Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [99]
What the doctor didn’t talk about, because he was a nutritionist and not a psychiatrist, was some faulty wiring in my brain and the brains of a lot of overweight people that affects the appetite. My appetite keeps me going back for more long after I’ve had all the food I ought to consume. Food keeps tasting good so I want more and am unable to control my urge to take it.
I hate to be in a room with cigarette smokers but I’m sympathetic to them. I’ve never smoked cigarettes but I understand how difficult it must be to give them up. If I can’t give up ice cream, I’ve got no business feeling superior to someone who can’t stop smoking.
There have been periods in my life when I’ve lost weight. I can overcome my urge to eat for short, intense periods when I devote practically my whole life to trying not to, but it doesn’t last. Overeating is as much a part of my personality as blue eyes and wide feet. I can no more keep from eating too much over a period of years than I can change the Irish look of my face.
When I look at those weight charts in a doctor’s office, I laugh. According to them I ought to weigh 145 pounds. They’d have me lose a third of what I am. I’ll get down to 145 pounds the day the doctor starts making house calls for ten dollars a visit.
Many things about overeating are too depressing to contemplate. Butter is certainly one of the purest, most delicious foods ever made. It’s made with such a wholesome and natural collaboration between man and cow, too. It seems unfair to farmers who have so much of it, and to good cooks who love to use so much of it, that butter should be high on the list of things we shouldn’t eat.
Years ago I learned that bourbon was fattening. All alcoholic beverages are high in calories. It seemed incredible to me that two things as different as butter and bourbon could produce the same deleterious effect on the system. I recall wondering whether the fat produced on my frame by bourbon would look any better or worse than that produced by butter.
Everything about being fat seems so unfair.
Sodium-Restricted Diet
Last week I went to my doctor for my annual physical.
Things are looking up for me. My weight is up, my cholesterol is up
and my blood pressure is up.
My doctor is also my friend and he was fairly insistent that I lose
weight.
As I was leaving, he handed me these two brochures. This one, from
the American Heart Association, is called SODIUM-RESTRICTED
DIET and the other was put out by the Morton Salt Company. With due respect to my doctor, let me say in the nicest way I know
how—these pamphlets are ridiculous. If you’re going to help someone
with a diet, you don’t tell them how much salt there is in one ounce of
Animal Crackers, 5/6th of an ounce of Shredded Wheat or in half
a bouillon cube. Its been years since I had half a bouillon cube for
dinner.
If you followed the advice in this booklet, you’d be eating off a scale. I’m suspicious of the Morton Salt pamphlet too. If their business is
selling salt, are they really going to help someone use less of it?
Sodium-Restricted Diet 217
And they keep calling salt “sodium.” Salt and sodium are the same thing . . . why do they try to make it sound more important by calling it sodium? You don’t notice them calling it the Morton Sodium Company.
They list the sodium content of strawberries. Half a cup of strawberries has one milligram. The average person doesn’t have any idea what a milligram is and I am an average person.
And how do you measure half a cup of strawberries? Here’s the half cup mark . . . do I mash them down, Morton?
I like salt. I’m the kind of person