Stay out of the kitchen - Originally posted to BMGS 1.0 October 2, 2007

Stay out of the kitchen

I had a nice email the other day from old friend Nick Wyman, writing from Sarasota where he will appear beginning October 13 in the pre-Broadway premiere of A Tale of Two Cities at the Asolo Repertory Theatre's mainstage, The Harold E. and Esther M. Mertz Theatre. My efforts to get back to my old playing weight struck a chord with Nick, and he told me he’d been struggling to keep his weight where he wants it. 

One significant difference between us that bears mentioning here is that Nick is 6’5”, while I am 5’11 on a good day. In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that I have sometimes envied very tall people their ability to wear a few extra cheeseburgers more elegantly than the rest of us.

But I know that is silly, and I understand that it is every bit as much of a struggle for Nick as it is for me. He is doing admirably with a regimen of yoga, gym duty every other day, and some sensible meals. But he got me thinking about another Nick.

Nicky D. was also 6’5” and struggling with his weight when I knew him a few years ago. He was doing time for some drug-related problems (like a couple of million other Americans). Who am I to hold that against him? Like Nick Wyman, Nicky D. was a great guy who I loved being around.

But there was a big man. He had started out somewhere over 1100 pounds. No, that’s not a typo. 1100 pounds. Of course nobody starts out at 1100 pounds, but I think you know what I mean.

He worked at it so hard. He lost over 500 pounds, down to under 575. Yeah, he lost the equivalent of 3 grown men of normal proportions. He did it by eating healthfully and walking every day. He had a lot of extra skin hanging here and there on him, but it wasn’t hard to imagine he might continue his successful effort and get back down around 300, which he had carried well as a high school football player 20 years earlier.

Then he got a job in the kitchen at the prison where he was doing time. Not surprisingly, he was a very good cook. Everybody else in the joint wanted him to work in the kitchen, I heard.

But within a few weeks I could see that things had changed. The scale started moving in the other direction. (He had to use an industrial scale). In a few months he was over 700 again. He could gain 5 pounds at a single meal, and ate around the clock, but the key to it all was that his kitchen job gave him unlimited access to foot after a couple of years of deprivation.

There are morals to the story. Simple ones. Being 6’ 5” is no protection. And if weight issues challenge you, don’t get a job in the kitchen, any more than an alcoholic should be serving drinks or a gambling addict dealing cards.

Pheromones Redux: Adrienne Campbell-Holt

"Pheromones" is an occasional feature of this blog, in which I will share and share alike from among the reader creations and suggestions that flow back toward me. Feel free to send yours in to me either as comments on the blog or by sending me an email at hppress@gmail.com. In the next few days I will re-post a few past entries that may interest you:

Pheromones - December 8, 2007 - Adrienne Campbell-Holt

Turns out Stephen King's son is a novelist named Joe Hill. I dreamed I saw him. It's kind of funny, though, the things that any of us do to give our children a boost, or to give them distance, or to try not to seem to be giving them a boost.

I am so proud of my daughter Adrienne Campbell-Holt, mentioned here occasionally as Kippy. She is an actor, a writer, a director, a dancer, an artist, a blogger, a runner, a choreographer, a comedienne, a teacher, an arts administrator, a lefty, and a Sox fan. She is bo-coastal, not that there's anything wrong with that. She is at home in LA, Brooklyn, and Dorchester. As you can see above, she is a photographer too. But above all else, as she says on her blog, "you will never meet anyone else like me. I love, and also dance, harder than most people."

There are many other remarkable photographs on her blog, Adventures with Blue Car. And many powerful words well worth reading.

It is clear from her blog that we must see Into the Wild. And so I will.

(Update: Happily, I got to see Into the Wild with Adrienne, which doubled my enjoyment of a terrific movie. More recently, just this past weekend, I got to see the latest blossoming forth of Adrienne's amazing creativity -- she is assistant director of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson at the Public -- and to celebrate her birthday with a lovely outdoor brunch at 5 Front Street under Walt's bridge).