Kathleen acknowledged that she is probably about thirty pounds overweight right now. Her gradual weight gain coincided with a diagnosis nearly twenty years ago of severe rheumatoid arthritis. “Before that, I was an extraordinary athlete. I did all my own stunts and absolutely loved it. The arthritis at one point put me in a wheelchair and the doctors told me I would never be out of it, at which point I told them that they were fired.”
Numerous surgeries later, Kathleen has regained an incredible range of motion, and her younger co-stars on stage admire the physicality and energy she brings to every role. She thinks that at least some of the extra weight on her body has actually enhanced her career. “In some ways it’s good for my work in the sense that I am, and always have been, a character actress. I’m fifty-eight and doing these wonderful, very strong, very eccentric women who don’t need to please men anymore, right? In a way, the weight and the solidness of me enhances that.”
When she’s working, Kathleen is just not worrying about her body image. “On stage or on camera I don’t think about how I look, because that could interfere, even block, my acting. I am fortunate in my work. I know that the pressure of weight and appearance is different to many women in their chosen work.
“I find it actually quite frightening to see some of the actresses on television now, because I don’t know if they have any intestines. In order to look like that you have to spend every waking moment of every day thinking about your weight. That’s a tyranny I don’t want to accept. I really don’t.
“Yes, I would be happy to lose ten pounds, and when I get off the road and back home, I will work on that. But I resent this demand that you have to look so incredibly, incredibly thin. It makes me angry. Who decides this?”
That’s a tyranny I don’t want to accept. . . . I resent this demand that you have to look so incredibly, incredibly thin. It makes me angry.
—Kathleen Turner
Gayle King is another woman who is able to accept herself and her body. She works hard to stay a size 10, and to keep her weight at 162 pounds. At five foot ten, she is the first to admit, “I’m no Skinny Minnie,” but she doesn’t get upset about it. She’ll diet when she has to, and she’ll exercise even though she doesn’t like it, but she is just not fixated on weight.
Gayle radiates confidence when she walks onto the set of CBS This Morning, and her philosophy on food couldn’t be more different from mine. “I’ve now gotten to the stage in my life that I deny myself nothing,” she insists. “I’m not going to not eat bread, or not eat cake, or not eat sweets. I’m not going to live like that. So I eat exactly what I want, and if I fall off the wagon I know how to get myself back on the program, whatever that is.”
That’s amazing for someone like me to hear, especially when Gayle admits how much she enjoys food. She recalls some time ago being at a hotel and ordering a room service breakfast: scrambled eggs with cheese, bacon (extra crispy), and an order of pancakes. The menu indicated the breakfast came with toast, and when room service asked if she wanted potatoes, she said yes to that, too.
“I was giving the woman the order and she goes, ‘For how many?’ I was so thrown by the question because I’m thinking this is not a lot of food, that I said, ‘Uh, two!’
“So the room service guy comes and brings it, and before he got there I had turned on the water in the shower and I said to the waiter, ‘He’s taking a shower, you can set it right here.’ Then I called out, ‘Honey, the food’s here!’”
Gayle told this as a funny story, but to me it would just have been humiliating. She also told me about walking into the office of her news director when she was working at WFSB-TV in Hartford. “On the list of things to talk to me about I could see he had written ‘Gayle’s butt.’
“I remember thinking, damn, Gayle’s butt? He says to me, ‘On those wide shots if you could just push in, because your butt hangs over the chair.’ I didn’t even have the wherewithal to be offended. I’m like, ‘Oh, okay, I’ll watch that.’ Now—and this comes with age—I know I could say, ‘Wait a second. Wait a second.’”
In my own life, I truly love to run, but let’s just say working out is not at the top of Gayle’s list of favorite things to do. Actually, that’s putting it mildly. “I hate exercise, I hate it, hate it, hate it, but I also know that it’s necessary. People say, ‘Don’t you feel so much better after you work out?’ Well, actually, no. I just feel that, okay, I did it. I did it, I did it.”
I loved Gayle’s stories because they told me so much about her. Yes, she does have to be aware of how much she eats, and she needs to push herself to exercise more, even if she doesn’t want to. And, yes, there have been times in her life when her weight became a professional issue. She knows she can’t ignore it, and she weighs herself once a week, using Jenny Craig, juice cleanses, or her latest discovery, Fresh Diet, a service that she says delivers really fresh, really delicious food to her home every day to shed a few pounds when she needs to.
But she’s also okay with who she is, and how she looks. “I think my relationship with food is pretty healthy,” she said. “It’s a loving relationship, because I really think that eating food, sharing food, cooking food is one of the greatest examples of love.”
I really think that eating food, sharing food, cooking food is one of the greatest examples of love.
—Gayle King
Because she is comfortable in her own skin, Gayle is also able to let go of the envy that sometimes accompanies insecurity. “There is always going to be somebody who’s skinnier, who’s richer, who’s prettier. I discovered that years ago. Now I can see somebody who’s gorgeous and I’m not envious. I’m like, ‘Wow, I really admire what you do and who you are.’”
In the end, Kathleen Turner, Gayle King, and others remind me that what really matters is having a healthy mind and body. I’m all for a healthy thin, and I think women have to recognize that we are going to be judged, at least in part, on how we look, whether we like it or not. But some women are content to live with a few extra pounds instead of obsessing about what they eat all the time, and I admire them for it.
I also admire Kate White, who banned diet stories, normally a staple of women’s magazines, while she was editor in chief of Cosmopolitan. “I just felt that girls have enough to worry about. Diets don’t work. If someone promises you can lose ten pounds in four weeks you’re going to lose it, but you’re going to gain it back. I felt that it was unfair to women to keep fostering the notion of these quick diets, when really what you need to do is to overhaul your approach to food on more of a long-term basis. I decided if we gave any information about health and food, it would be just smart nutritional information.”
Diets don’t work. If someone promises you can lose ten pounds in four weeks you’re going to lose it, but you’re going to gain it back.—Kate White
The magazine does provide guidelines for eating smart, and under Kate’s watch, Cosmo launched a new feature titled “Body Love,” which is aimed at helping women feel good about their bodies. “That’s a lot about celebrating your body and feeling good about it and feeling confident about it,” she says.
Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Hudson is another woman who has been able to resist the cultural pressures most of us face. At any weight, she has always managed to maintain a healthy body image. “I remember the first time I was told that I was plus-size, at least in Hollywood terms. I was on the red carpet and the media were asking, ‘How do you feel being a plus-size girl?’ I looked over my shoulder like, ‘Who are you talking to?’ because I never saw myself that way.”
Coming from Chicago, Jennifer thought of herself as just an average-sized woman. The norms of Los Angeles took her by surprise, but she didn’t get thrown by them. “I was maybe a size twelve at the time, and that’s pretty good. Where I come from, size is welcome. So I thought, hold on. I have the height of a supermodel, I have lips that people pay for, so why should I feel insecure? I didn’t have those insecurities at all.”
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sp; When she did decide to lose weight with the help of Weight Watchers, she was genuinely surprised by the attention it attracted. “I’ve had people coming up to me and saying, ‘Oh, my God, you’re my inspiration,’ and I’ve thought, people were watching? I didn’t realize that until after the fact.” Curiously, Jennifer actually felt more pressure after she lost weight because her body began to get so much more attention.
Body image is also a nonissue for comedian Susie Essman. In my next life, I want to be just like her. Why? Because she tells it like it is, whether she’s swearing a blue streak on Curb Your Enthusiasm or performing stand-up comedy. She’s a woman who really knows her own strength. “As a female comedian, there’s this tremendous balance of power and femininity that’s very difficult to maintain,” Susie explains. “It’s a very masculine art form, it’s a very aggressive art form, and it’s very powerful being up there by yourself onstage. Stand-up is so hard, and I have to be so focused when I’m on stage that I don’t have room in my head to think about what I look like while I’m performing.” I can’t imagine what it would be like to be able to worry only about what comes out of your mouth, not what your body looks like. It just doesn’t work that way for most women on television or in show business. I take it for granted that I am always going to be judged partly on what I weigh and how I look.
“It would be a whole different thing if I was just an actress out there in the marketplace,” Susie acknowledged. “But I’m a comedian. So it’s different. I write everything that I say. I have my own sense of my own power because I’m onstage all the time doing that.” Susie understood what it takes for me to get my job done, and I really appreciated that. “Let me tell you something, Mika. You sit up there with Joe and Donny and Barnicle, and you hold your own with them. You should feel pretty damn good about that. Because that’s a boy’s club over there, and it’s not easy.”
She also reminded me that it takes a lot more to succeed than a good-looking body, helpful though that is. “It’s been said that a pretty face is a passport,” she said, “but it’s not. It’s a visa, and it runs out fast. Yes, your life is easier when you’re attractive; I absolutely believe that. I think things come more easily, whether it’s standing in line at the deli or whatever. However, you’d better develop yourself, because there’s always going to be somebody prettier, younger, and thinner. Always!”
You’d better develop yourself, because there’s always going to be somebody prettier, younger, and thinner. Always!—Susie Essman
I know that, of course, but it’s not always at the top of my mind when I am wondering how I look to the millions of viewers who are watching me every day. It’s a way of thinking that needs to be part of our larger conversation, whether it is taking place in schools, libraries, or community centers, on television, or in political and public health circles. If we are going to get healthier as a nation, we need to think differently about body image, weight, and eating disorders. They are all so closely tied together.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT’S WHAT YOU EAT, AND HOW YOU EAT IT
MY STORY, WITH NORA EPHRON, LISA POWELL,
DR. CYNTHIA GEYER, DR. NANCY SNYDERMAN, KATE WHITE,
DR. DAVID KATZ, DAVID KIRCHHOFF, CHRISTIE HEFNER,
SENATOR CLAIRE MCCASKILL, FRANK BRUNI, SUSIE ESSMAN,
JENNIFER HUDSON, BRIAN STELTER, SENATOR KIRSTEN
GILLIBRAND, PADMA LAKSHMI, CHARLES BARKLEY
As we were researching this book, Diane and I got an incredible amount of good advice about smart eating from our women friends (we found a few good men with tips, too). I really appreciated hearing fresh ideas about how to get over my obsession with food and weight. Diane, who has run through just about every diet out there, was also open to new ideas about healthy eating. Sharing strategies for losing weight, or maintaining a healthy thin, makes the journey a lot less lonely. True, at the end of the day, each of us makes our own decisions about what we put on our plates, but there’s still plenty we can learn from others.
I especially appreciated people who were willing to be blunt with me, just as I had been with Diane. My late friend Nora Ephron was one of those. Never one to mince words, Nora made it clear that she wasn’t very happy with how either Diane or I approached food.
Joe and I had gotten to know the screenwriter, film director, and essayist quite well in the last few years. We’d been working on a project together: a romantic comedy, like others that Nora had already made so brilliantly. What we didn’t know at the time was that Nora was sick. She was so optimistic about beating leukemia that she kept it from most people.
It is a tribute to Nora and her love of her friends that just weeks before her death she sat down with Diane and me to have a conversation for this book. She was as open and direct as ever. “I’ll have what she’s having,” from Nora’s film When Harry Met Sally, may be one of the funniest lines ever delivered in a movie, but in real life our conversation with Nora was not as hilarious.
Nora’s fans and friends know what a foodie she was. When I went to Paris a couple of years ago, I got the full Nora treatment. She sent me a file of places to eat and told me what to order when I got there. “I love to eat,” she told Diane and me. “I do nothing all day but think about what I am eating at my next two meals.” I told Nora I think about food all day, too. But I don’t do it with her joyful anticipation of wonderful food. Much more often, it is because I am trying desperately to stick with a tightly disciplined diet that often leaves me wanting more, much more, to eat.
“I’ve been up at night holding my stomach in hunger and crying, trying not to eat,” I admitted to Nora. “And when I break down and give in to my cravings, it is not pretty.”
“Boy, that’s sad. That’s so terrible,” Nora replied. “Food is one of the great pleasures in my life.”
Diane was candid, too, telling Nora how discouraged she had become in recent years about her inability to keep off weight after working so hard to lose it. Nora really drilled into Diane after she acknowledged dropping out of Weight Watchers. “Who told you you could stop?” Nora scolded. “You can’t stop; it’s like AA.” Our conversation took place early in Diane’s seventy-five-pound weight-loss challenge, and she got a little defensive, responding, “I never seem to be able to plan what I’m eating. I’m always grabbing something out of the refrigerator or on the run.”
Nora would have none of it. “That’s just an excuse,” she countered. “You say, ‘I’m always on the run and I can’t plan my meals,’ as if we are living in a place where we can’t pick up the phone and get anything delivered to us in five minutes that’s healthy.” I cringed, knowing that Nora was right, but also that it was painful for Diane to hear. “I know how Diane is hurting right now because it is not that easy for her,” I told Nora. “Having said that, she has to do this. This she and I have decided.”
Nora agreed. “Well, we know it’s not easy, but we also know that you can do it, Diane, if you just trust yourself to stay with it. Let’s say you made a commitment that you would stay with it for a year. Right? I swear to God at the end of the year, you will have changed your eating habits.”
That’s what we are both trying to do, and Canyon Ranch nutritionist Lisa Powell reminded us why it is so important. “The number one complaint in a doctor’s office these days is lack of energy,” she says. “I don’t expect my car to run if it doesn’t have the right fuel. How can I expect my body to have energy and to feel good without the right fuel?”
I don’t expect my car to run if it doesn’t have the right fuel. How can I expect my body to have energy and to feel good without the right fuel?
—Lisa Powell
Getting enough sleep is a part of fueling the body properly. Dr. Cynthia Geyer, medical director at Canyon Ranch in Lenox, Massachusetts, says that without adequate sleep, we become more stressed and that, in turn, makes good habits harder to sustain. “The very things that you might do to help yourself stay healthy kind of go out the window when you’re stressed. You g
ravitate toward comfort foods; you forego your exercise, because you have to put the pedal to the metal and get your work done; you get sleep deprived.” That becomes a vicious circle, Geyer said, and “you’re hungrier, more stressed, and more resistant to insulin when you’re sleep deprived.”
Diane and I are persuaded that whole, fresh food is the fuel that powers us best. Staying away from supermarket and restaurant foods crammed with sugar, fat, and salt is rule number one. Unprocessed food is not always the easiest to get, especially if you eat out a lot, and it can take longer to prepare at home, but it’s almost always the best. “There are no bad whole foods,” declares NBC News medical editor Nancy Snyderman. “The bad foods are the ones that are manufactured and have words on the labels that you can’t pronounce. You wouldn’t purposefully eat arsenic. So why would you purposefully eat bad food?”
Beyond an emphasis on whole food, there is no one-size-fits-all diet that will work for everyone. Some people seem to do better increasing their protein and reducing their carbs, while others decide that a vegetarian or vegan diet is the best strategy for them. There are some tried-and-true techniques that help many people, but you’ll have to pick and choose the ones that suit your own lifestyle and keep the cravings to a minimum.
For me, healthy eating is a matter of finding equilibrium. The diet that works best for my body seems to be a very careful balance of fat, protein, and carbs. The challenge I face is how to eat enough of the right foods so that I keep hunger at bay and maintain control without giving in to episodes of insane overeating. Kate White described her approach while at Cosmopolitan, which seems sensible to me. “I’ve really limited the amount of sugar in my diet, and I eat a certain amount of fat and protein. If you sit down to a dinner that involves chicken and cauliflower that has been roasted with some olive oil, and then something else, you’re so satisfied that it’s really hard to get a craving going.”
Obsessed: America's Food Addiction Page 13