in the right way. To lower your weight 20 pounds or more and keep that lower weight is to change your life. Anyone can go on a diet. Let's make a real change.

What tastes best? What do we all crave? Sugar. During the last 100 years or so, the average American went from consuming about 12 pounds of processed sugar a year to consuming over 100 pounds a year. Because it was there. A healthy person needs absolutely none of that processed sugar. So cut it out. In effect, you must avoid almost all processed foods — foods that come sealed in bags, boxes, packages, cans, bottles, and jars. You think I'm kidding, don't you? Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. If you follow my advice you will eat better in two senses: first, fresh food is better for you, and second, it tastes better than processed foods. Here is why.

Foods are processed so they can be preserved for storage and shipment. Although some of the chemicals used as preservatives may eventually cause cancer, so does the polluted air you breathe, and I'm not going to get off on that subject. The main problem with processed foods is that they contain enormous quantities of salt and sugar. These are added as preservatives and taste-enhancers. Also, meat, fruit, and vegetables on the verge of spoiling can be made quite palatable with salt and sugar. Salt makes you want to eat and drink more. Sugar is addicting. It is perfectly intelligent marketing practice, then, for manufacturers to shoot processed foods full of salt and sugar (and if both are put in at the same time, they counteract each other so even more can be put in). Is it surprising that manufacturers want you to eat more of their foodstuffs? Another addicting additive is caffeine. Add eight teaspoons of sugar, some flavor, and a bit of caffeine to eight ounces of carbonated water, and you have one of the best selling drinks in the world. At least knock off the sugar. If you need the caffeine, drink coffee, black. If you still crave the carbonation, you'd best go to seltzer water. From what I can make of all the reports, the artificial flavors, colorings, and sweetenings in diet drinks may be more harmful in the long run than the sugar-loaded originals.

You need the sugar? There is plenty of sugar in fresh fruits and vegetables, and the carbohydrates in grains are converted to sugar in your stomach. Two medium-sized apples have about the same amount of sugar as a bottle of soda pop. And besides giving you lots of vitamins and minerals and roughage, two apples will probably cut down your total consumption in a way a bottle of soda pop will not.

The worst processed food is, of course, sugar itself. Your body turns excess sugar into fat. Does eating a lot of sugar cause hypoglycemia or diabetes? Does smoking cause lung cancer? It seems likely that increased consumption of sugar during the last 100 years has had something to do with the great increase of these diseases during that time. Just because the exact sequence of causes and effects cannot always be determined is no reason to deny the probability. Eat lots of sugar if you like, but no one can help you lose weight and keep it off if you do.

The other major processed food is white flour. Like sugar, it has been available to common folk for only about a hundred years, and it consists pretty much of pure starch. Processors take out the germ and take off the skin so you don't get the vitamins, minerals, and roughage. Of course, white bread is fortified. But the point I'm leading up to is that even if you avoided sugar but continued to eat processed white flour — something almost impossible to do unless you eat flour from a bag with a spoon because everything made from white flour has sugar in it — you would still be laying on a lot of fat quickly because starch turns into sugar in the digestive process. Like sugar, white flour is always void of any nutritional element other than calories, lots of bare calories easily assimilated into your fat system.

Knock off all processed sugar and processed flour. This means spurning almost all processed foods because, as I say, almost all of them contain either sugar or white flour. Eat whole-grain breads. But be sure to read the labels. You will learn that even "wholewheat" bread sometimes contains white flour. Of course, wholegrain breads contain starch that turns to sugar, too, but at least they provide needed roughage at the same time. As for sugar, be advised that brown sugar, fruit sugar, turbino sugar, raw sugar, molasses, syrup, and honey are all sugar. Yes, I know honey is natural, but it is also processed. Bees process it: they extract it from sweet flower nectar and refine it into honey. Give up honey. And grit your teeth, because for some of you, the worst is yet to come.

What do you put in your coffee or tea? Milk? Lemon? Alcohol? A bit of brandy in your coffee? Alas, alcohol is right in there with sugar and white flour, but I am trying to be reasonable, and since most American adults drink, all I can say is count the calories. I don't advise a diet of 900 calories of beer a day, but it has been done. It isn't a good idea. Wine is loaded with sugar. Well, it's up to you.

Instead of processed foods containing sugar and white flour, you eat fresh vegetables, raw or lightly cooked. Don't add sugar. Eat whole-grain breads and pastas, eggs, milk, cheese, fresh meat and fish.

What about butter, oil, and lard? Fatty meats? Your body needs fat, you know. Go ahead and eat them. Just count the calories. If you stay on your diet, whether to lose weight or to maintain it, you aren't likely to eat enough fat to hurt yourself. Some crank diets consist only of meat and fat, and of course Eskimos once were quite healthy on nothing else. We fixed the Eskimos by exporting sugar and white flour (and smallpox) to the Arctic Circle.

Eat meat. Deep-fry it if you will. Just count the calories. I don't ask you to be a vegetarian, but you will find that you can eat more food if you concentrate on vegetables and cut down on meat and fat. If you are used to eating a lot, you may find that high-bulk, low-calorie foods weigh heavily on the scale of desirability when you're on your diet.

The crucial thing, the radical thing, the thing that makes this hard enough to be interesting and thus workable, is cutting out processed foods. You have to modify your behavior by eating less overall. But just cutting down on calories while eating the same old foods will not modify your eating behavior sufficiently to make you stay the course. Cutting out processed foods just might do it.

Now it is time to run back to your friends or the library or the bookstore to get more books, low-calorie cookbooks, natural-food cookbooks, no-sugar, no-white-flour cookbooks. Add these cookbooks to your library on inspirational literature. Read and think thin. You can lose weight and keep it off. People do. You will have to change most of your eating and cooking routines? Good. You're on your way to a wonderful world of new taste sensations.

I just heard my sister say, "Bull."

"Oreos and donuts and malted milks and Shakey's pizza," that's what she's saying.

OK, OK, I did not say it would be easy. At first it will be hell. And that's what I'm counting on. I mean, if you are not tough enough to go through the initial withdrawal symptoms, then buzz off. You don't get something for nothing. Most Americans can hardly conceive of going off processed foods. And sure, once you've been on your maintenance diet for several years, you can probably handle, say, a milkshake now and then. (It won't taste the same.) Right now it's cold turkey. Just knock off sugar-full, fat-full processed foods and go on from there. You want a new life, don't you? A wonderful new life at that sexy, perennial, steady, stable, new low weight? Well, then, do what I say.

It is not impossible. Of course, I know you go out to dinner. Go, and eat what is set in front of you. You are not playing around this time, however, so please don't indulge in the dieter's game of one-upping the hostess as you refuse to eat the mashed potatoes and gravy, only to give in by taking a full serving of the chocolate pie. Try to eat less if you can without being conspicuous; refuse dessert if possible. If you blow it, you blow it. The real test is the next day.

Start over again. It will be painful. One helpful trick is to make sure before you go out that you leave only fresh fruit and vegetables in the refrigerator to snack on. If you don't keep powdered sugar donuts in the house, you can't pig out on them. You are always weakest after a feast, because you think that a bit more can't do much worse than has already been done. It can. A meal you have to eat to be civilized and social is one thing, but breaking your diet on your own can destroy all you have built up, like W. C. Fields's fatal glass of beer. So remove temptation.

You have children, so the house is full of junk food? They would be better off on your diet, too. Don't tell me, I know how hard it is, I tried. About the best advice I can give you is to make sure your spouse is on the diet, too. Then have only one child (two parents outnumber one child). Children raised on this diet will prefer it, at least for a while. When they get older, they will rebel. Fine, that's normal. You have to let them go sometime. Maybe later on they'll come back to the wisdom of your ways. If they've been on processed and junk foods for years before you started your diet, remember that you were, too. You can try to bring them around, but don't go to war with them over it. They will grow up someday, and perhaps even leave home (that's a family joke). In any event, nobody can be forced to diet like this. You have to do it on your own.

If you take someone out to dinner, try to pick a natural-food or vegetarian or Chinese restaurant where there is some chance of your keeping somewhere near your diet. Did I say Chinese restaurant? White rice is as bad as white flour. Watch out for couscous, too.

You will know that you are making progress when you find that a raw carrot tastes very sweet. Peas have a lot of natural sugar in them, have you noticed yet? After a while you will tend towards salads (plain vinegar and oil, please) simply because you need to stuff your gut, and salads have a lot of bulk. Vegetables. Whole grains. You are counting calories so carefully that you begin to think twice before you blow a lot of them on a small piece of meat. When you start finding that you prefer vegetable casserole to a steak, you're on your way. This fresh food routine forces your eating behavior away from the high-calorie meat, potatoes and gravy, and pie most Americans grew up on. The vegetarian health books you are reading for inspiration will tell you that cutting down on meat is healthy for you. Probably it is, but that doesn't matter so much by itself. What matters now is that you are making a radical alteration in your eating habits. You have to, if you are to maintain your desired weight once you get down to it. Have I already said that if you just cut down the quantity of what you have been eating before, you will eventually start eating just as much of the same old stuff again and gain back all the weight you have lost? I know I have said that. So I'll say it again. If you just cut down on what you have been eating before, you will eventually start eating just as much of the same old stuff again and gain back all the weight you have lost. That's the way inspirational writing goes, you know. Repetition, repetition, the same thing over and over again. And that is the way your old eating habits have been, isn't it? The same old foods over and over again. And what has been the result? Fat.

Fat! Fat! Fat!

Cut it out.

By now you may think that I'm a fanatic and want you to be one, too. Maybe. Maybe not. I am trying to turn you into a very committed person. If you are not absolutely determined to make this change, you won't make it. I am trying to help you. Put your mind to it. Do it. The rules are quite simple. Get off most processed foods, eat 900 calories a day until you reach your desired weight (when you are forced to break your diet or when you have a relapse, buckle down and start over again), and then increase calories until you reach your maintenance level, and stay there. The change to fresh foods will wean you off your old eating habits, and before long — a year or two — you will find that your new diet really does satisfy your reformed appetite.

Yes, it will take years. But it gives you something to do, doesn't it? And if it is worth doing, so what if it takes years? You knew it was not easy before you opened this book. In fact, you know that it may be one of the hardest things you've ever done in your life.

Now some philosophy. Don't you want to have done something difficult in your life? It may seem a rather small thing to be proud of, if you are a 5'3" female, say, and have managed to stay at 110 pounds for five years, ten years, twenty years. Especially when there are women 5'3" tall, weighing 110 pounds, who never thought about what they ate in their lives. What counts is that it's hard for you. If you can't take satisfaction in knowing how hard it is to do something difficult, and in having done it, then forget it.

I'm not begging you to do this. I'm just writing the first chapter of a book on life and what it all means, and it turns out that what clutters the unexamined life is, you guessed it: fat. Everybody in America relates to fat these days. The worry about being overweight is largely a pseudo-fret, as I have shown, but there is something under it. Somebody out there is putting a lot of pressure on us to lose weight. If this diet appeals to you, try it. Whether you do or not, keep reading about it. It's inspirational. And it has a certain form we can use.

If you succeed, you will be entirely different from the usual American dieter. The norm is up and down, up and down. These people have a lot of fun with their ostentatious periodic diets. Diet talk fills up space at American cocktail parties, and that's helpful. You can tell people all about your diet over white wine, skimmed-milk cheese, and wheat thins.

There is a qualitative difference between what I'm offering and the usual diet game. How likely do I think it is that many people will take me up on this challenge? Not very likely. Not many people. That doesn't matter. There will be a few. Like world-class marathon running, this is not the sort of thing that many people are going to go for. But it is worth doing, just for the doing of it. Is it you?

Before you answer, let's consider another question. What does fat mean in America today? Throughout history a fat baby has been a healthy baby. Fat men were rich, and fat women sexy. Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins, but the Christian middle class in Europe and America has overwhelmingly outweighed any other class one-for-one ever since the industrial revolution. Walk through the shopping centers and restaurants of middle America today. The men have bellies like barrels, the women arms like hams. They eat, eat, and eat. Where can you see their like? Women in Greece. Men in Germany. These are big people. Their backsides come one to a bushel, and not one in a hundred of them has read a book on losing weight. For the masses, for the proletariat, for the workers and bourgeoisie, fat means affluence. Fat people are made fun of on television, but the real hee-haws are for people on diets. It stands to reason: if you can afford it, you would be a fool not to eat good.

Who, then, are the millions who read diet books? Of what class? Movie stars? Jet setters? The rich, powerful, and visible? Some, but mostly the same middle classes, city folk. Still, dieters crosscut all income brackets and geographical boundaries. What's the matter with them?

They can't all be frightened by scare tactics used by those in the diet and health-food industries who profit from this obsession with fat. Look how many Americans have successfully stopped smoking. These are people running scared. Now consider how many people manage to change their lives in a similarly drastic fashion by losing weight and keeping it off. Very few. Is maintaining a diet any more of a change of life than stopping smoking, any more difficult? You wouldn't think so, but count your friends. A lot more of them have successfully quit smoking than have kept off weight. I don't think many of them take their dieting seriously. They are not running scared.

Fat does have a bad press, though. Some even say that fat equals death. They exaggerate. Of course, extra weight does strain the system. Your muscles and organs have to work harder when there is all that fat to maintain and carry around. A strain on the heart, they say. And there are those plaques of cholesterol, packing up your blood vessels, breaking loose and clogging the bloodstream. Cholesterol has a mixed press these days. What seems to be settling out is what we knew all along: the body has to have fat, and if you don't eat cholesterol, you will manufacture it internally. People with high cholesterol counts do have heart attacks. There is a causal relation here more easily traceable than the track from that first cigarette to death from lung cancer. But you don't have to smoke. You've got to eat.

In the past, East and West, fat always meant life, fertility, beauty, health, happiness, and joy. Today you hear people saying such things as: "A fat ugly man." "She lay there like a mound of fat." "There goes old lard-ass." Yes,these do ring true. They have put across the notion that fat is ugly, which leads to the pop-psychology notion that a lot of fat is defensive. It protects shy boys and girls from having to interact as sexual beings with other girls and boys. Wives put on fat to turn off their husbands, who read Playboy (but did you ever see a skinny Bunny?). Men get fat so they won't have to fulfill their marital duties. How about fat as a sexual turnoff? It sounds good, but I doubt that it cuts the birthrate. The fact is that in times of famine, women quit ovulating. What is truly ugly and the true sign of death is emaciation.

I think this is why people often don't take fat very seriously as a threat. They recognize it as a sign of well-being. As people mature and get on in life, they just naturally get bigger. Nervous, skinny people are annoying. Even if they advance in the world, they don't seem quite to have made it. My brother Jim (a China scholar) would ask: "What's wrong with them? If they're so rich and successful, why aren't they fat?"

Yes, the good things about fat seem to be too strong for most people to resist. To resist? Isn't there something wrong in a culture where the traditional image of the good life is denied? Anybody who has to ask what it all means is in trouble. And a culture in which millions of people are alienated from fat is also in trouble.

We'll come back to this. Meanwhile, back at the fat farm ...

When someone trains for the marathon, he or she does not pay much attention to pop psychology like the above. I'll talk about running in a later chapter, but now I want simply to remark that readers who have seriously decided to fight fat have probably yawned their way through the last few paragraphs. It does not matter what fat means or has always meant, nor that one is healthier in the lower weight range than in the upper, all else being equal (which it never is, but no matter). It just does not concern the serious weight watcher that the rest of the world can get along as slobs, any more than it matters to the marathon runner that the world walks or rides.

I approve of attacking fat because it is there. This battle harms no one. You who are fighting fat, take notice, be aware. A few of us out here appreciate what you are doing. We know how hard it is. They say 95 percent of the people who lose weight gain it back, and 90 percent gain back more than they lost. If you're really worried about fat, taking it off may lead to putting more on. With those statistics, success in keeping it off has world-class potential.

Carry on.