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CHAPTER 3
I don’t know what most of my fellow junior classmatesat Marblehead High were doing after school in the fall andwinter of 1973. Some were pulling lobster pots, some wereplaying sports, some were having sex with each other beforethe parents got home.In part because I was tolerated more by adults thanpeers, in part because they usually put donuts out, I wasagain volunteering for my congressman, Michael J.Harrington, this time in a three- or four-staffer campaign-finance office in which I was the sole volunteer. I was alsothere because Ernie Weiss, a longtime family friend, was theexecutive in charge. He was a sympathetic guy whosometimes would return me home in his exotic French sportscar.One day on the way home, he asked me if I’d considerconsulting with a doctor he’d been seeing for weight control.I was surprised by this, since he never struck me as having aweight issue, but I said yes. The doctor was in New York, hesaid, but he would take me to the airport, fly with me, andescort me into the first visit. I would actually get a day off from school, to jet down to the big city for the day. (On mythird or fourth visit, I caught 7 innings of a Sox-Yankees gamebefore having to catch my plane home.)
I also liked that it was an opportunity to be special. Notonly would the jetting-down-to-New York thing work for that,he said that if I tried to get an appointment with this guy onmy own, it would take me more than a year, but he could getme in. The doctor’s name was Robert G. Atkins, and his DietRevolution was just taking hold.On that first visit, I weighed in at 332½, meaning that Ihad, on average, added 20 pounds onto my body for everyyear of my life. Owing to a glucose-tolerance test, the visitlasted 7 hours, filled mostly by peeing in a cup or waiting forthe next time to pee in a cup, but it did include an audiencewith the doc.I was unimpressed.What sticks out most from the interview was when heasked me if I wasn’t bothered to be missing out on so much,such as sunning myself on the beach at Saint Tropez. InFrance. On the French Riviera. Literally, he was trying tomotivate a 300-pound-plus 16-year-old suburbanite bysuggesting that when I lost my weight, I would find myself among the beautiful people in the south of France.I suppose he’d honed the pitch for his patients from hisEast Side neighborhood, but as a diet doctor, he certainlyshould have known that one size does not fit all. After a bitmore of his diet-pop psychology, I asked him if I was
supposed to be feeling regretful for having gotten myself into such sorry shape.“Never mind what you’re supposed to be feeling,” hethundered, scaring me. “Just answer the question!”Clearly, we weren’t going to be buddies, but hisregimen kept me coming back. At my two-week weigh-in, I’dlost 30 pounds — yes, 2 per day — and I would drop about ahundred more before my willpower would peter out.Why, when I’d never lost any appreciable weightoutside of summer boot camp, was I able to do this,especially when my only impetus was special circumstanceand the solicitude of a family friend?First, those conditions aren’t to be discounted: Up tillthen, I’d had scant claim to specialdom, and most of it hadbeen of the bad kind, such as the year I made the top rungof Little League. None of the uniforms in the team’s box fitme, so a league representative took me shopping, and allseason, I stood both for my size and for the much largerscarlet number emblazoned on my back.But also, it was a plan that rewarded black-and-whitethinking. Instead of balance, there was the “right” stuff —protein and fat — and the “wrong” stuff — fruit andvegetables. And though I didn’t know it then, and I wouldn’thave related the knowledge to myself if I did, black-and-white thinking is a hallmark of addictive behavior.
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