Leith, William

by The Hungry Years

  We talk for hours, and I realize that, even though we've known each other for years, we've never talked about weight or diets, and, towards the end of the evening, we're talking about how magazines are full of thin people, the usual stuff. I remember a feature in a glossy magazine about how fat people dread the summer, particularly going to the beach. This is an article written by a woman, and it's full of pain and despair; in the article the author says the beach is a no-go area for overweight people. The piece is illustrated with a picture

  of a woman on a balcony, wearing sunglasses, looking mournfully down at the beach. And the woman get this is slim. No, she's actually thin.

  The person I'm talking to, the overweight person, lets out a little yelp, a yelp of actual pain. And we talk about what it's like to be fat, and what it's like to buy clothes when you're fat.

  I say, 'It's enough to make you want to ... eat.' `Yes. Right.'

  And somehow, aware of how hard this will be, I steer the conversation around to the subject of compulsive eating, and this person says that, yes, he or she is a compulsive eater.

  `Can I talk to you about it?'

  `OK. But I don't want to be identified.'

  `That's fine.'

  We talk for a while about compulsive eating. He or she says that he or she compulsively eats only when alone. In the evenings. Pizzas, pasta meals, avocados with mayonnaise, oven fries, tinned shellfish.

  `Elton John had a thing for tinned shellfish.'

  `Yes, well.'

  `I can't do tinned shellfish myself.'

  `Oh, when you start you can't stop. A jar of cockles . `Why did you stop doing Atkins?'

  `I don't know.'

  `Is it because you actually like being hungry?'

  `What?'

  `Is it because, you know, deep down you sort of actually want to be, you know . . .'

  ,What?'

  `Well, you know.'

  `No, I don't know. Want to be what?'

  `Well, overweight.'

  `No.'

  `Susie Orbach says . .

  `That's stupid.'

  `Well, when I started doing Atkins, I .

  `That's rubbish! And when you write this, I don't want to be identified at all. No identifying details. I don't even want you to say if I'm a man or a woman.'

  `OK. Fine.'

  We look across into the corners of the room. There is awkwardness, a depth of embarrassment and shame. I nod my head, trying to look serious.

  We catch each other's eye. And for a moment it's like looking at myself. My fat self.

  A Thursday Morning in February

  It's a Thursday morning in February and I'm drinking a glass of water, something you're supposed to do on a lowcarb diet. Atkins, for instance, recommends drinking eight glasses of water a day. And every day, somebody a newspaper columnist or a nutritionist on the radio or somebody I meet in the street tells me that I should be drinking more water. One of our big problems is that we're dehydrated partly, I think, because we are obsessed with consumption, and drinking water doesn't quite feel like consumption. Somebody told me

  something very interesting about water the other day. I wish I could remember what it was.

  Is my memory going? A friend of mine, an Atkins sceptic, told me that cutting out carbohydrates adversely affects the memory. We were sitting in a bar.

  I say: 'Have you read this?'

  `I heard it somewhere.'

  `So it might not be true.'

  `Well, I wouldn't take the risk.'

  `But you're drinking beer.'

  `So?'

  `Well, we know that beer destroys brain cells.'

  `Yes, but . . .'

  `But what?'

  `But ... this is just beer.'

  This morning I had a cup of peppermint tea and some blueberries, which are low in sugar, and a very tart cup of sugar-free cranberry juice. I made that up. Actually I got out of bed and had a talk with my girlfriend and when she went to work I walked down the road to a cafe and ordered a full English breakfast two sausages, bacon, a fried egg, and a fried tomato, which felt like quite a lot, almost too much, although I got through it. Soon I will be able to leave food I don't want on my plate.

  As I'm sipping my water, which is from the tap, and has a metallic aftertaste, I'm thinking about the talk I had with my girlfriend. She wants to quit smoking, and she's waiting for `the right time'. I told her that if she wants to quit smoking, she should quit smoking.

  I said: 'I stopped eating carbohydrates.'

  `Smoking is different.'

  `Not really.'

  ,Oh come on.'

  `Carbohydrates are addictive.'

  `They are so not!'

  `They are! They give you a buzz! They make your blood sugar go up

  `Not this again.'

  `Well, it's true.

  `It's not the same.'

  My girlfriend took a cigarette from the packet, put it in her mouth, clicked her lighter, sucked on the cigarette, a sharp tug, and sucked on it again, removed it from her mouth, and looked at the end, put the cigarette back in her mouth, and tugged on it again, and removed it from her mouth again, sucked down a ball of smoke, held the smoke in her lungs, tilted her head upwards, and blew the smoke out in a narrow stream, a rhythmic procedure, complex, automatic.

  `It is the same. I was addicted to carbohydrates.'

  `Look. I've been smoking, apart from twice when I quit, which, added together, is about two weeks I've smoked every day of my adult life. I don't know what adult life is like without smoking.'

  `Well, I ate carbs every day of my adult life. And my childhood too. I mean, I probably ate carbs every day of my life after the age of, I mean, even when I was a baby.'

  My girlfriend sucked on the cigarette again and removed it and inhaled the smoke, and held it and tilted her head and blew it out, a long, steady stream. She said, 'Yes, but smoking is connected to my emotions. If I can't smoke I feel all these emotions welling up. And that's why it's so hard to quit.'

  `Once you've got through the first couple of weeks, you'll be fine.'

  My girlfriend sucked, removed, inhaled, held, tilted, blew.

  She said: `It's not j ust a physical thing. It's an emotional thing.'

  And I wondered if addiction to carbohydrates might also be more than just a physical thing. My girlfriend left for work. I tried to imagine what would be a really healthy lowcarb breakfast. I could have strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, or rhubarb, as long as these fruits were unsweetened. I could have a salad with cold cuts. I had an idea: I would buy a chicken a free-range, organic bird and I'd roast it, and not eat it there and then, but wait for it to go cold, cut it into slices, and keep it in the fridge, and eat it over the next few days. The thought made me feel optimistic, non-compulsive. I had, I realized, never cooked anything, anything, and not eaten it on the spot.

  And then I walked down the road, sat down in the cafe, and the waitress came up to my table and said, 'Full English breakfast?'

  And now I'm sitting on the sofa, sipping my water. After this, I only have seven more glasses of water to drink, and I will have fulfilled my day's quota.

  And then I remember the interesting thing about water. People are not drinking more tap water, but they are drinking more bottled water. This might be because, with bottled water, they feel like consumers. That's what this guy was saying. And the interesting thing is this: the higher the price of bottled water, the more people drink.

  That's a relief.

  My memory is not going.A Bowl of Fries on My Plate

  I keep having to explain to people how a lowcarb diet works. I explain about the blood sugar. That's the first thing. How carbs make you hungry. The addiction angle. I tell people to look at the facts in a society where more than half the adult population is overweight, and where these adults are eating less fat than ever, you have to look elsewhere for a culprit. Sugar, sure. But what are we eating a lot more of? Carbohydrate.

  I say, 'Look, it's because we've
spent thirty years trying to avoid fat. And it's because food companies can easily remove fat, or make things without fat. And when people see that something is "99 per cent fat free", or whatever, they don't mind eating it.'

  And sometimes people get testy with me. They ask me about eating a lowcarb diet, and I explain it, and they say, `But what about bread? Huh? Are you telling me I shouldn't eat bread?'

  `I'm not telling you you shouldn't eat anything.'

  `Yes you are. You're telling me I shouldn't eat bread.'

  I have a lot of conversations like this. People say to me, `Look, how can it be healthy to eat sausages and bacon all the time? And cheese?' And I tell them I don't eat sausages and bacon all the time, which is sort of true, or at least could be true if I were less lazy. I mean, I could have berries for breakfast, with soya milk, which is really healthy, and a few slices of, say, chicken breast or turkey breast and a salad for lunch, and then fish with green vegetables in the evening.

  I'm always making the same point, which is that, conducted properly, a lowcarb diet is not about eating more meat, or more fat, or more cheese, or more cream it's about eating less carbohydrate, for God's sake. It's about taking away something bad. It doesn't have to be about taking away one bad thing and replacing it with another.

  But the trouble with the Atkins diet is that, although in the book Atkins goes on at length about fibre and the beauty of eating lots of green vegetables he once said he ate more vegetables than a vegetarian in practice, you tend to eat the same old things. Bacon. Eggs. Steak. Cheese. This is because, in your past life as an eater of carbohydrates, you were absolutely spoiled for quick, easy snacks. I mean, when I ate a lot of carbs, making toast seemed like a struggle. I was used to eating on the hoof, just darting into a newsagent or a snack bar, and grabbing a sandwich or a filled bagel. As a lowcarb dieter, you are haunted by memories of convenience.

  So you do the best you can. I had a kebab the other day. But I didn't eat it in the usual style. Normally, the recipe for a kebab is simple you just take a quantity of alcohol, and pour it down your throat, and repeat the procedure for a while, and eventually, there you are. The kebab seems to materialize in your hands. You can eat it on the move, because the kebab itself the slices of reconstituted lamb, the fiery chili sauce, the creamy garlic sauce, the raw onions, the shredded lettuce all of this is encased in a carapace of pitta bread. I was sober when I ordered my kebab I'm still not drinking and I sat down at one of the rickety little tables in the kebab place, and ate the kebab on a plate, without the bread.

  `Without bread?'

  `Yes. That's right.'

  `Large doner. Without bread?'

  ,Uh-huh.'

  And that's another thing. I keep having to tell waiters to bring the meat, and hold the carbs to bring the burger and hold the fries, and replace the fries with a salad. This worries me. One day, I realize, the waiter will bring the burger and forget to hold the fries, and they'll be there, on my plate, invitingly presented in one of those little bowls and I'll have to pick my way through the burger and the salad and stare at the fries; I'll have to stare them out.

  When the day comes, I'm sitting in a French-themed cafe with three other people. I've ordered a steak, and the waiter has fussed over me in the way they do when you order the steak. There has been steak banter, some nodding, some respectful movements of the hand, some approval of my judgement, and the waiter has taken away my silly, blunt, round-ended cake-knife, and replaced it with a real knife, jagged and pointy. And the steak arrives, and there is more nodding, the waiter and I looking at the colour of the meat, the oozing blood, and everything is all set ...

  And there is a bowl of fries on my plate.

  `Could you take these away, please?'

  `Hein?'

  `The fries. Could you take them away?'

  `Of ... of course.'

  And then somebody says, 'Hang on a minute. I don't mind picking at them.'

  And that's what he does. He picks. He has about three. A thin guy. He dips them into the dinky little tub of tomato

  ketchup. He eats one every three or four minutes. He's having mashed potatoes anyway. And I eat the steak, and stare at the fries, just like I used to stare at people's drinks a few months ago, although that phase has passed now. Of course, when it comes to booze, the hardest thing will be starting again. Starting again and not going overboard. Because I don't think you've truly beaten alcohol if you just give it up, like a sissy. No, you must get back on the horse, and not try to kill the horse with your spurs.

  And one day, I'll be able to pick at fries again.

  Later, I go home and devise the healthiest lowcarb meal I can imagine; a kind of lowcarb elixir. I fry some onions and garlic in a saucepan, spice it with a teaspoon of turmeric, which aids digestion, some grated ginger and some fennel. Then I add a fistful of turkey mince, two organic courgettes, a head of broccoli, and a little shredded cabbage, both also organic. Then I make a salad of rocket and tomato. Olive oil. White wine vinegar. A pinch of sea salt. White pepper.

  Adventures with Carbohydrates

  I'm losing more weight and I'm not drinking alcohol and I'm not snorting coke and I'm not taking painkillers, hardly any painkillers, and I find myself smoking cannabis every so often, and then more than every so often. The painkillers were a problem when I was drinking a lot and eating junk food, both of which increase your levels of pain. I would take ibuprofen, two or three or four at a time, several times a day, and sometimes I would take combinations of ibuprofen and

  codeine, which made me feel temporarily calmer and steadier, and sometimes I drank a soluble mixture of codeine, paracetemol, and caffeine.

  So now, if I've been smoking dope in the evening, I might take a couple of painkillers in the morning. Nothing more. I read a news item somewhere claiming that painkillers, ordinary over-the-counter analgesics, are addictive, that they actually give you headaches. They take away your problem and give you another one. Just like carbs, food that fills you up and makes you hungry again. And just like pornography, cocaine, cigarettes. Addictive products, advertisements for themselves, spreading like viruses in the Darwinian modern marketplace.

  I'm preoccupied with painkillers.

  This is what I'm thinking on a Sunday in March as I wake up, slightly headachy. I'm thinking about painkillers. I'm thinking that these days, these painful days, painkillers play a different role, a new role. When I was a kid, in the sixties and seventies, the painkillers were kept in a glass bottle in the bathroom medicine cabinet. When you had a headache, you would wait until you got home and then open the dusty bottle and shake out two powdery discs, and you'd swallow them with a glass of water, they'd taste bitter, and you'd put the bottle back in the medicine cabinet, and not open it again for ages. The bottle, which contained fifty pills, would hang around for months, even years.

  And these days, when you feel a headache coming on, you pat your pockets or, if you're a woman, check your handbag. The time between pain and treatment has shrunk to almost nothing. These days, painkillers do not come in glass bottles,

  but in blister-packs in bright, shiny boxes. I'm thinking of the colourful boxes, of the sensation of popping a pill through the foil sealant, of the pill's sugar coating, which makes it taste like an M&M. This is what I'm thinking as I open my eyes and squeeze them shut against the glare.

  I'm not at home. My girlfriend and I are staying with friends, another couple, even though we're not getting on particularly well, not getting on well at all. My girlfriend says she still can't find the right moment to give up smoking, and she's smoking a lot. I've never seen anybody smoke so much. We go into restaurants and sometimes the person at the door, the greeter or whatever, says there's no room in the smoking section, but we can have a choice of tables in non-smoking, and I say yes, that's fine, and my girlfriend says hold on, no, that's not fine. And we have to find another place. And I say can't you go for a little while without, I mean after all this is a meal, we've come here to eat, and
she says no, she can't not smoking around mealtimes is one of the hardest things. Particularly after the meal. Like she always lights up when she has a cup of coffee, and when she picks up the telephone. It's linked to all these other activities.

  And so at the restaurant we say sorry, we'll look for somewhere else, and we walk off, silent for a while. And she'll say, where do you want to go, and I'll say, no darling where do you want to go?

  It's ten o'clock by the time we get up, and there are no painkillers at my friend's house he's anti-pill and I don't have any breakfast, just a cup of coffee. I'm not a slave to meals any more. One thing is that I can look back at my former self, the person who sat in Sadie's mother's garden,desperate for carbs, begging for a bit of bread, and I don't blame Sadie or her mother for thinking how awful I was how fat and weak, how unattractive. Now I'm sitting at my friend's sunny kitchen table, drinking coffee, and my friend's wife says do I want toast or anything, and I say no, I think I'll just wait till lunch. Last night we had a roast, with several vegetables and roast potatoes, and I ate everything but the potatoes, and we discussed the fact that I was on a lowcarb diet, but I didn't make a big deal of it, and my friend's wife has either forgotten all about it, or she hasn't made the link between toast and carbs some people don't or maybe she's just being polite.

  And when somebody offers you toast, you don't say, 'No, but can I make myself an egg-white omelette?' You don't say, `No, but I wouldn't mind a few slices of last night's chicken." You don't ask for a bowl of berries. You just say you're not hungry. When you're at somebody else's house, and they ask you if you want something to eat, you should only ask for carbs, or something carb-based. It's etiquette. It's engrained, deep in the culture.

  So I'm keeping the lowcarb thing low-profile. People quite often ask me if I'm doing Atkins, and I say, 'No, not really,' or, 'Well, sort of.' The trick is only to use the word `carbs' in certain company. When you say `carbs', you're definitely saying that you think carbohydrates are bad. You draw raised eyebrows, and some people won't let go of the subject until they feel they've discredited you.