On the Road to Fastsville
On the Road to Fastsville
  • On the Road to Fastsville

After lasts week’s post on anonymity, I received a couple requests from Portland’s pro eaters to talk about the health costs involved in eating for a living. I’m happy to oblige because, for me, the concern of packing on the weight was far more intense than that of keeping a low profile. There’s a simple reason for that: I’m intensely vain and self-conscious. Also, I’m lazy. Combine those factors with a job that requires you eat several restaurant meals a week, often packed with fat, and you’ve got a recipe for anxiety. I’ll give you all the gory details, after the jump.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that this job might cause problems for my waistline. While I did have leeway to pick the restaurants I reviewed, it was also imperative I review newer places in order for my column to remain relevant. So, right out of the gate, and in quick succession, I found myself reviewing Wayne’s Chicago Red Hots and Pine State Biscuits. Being new to the game, I wasn’t really moderating how much of the meal I was eating. I was far too concerned with getting it right than over-eating. Looking back at the sheer amount of fatty food I ate during just those two reviews makes me cringe.

Within the first six months of the gig, I was the heaviest I’d ever been in my life, passing 200 pounds. I felt terrible, and I hated the way I looked. In fact, it was only after I’d gotten back on track that Kitty admitted to me I’d begun to develop rolls of back fat. All together now: Eeeeuuuugghhh!

But weight gain was only half the problem. Not only was I hurting myself by eating and not exercising, there was additional risk in that, as a part-time employee, I wasn’t eligible for health insurance and unable to afford it. Obviously something had to be done.

But here was my conundrum: On the job, I had to eat enough to feel that I’d given the restaurant a fair shake. To that end, I’d increased the number of visits I’d make to a restaurant to a minimum of three, often paying for the third dinner out of my own pocket to keep my section on budget. Sometimes I’d add a fourth visit if I felt the restaurant wasn’t doing well—the idea being that if I were going to write a bad review, I wanted to be double sure the place wasn’t measuring up. This meant more and more food going into my belly. As I ballooned, it was clear I had to take action. Maybe I’m just slow, but when I finally developed a plan of action, it was stupidly obvious.

There is no secret to weight loss. Unless you have other disease processes present, pretty much all you have to do is burn more calories than you consume. The first step of the plan to keep myself healthy was simply to leave food on my plate. As I grew more confident, I found I didn’t need to eat an entire entree in order to get the idea of what was going on, and the leftovers where often helpful in sparking the memory when writing a review.

The second part of my plan was to start moving. Kitty and I began a training plan called Couch to 5K and stated hitting the track three times a week. Before long, and unbelievably considering my sedentary lifestyle, I was running three miles three times a week, eventually competing in a couple local races. Reading the book Born to Run was also integral in keeping me on the road, and soon I was just as obsessive about trail running as I was about good food. And that, my friends, is kind of a perfect combination. Soon my work-out regime included swimming, weight-training, as well as running. At my peak, I was doing seven-mile runs from my house to the top of Mt. Tabor and back. I dropped about 25 pounds and felt amazing.

Unfortunately, I over-trained and developed runner’s knee, a depressing (and painful) set-back, which has put me on the sidelines and off the trails for several months. Then swimming got boring, and weight training seemed pointless, and here I am at the end of my life as a food critic, slowly gaining weight and generally feeling shitty. But things are getting better. I’ve started running again, barefoot. It’s infrequent, but it feels good and I’ve had no knee pain. I figure that, and not having to eat out three times a week, will put me back on track as I enter my new career.

At any rate, any professional eater can tell you the struggle with the body is just about constant. After 30 months of restaurant reviews, consistently eating three to four butter drenched dinners every week, I can honestly say: I’m not as fat as I could be, but not as thin as I’d like. And I guess that aint bad.

13 replies on “My Life as a Food Critic: Fat and Fairness”

  1. Thanks for this – I’m always freaked out about the overall health of the people in food media – overall, we’re not your most svelte bunch. It’s about balance, and a sense of humor, and some pretty gritty realizations. You rock.

  2. Exercising to lose weight is very tough – takes tons of effort to burn just a few calories. The only true weight to lose weight is to not eat – and drink – as much. Which is nearly impossible I would think if that’s your job.

  3. your (ex)job is made harder by the compounding issue that once you eat all that food, you have to sit on your (ever expanding)ass and write about it. I do not envy that position. Like G.C. said, if all you do is run on a treadmill for 45min 3x a week, you will never see meaningful weight loss from that alone. Now, ramp that up to about 35miles a week and we can talk.

    On a side note, you are getting fucking old, you’re married, and you have a baby on the way. You’re life is motherfucking over. Stop Whining about your extra chin, and start whining about you existence as a walking wallet and shit-cleaner-upper. Cheers!

  4. I work in IT, sit on my ass at least 8 hours a day, and managed to lose quite a bit of weight this summer/fall while still eating out at least 1 meal a day. (22 pounds as of this morning) Exercise isn’t difficult to do. My simple formula came down to:

    – 2 hours of exercise (walking or biking) 6 days a week. Make it a priority over everything. Walk during your lunches and commute to work.

    – 700 calories a meal (for men, 550-650 for women.) If you eat out, roughly attempt to eat what would fit entirely in your two hands. 2100 calories a day was a goal for me. If I went over I just “reset” and aimed for 2100 calories the next day, I never attempted to “undershoot” and eat less than 2100 to make up for it.

    I used a website that allows you to count and track calories and energy expenditure, not going to spam them, there are at least 20+ of them + apps though.

  5. Just a suggestion: Maybe you’d like to try something like Bikram yoga. It really helped my bad knees and I can now run without pain. Also, I lost 20lbs without making any changes to my diet. (Studio at NE 49th & Fremont has a free class this Saturday at 10:30).

  6. Have you tried the sweaty Vinyasa yoga Patrick? I was incredibly faithful to it in SF and that combined with walking the dog every day made me lose about 25 lbs FAST.

    I gained it all back moving to Portland but that has more to do with some crazy meds I’ve been on that I just finally kicked.

    Anyway…OVERSHARE’D JUST FOR YOU.

  7. Check out Gary Taube’s book ‘Good Calories, Bad Calories’. Fat is not the problem, it’s the excess of carbohydrates in the Western diet. There’s one case study in the book that mentions an extremely obese man eating 7000 fat calories per day and still losing weight because he wasn’t eating carbs. We gain weight because of the excess of insulin in our bloodstreams caused by carbohydrates. He also mentions the Western mindset of eating low fat (AKA : starving) and how that backfires every time and we gain more weight in the long run.

    So, you can get the Pine Street biscuit, just take it easy on the biscuit.

  9. @ PAC (and anyone else): I stopped drinking beer and eating bread about two months back, and dropped 15 without doing a single thing differently, exercise-wise, so I’ll back up the carbs thing from Jody. I’ve been making Old Fashioneds at home ever since, and haven’t looked back.

    Random things, since we’re oversharing:
    1) Try to make every restaurant meal two meals. Added benefit of saving money.
    2) I’ve been weighing myself daily for about a decade now. Making it a ritual keeps it on your mind.
    3) Biking to work as often as possible, 30 min brisk walk with dog daily.
    4) While I’m not expecting you (or anyone else) to switch, I was never able to truly discipline myself effectively around food (or beer) until I went veg. Again, that’s just me: now it’s ridiculously easy to do so, and I’m kicking myself for not doing it earlier.
    5) Rice cakes + peanut or almond butter.

    This week, I weigh less than I have at any point since starting high school, and I have plenty of energy. CONCLUSION: ME RULE.

  12. Exercising to lose weight is not very tough. Diet is everyone’s achilles heel. Portion control helps, eating breakfast every day helps. No, eating breakfast every day is essential. If not, you gorge yourself later in the day as your metabolism starts to slow down. Cut down on the booze, cut the fiberless white flour products.

    I can help you, PAC! This is my fleld. Message me. I have suggestions and can help with your knee, too.

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