Cirque du Malaise

I was recently dismayed to find out that I weigh 20 pounds more than I did 2 years ago and 30 more than my ideal, target weight (which is: the weight I have to be at for my awesome collection of size 6 hand-me-down jeans to actually fit). I had a mild nervous breakdown for a few days. Okay, not mild.

Then, because at this point in my life I’ve learned the hard way that no secret angel is ever going to come fix all my problems for me, it became sadly obvious that I only had one choice: DIET.

I have never been a dieter, ever, although I have tried every smart and wholesome eating system this side of the Sierras. I’ve done all manner of juice/wheatgrass/colonic cleanses/protocols, and they have never worked for me. All they ever do is whack out my blood sugar and send my entire system into the sort of distress that inevitably leads to horrific rebound binge eating and emotional trauma. (And if you are thinking of recommending that ONE AMAZING CLEANSE I have never tried, save your breath.)

I’ve also gone the route of more gentle and holistic eating protocols, such as the 3-month elimination plan that my acupuncturist Caylie See put me on last winter. That actually made me feel fantastic and helped me with a lot of things, but, unfortunately, it did not make me lose weight, even though I stopped drinking, eating sugar, eating dairy, gluten, stopped enjoying everything, basically, for three months. (And I have to note here that the goal of the program was NOT to lose weight, so it’s no fault of Caylie’s. She’s truly incredible at what she does.)

Here’s the thing — the women in my family get fat.

I’m from a long lineage of matronly women. The Westcott/Bangs/Hamilton women, they start out reeeaaaallly skinny and then swing to the opposite side of the pendulum over a long lifetime of having babies and being enduring, stoic New England sorts. I thought I might evade this pattern, since I am woefully childless and moved to California, but it turns out that it doesn’t matter. It’s hardwired.

As a kid, I was emaciated and actually anorexic for a while, and my mom and grandmother were also wispy little waifs when they were young. It’s when we get older that things predictably slide. Now, my mom is in pretty fine form these days, mostly because she owns a restaurant and so (ironically) doesn’t eat because she’s too busy running around being mad at her employees all the time. She also doesn't have blood sugar issues. She’s one of those annoying people who “forgets” to eat food and maybe eats one meal a day, maybe. And she is a jogger. Me, not so much. I wake up starving and get hungrier, crankier, and fainter from there. If I go too long without eating, I become palpably murderous. And as for jogging, no.

I know that technically it’s unhealthy to starve yourself, but here’s a dirty little secret that all women know and most holistic consultants don’t want you to find out: it’s the only real way to lose weight.

So I have come up with my own eating plan that is my shining salvation and only hope. Fingers crossed.

The Small Bowl Diet^TM is basically an artistic expression-meets-portion control eating plan.

Here’s how it works. First, you make a really cute, small bowl in pottery class. This is your one and only Small Bowl^TM. Now, you can eat whatever you want (except evil sugar, of course) as long as it fits in Small Bowl^TM. When you eat out of the bowl, you always take a moment first to admire how good you are at pottery. This is essentially a distraction from the fact that you are eating a concentration camp amount of food.

You wait until the point that you are absolutely starving, and then you wait just a little longer, for good measure, and then you eat ONE Small Bowl^TM of food. You eat it slowly, as if torturing and punishing yourself for being fat, and when that’s gone, that’s it. You should still be hungry when you’re done with the one Small Bowl^TM. If you’re not, you overfilled it or you need a smaller Small Bowl^TM. The key is to always be at least slightly hungry.

Then, you once again wait until you are out of your mind, chew-your-own-arm-off starving, and you wait the requisite little-bit-longer, and then you maybe accidentally murder someone, and then you eat another Small Bowl^TM.  Don’t go overboard.

Again. The key is to be basically starving all the time.

Oh — and a fucklot of exercise. You can’t forget that part. Basically, if you want to lose weight, you have to get on board with your genetic legacy and mimic the amount of physical activity your forbearers used to get. So in my case, the same amount of exercise as if I was chopping firewood and lugging water uphill from the river on black ice, 15 hours a day. That’s how much exercise my aging metabolism demands for me to stay at my “peak weight,” and even then, it’s a losing battle, since my genes think that a faux pregnant belly is a good thing — gets us through the long, cold, sedentary New England pilgrim winters, after all.

Unfortunately, my genes and my jeans are at odds, and if me and Small Bowl^TM have anything to do with it, the jeans are gonna win.

I’m really into making pottery. I don’t talk about it all that much, partly because it’s hard to talk in words about something that happens purely from the right side of your brain, and partly because, well, it’s my thing, and I don't always feel like sharing it. Sometimes it’s nice to have just one thing that you don’t share with anyone else. I go to a pottery studio once a week and make things. And usually my favorite part of these evenings is putting in my iPhone earbuds, blasting some Chopin, and tuning everything and everyone else out.

Last night though, was different.

I was feeling sad when I got to class. I have terrible jet lag this week, it’s been rainy and glum in Mill Valley, and then, fuck it all, Steve Jobs died yesterday.

I know it’s a little weird to get emotional when a public figure dies. I did not know Steve Jobs and I really do have bigger problems to worry about. But Steve Jobs was that rare public figure whose existence actually did touch my life, personally, and the lives of those around me. He impacted my own life deeply with his brilliant product innovations at Apple, but also with his creative vision, in which way he was truly a role model. THINK DIFFERENT. He was a legend, and he really did the change the world. He definitely changed my own life. Everything I’ve ever done that matters, I did on a Mac.

So when I got to pottery, I was feeling heavy-hearted. I didn’t really want to be there. And I definitely didn’t want to talk to anyone. I wanted to stay home and worry about what’s going to happen to the world without someone like Steve Jobs in it.

I put my headphones on, and I started throwing pots. But then, a funny thing happened.  I somehow ended up talking to the guy next to me — a new face at the studio — and ended up having a really meaningful evening. He was a visiting ceramic artist who gave me a whole bunch of insightful tips about how to throw on the wheel. Some of them were useful practical tips: “Get in, get out.” “Keep your elbows in close.” Others were more philosophical.

I watched him give a demo on how to throw off the hump. This is where you take a huge pile of clay, sloppily center it on the wheel, and then make little objects (bowls, mugs, whatever) from just the very top part of the wedge. In this way, you can pop off a whole bunch of things really fast without having to keep wedging, centering, and cleaning off the wheel. It also gets you away from the rabbit hole of being obsessed with centering the entire lump of clay perfectly, which can be a real time consuming OCD endeavor.

My favorite part of watching him throw off the hump was that he kept spinning these beautiful creative pieces, cutting them off the hump of clay, holding them up for everyone to admire, and then smashing them on the floor.

He said: “pottery is not precious.”

And this is what I love about pottery. You can’t take it too seriously. It’s a transient creative format. You can focus everything you’ve got on the most brilliant piece of artwork you have in you, but there are a million things that can go wrong. Even if you manage to throw it successfully, cut it off the wheel without warping it, carry it to the shelf without tripping, and trim it without fucking it up, you never know what’s going to happen in the bisque fire, or the subsequent glazing fire, or when some silly person picks it up to admire it and then accidently drops it. There might be an earthquake, or you might put a glaze on it that ends up sucking. You might get it home, only to have it break in the dishwasher, or slide off the edge of the table, or maybe the handle just breaks off one day. The thing is broken before it was ever born.

You’ve all probably heard the fable about Achaan Chaa, the Buddhist master, who loved his tea cup. His disciple said, how can you teach us about non-attachment when I see you always use that same mug? In the words of Mark Epstein:

“You see this goblet? For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”

Pottery is all about nonattachment and it’s also about getting over yourself.

I left the studio in a great mood last night, grateful for a few lessons learned. And then I came home and watched one of the many Steve Jobs videos circulating around the Internet in memorium, the one in which he said:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”