On Maintaining My Girlish Figure

April 12, 2004 | By Adam Roberts | 2 Comments

Site reader Elise, in the comments for my first sorbet post, asks: “How do you maintain your girlish figure with all of this delcious food?”

A lot of people ask me this. It’s the fourth most common question I’m asked, after “Why are you punching that muppet?”

The simple answer is: although I don’t watch what I eat, I often don’t eat what I watch.

That didn’t make any sense.

Let me try again.

The secret is that I often don’t finish my food. Portion control! That’s what I always say. Seriously, though, I pick and I nibble but I rarely will scrape clean my entire plate. What’s strange is that my brother feels that our parents made us finish our plates at the table, but I don’t remember this. In fact, I have a very distinct memory of me NOT finishing my food.

Picture it: Sicily, 1947. Well: Oceanside, 1986. I’m sitting on a gray carpet in front of the TV in the den at my little yellow plastic table–where I take most of my meals–and my mother brings me a plate of steak. I chew a few bites and get bored.

“Finish it,” says my mother, and she leaves the room.

Fast forward ten minutes: mother returns. The steak is gone.

Fast forward a week. Mother returns. She notices a funny smell. She lifts up the gray carpet and finds the steak, festering away.

Yes, it would seem, I have food ADD. The fact that I get bored quickly helps me maintain my girlish figure. That and a lot of vomiting.

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