On Maintaining My Girlish Figure

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.