Ode to a Patty Melt
My stomach has changed in ways that are still a mystery to me. For many years I could and did eat anything in whatever quantity I wanted and it all showed up where you would expect it would. I spent my entire adult life going from one failed diet or program to another. I was in Weight Watchers twice I think. I was in a St. Luke’s trial that was looking for causation by taking small bites out of our individual asses and microscopically examining them to count and dimension fat cells. We were determined to either be hyperplastic or hypoplastic and from what I could tell that meant that in our infancy we had either produced an over-abundance of fat cells, or we grew a more modest number and then gained weight later on by over-filling the fat cells that we had. Those of us with more fat cells (which is where I reside) had the disadvantage that we gained weight more easily and lost it harder. Those of you with fewer fat cells were less prone to gaining weight, but when you did you extended your fat cell walls to the point where you increased the risk of bursting the cell wall membrane and causing all sorts of maladies like diabetes. I have no idea if those results were valid or hogwash, but I like to think that there is some benefit health-wise for people like me for all the weight loss and gain suffering we go through.
I went off twice for two weeks at a time to Pritikin, once in Pennsylvania and once in Santa Monica. Those were interesting and educational visits that actually taught me a lot about nutrition, but unfortunately only had a marginal impact on my waistline. And then there was the time I went to Duke for an entire month. I did lose weight, but alas, it all found its way back. And then, in 2006, when I had reached a peak in my weight that is simply too high to mention on any permanent platform like the internet, I decided to go in for bariatric surgery. While I am generally not a big believer in elective surgeries, I have managed to be an early adopter on two occasions. The first time was in 1992 when I went for radial keratotomy to correct my nearsightedness. It didn’t work so well and I ended up having to get glasses after a miserable eight weeks of pretending that I was 20/20, so I should have learned my early adopter’s lesson. But no such luck. In 2006 I decided that a lap-band was the bomb and sounded like exactly the prophylactic I needed to help me lose weight for good.
I had an Australian doctor who swore that the lap-band would solve the world’s weight problems for good. I challenged him by suggesting that will power must still be required, and he insisted that it wasn’t and that 90% of the work would be done by the band. I’m not sure I really believed him, but once an early adopter, always an early adopter. The process began with a dire warning that I MUST lose thirty pounds before the surgery otherwise the surgeon would have to wade through all sorts of fatty tissue on the way to lassoing my stomach. It was enough to convince me to lose the weight and I never looked back. The procedure went just fine and I was out of the hospital in a day, ahead of schedule. The next sixty days were an adjustment. Having a zip-tie around the upper part of your stomach is certainly a new feeling. It starts with liquids and gradually moves to soft mushy food, but for the most part, the procedure took away my appetite. Before I knew it I had lost another 100 pounds and was starting to feel better.
You get used to how to go about getting nutrition and it comes in small, regular bits rather than large sit-down meals. That is all good and well when you are at home, but when out and about one of several things can happen. Assuming you don’t do what they tell you to do, like not drinking water while you eat and staying away from white meat chicken, beef and bread, all of which can clog up your newly restricted stomach entrance, you can either overdo it and experience the eye-bugging feeling akin to when you gulp too much water…only for 20 minutes at a stretch, or you can stare at the food with disdain and disgust.
Certain foods just went right to the no-fly list. Most big burgers and sandwiches, and anything you had to grasp with both hands to eat literally gave me the heebie-jeebies. Other foods like buttered popcorn at the movies, seemed to have no problem going down in whatever quantity I wanted. Go figure. And here’s the thing, it turns out the Australian surgeon was right. Without any particular effort on my part, the surgery succeeded in doing what no other weight control program had ever done, it made me not want to eat much. It was a virtual wet blanket on my appetite. Food mostly lost meaning for me. I became apathetic about almost all kinds of food. I was literally blasé about eating. Strangely enough, I still managed to eat enough to hold my weight steady (and even gain back a few, but not too many pounds).
While I found my balance point (or perhaps my body found its balancing point), pages on the calendar came off and fifteen years went by without my gaining back most of the weight I had initially lost. For the first time in my life, I felt like my appetite had a governor on it, something normal people seem to be born with and something I was missing for some reason. I really didn’t care for many foods and the normal meal with me involved me eating slower than anyone else (diametrically opposed to my previous pacing). I also wasn’t really finding much that I enjoyed and my plate would regularly go back to the kitchen with the bulk of its food still on it untouched. Once in a while I would get bug-eyed after just one bite and the whole plate would go back. It became a routine that Kim and I came to expect.
Since moving out here to the hilltop, that situation has more or less continued and with the addition of a new, less rigid schedule and all the daily outdoor work, I have seen my weight fall by 40 pounds or so in the past two years. Part of this change has also resulted in me occasionally really enjoying some particular food or other. I tend to skip breakfast most days and since Kim doesn’t eat dinner, I usually have a limited repertoire for dinner. My big enjoyable meal of the day tends to be lunch and I tend to go out to forage something al the local fast-food places. That usually has the affect you might guess and I get two bites in and whatever is left gets wrapped up and tossed out or fed to Betty (who’s stomach knows such bounds).
My free-spirit days involve a motorcycle ride which usually leaves me at the Lake Henshaw Cafe. The other day, I did just that and the spirit moved me. I ordered a patty melt on rye bread with a side of potato salad. It was the first thing I had eaten that day and that morning I had weighed in at my lowest adult weight I can remember since college. When the patty melt came it was a sight to behold. It had been grilled just right with delicious fried onions, cheddar cheese and butter-infused rye bread. The cup of potato salad had that yellowish look and only needed a touch of salt and pepper to be perfect. With the addition of ketchup from a squeeze bottle, this humble patty melt turned into the perfect meal to me. While I still couldn’t finish it, I got about 7/8 of it down and it was, in a word, wonderful. I don’t expect to have patty melts too often, but for now I am finding myself dreaming about my ode to a patty melt.