Free Hungry by Sheila Himmel Page A

had sugar, butter, and chocolate, of course, especially in chocolate chip cookies. As much as we tried to give Jacob and Lisa a love of high-quality food, and in that regard we succeeded, when they were young we weren’t serving snails in garlic sauce or only products found in nature. Our children ate a lot of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, with the scary bright orange powder sprinkled over boiled noodles and butter. (The directions called for margarine, which we did not stock.) Later the noodles came in shapes other than tubes, but that was as far as Jacob and Lisa would bend. They did eat real cheese on bread and crackers, so once I thought what a treat it would be for them to have macaroni and cheese made from scratch. I knew enough to seek out a recipe from Betty Crocker, not Julia Child. On the cover of our well-used 1972 edition of The Betty Crocker Cookbook , the fictional Betty looks like a young Lady Bird Johnson, or an old Shirley Temple. Betty’s recipe calls for processed sharp American cheese. I used real cheddar cheese and while the dish got positive reviews from the adults, the children never gave it a chance. They had been imprinted by the Kraft brand and weren’t open to innovation. But even processed Velveeta wouldn’t have saved the mac ’n’ cheese. The children of foodies preferred the orange powder.

five
    Fat Girls, Husky Boys
    When Lisa was born a lusty eater, Ned didn’t exactly panic, but it did bring up serious dormant fears. Ned’s sister, Elaine, had long suffered for her weight, and Ned wanted to avoid all of that for Lisa. Ned was husky as a teenager, but Elaine has considered herself fat since birth.
    We inherited the creaky bathroom scale that used to torture her. I’m not sure the spring-loaded metal antique, black with white speckles, was ever very accurate, but at some point I put it in the garage. Ned and I could find it, but not the kids. Then we couldn’t find it either and by the time we did, it was so rusty and cruddy that we threw it away.
    I like not having a scale. Considering our middle age and enjoyment of food, Ned and I are resigned to a gradual gain into medium well-rounded senior citizenship. If only our retirement investment charts showed the steady progress of our weight charts.
    When Ned’s waistbands seize up, he has been known to panic and eat cabbage soup for three days. He cooks up a five-quart pot that smells like the compost pile to start with and gets worse with reheating. After a few days it goes down the drain, but he feels lighter.
    My weight-loss method is to exercise more and drink less. I love wine, but it stokes my appetite, so I rarely drink before a meal. Wine also fogs the short-term memory of what I’ve just eaten. A few dry days usually restore order. Until recently, I weighed myself maybe four times a year, at the Y and in the office of our internist, who takes a realistic position on weight and keeps a close eye on Ned’s constellation of health issues: hereditary heart disease, high cholesterol and blood pressure. However, the gym got a new electronic scale and it gave me five less pounds than the old one, so now I check more frequently.
    In an article titled “The Diet Secrets of Slim Women,” Shape magazine claims that once-a-day weighing provides positive reinforcement. I guess this is true for the rare person who doesn’t obsess about weight. But if you’ve put on a few pounds, the focus on numbers can make you feel so much worse. What’s the point? All of your efforts are failing, so you might as well eat. It’s an unintended consequence and it doesn’t make sense.
    That’s why constant weighing is counterproductive for most of us. I like the set-point theory, which holds that everyone has a weight we’re basically destined for, and within a few pounds of that, who cares? I know this is easy for a happily married, middle-age person to say. But the scale only causes trouble. If I register more than a slight increase, what I’ve