I’m happy to answer any questions.

As I say in the video, I still can’t recommend it. It’s been good for me but everyone seems to react differently.

As I enter Act Three, I was not prepared for this. I was at peace with being the healthiest version of myself at a heavier weight, so this is wild.

I didn’t say this, but I want to add, do not tell a formerly heavy person, “You must feel so much better” unless you have intimate knowledge about how they felt. I had great mobility, my knees worked great, my blood work went from satisfactory to amazing, I slept well, etc. “You must feel so much better” has the subtext of looking for an excuse to judge and hate the fat version of who I was. You can say, “You look great” and compliment but stop kidding yourself that it was about health since you knew nothing about it. There are healthy fat people. Get over it.

This is a really bad photo from about 6 years ago, for reference.

This is a really good photo from last month, for an ego stroke.

Finally, I wanted to note someone on Threads who posted a photo of his pre-GLP-1 self and said he was ashamed of how big he got. I told him to cut himself some slack. I want to give my former self a big hug. I know how I hard I tried with everything and metabolic dysfunction was the cherry on top. I loved my old me. He sacrificed a lot and he made me who I am. He deserves a round of applause not disdain. And if the girth makes some uncomfortable, that’s about them, not me.

I had a doctor tell me it was about discipline and self control. I started a business from nothing, with no money and sacrificed my social life, romantic life, some relationships, raised a teenage son alone, was a caregiver for my mother until her death, survived and thrived various economic downturns and managed to tell people how to cook beans and somehow I lack discipline!

I am not ashamed of my past or present and I’m happy to answer questions, if you have them. My only advice is to eat real food, move as much as you can and if you haven’t found that groove yet, keep looking, and there is no one solution for all. Do your best and fuck the rest.

I haven’t found that to be true.

This is from Seth Godin, the closest thing I have to a business and marketing hero:

Laughing at you behind your back

If that’s not happening, it’s possible you’re not being bold enough, generous enough or creative enough.

It might be teenagers, competitors or that stranger down the street, but generous creative leadership always creates skeptics.

I was born with people rolling their eyes at me so boring people laughing at me is fine. For me, I interpret this as a reminder to please tribe and most importantly, yourself.

He took me to Brooks Brothers and had me fit for what’s known as a “sack suit”. He stressed it wasn’t fashionable, and it wasn’t, but it wasn’t too bad even though I was 16 and more interested in flour sack shirts, which were happening at the time. I could tell he loved the process of having me fit for a suit and the possibility that I’d follow in his footsteps.

A few weeks later, it was ready and we drove to the city to pick it up. He paid for it with his clean Brooks Brothers credit card, knowing full well he’d never pay for it. I was really uncomfortable with the situation but he insisted and I knew better than to argue. He threw in several button-down shirts and rep ties, all on an account that was doomed to end up at a collection agency. I donned the complete outfit, which felt more like theater than street clothes. This was followed by a dinner at Fior d’Italia, in North Beach, to celebrate on a Master Charge card that still had a few available dollars on it.

As we pulled up to a parking spot, a woman in another car felt the spot was hers. I don’t remember who’s spot it really was but I knew that I wished the woman would give up because I knew my father’s temper was going to make this ugly if she didn’t. Our car was an old boat that was hanging on by a thread. It had power steering, but the system had a leak in it, making it harder than ever to steer so when the two of them got into a battle of the wills, I was watching my father struggle to control our car, her space, and his weird sense of self-worth. It got ugly on both their parts. His whole world was falling apart. He’d been an executive and had bought a great home in the Sausalito hills and now he was on welfare, he’d alienated his youngest son (my brother Mike), and I was 16 and the only one with a job but I was counting the minutes until I’d be free from all the screwy adults in my life. This parking space, this dinner, my suit, and the chance to show a world that wasn’t watching that he was still a “player” meant everything to him.

He won the tug of war for the parking space. I wanted to go home. He was white hot, and we went to have this meal in a famous Italian restaurant. I was freaked out, as I often was. The menu looked like gibberish, but I saw the word “sweetbreads”. I had no idea what they were, but I thought, what the hell.

My father was still fuming but trying to act like a bigshot with the wine list and ignored me. He hadn’t checked with me before I ordered. I blurted out, “Sweetbreads, please.”

There was a moment of silence and I thought to myself, “You are an idiot.” My father just shrugged as if to say, “let him waste his last chance before we go completely broke on something he knows nothing about” and I was losing my nerve. Maybe spaghetti would be a better choice. Anything other than sweetbreads, whatever they were.

After a beat, the waiter looked at me, nodding his head, “Very good, sir. Very good.”

I felt as if I’d just been admitted to a secret club for discriminating tastes. This wasn’t a veggie stir-fry.

This was the waiter, who wasn’t my father, who seemed to know something about food, validating me. I had no idea there was a secret club for people with good taste and discriminating palates. Because the waiter reacted the way he did, I understood there was food for the masses and there was food for those who knew better.

They arrived and they were delicious. They tasted like freedom from my well-meaning, but crazy, parents. They tasted like freedom from a controlling father who was out of control. They tasted like freedom from the mainstream, which had made it clear I wasn’t welcome. It was wild to eat something as weird as a gland and then to like it. It was a dare accepted. It was my future with food and I was thrilled.

No one said anything. It was weird and seemingly random. I thought to myself, that’s an odd idea of a win.

“I just love it and I’ve never had a weight issue. I’ve always been thin.”

Okay, lady.

Over the last ten months, I’ve lost nearly 60 pounds, thanks to Mounjaro and since November, the gym. After so many frustrating years of being unable to lose weight, the door opened and I’ve run through it. I’ve got a ways to go but I’ve been feeling pretty wonderful about everything, including buying clothes that fit and getting to know the face I’d lost that seems to have come back. It’s been hard but it’s now possible for me. I started at the gym twice a week and moved on to three days. I don’t hate it! And more than the weight loss, it’s the regular gym visits that really have changed the way I feel, which is good.

Dinner party conversations about weight used to make me nervous but now I was curious to see where it was going.

Nowhere, it would seem. It was a strange non-sequitur that stopped the conversation cold until we moved on to something else.

Later the subject of Mounjaro came up. I was explaining how I wasn’t drinking, not as a decision but left to my own devices, I wasn’t much interested.

The woman who loved being thin blurted out, “That’s what Chuck needs. He’s my stepson and he’s drinking too much and his face is flabby and ruddy. He’s gaining too weight and that’s it. He needs to go on Mounjaro. He is not healthy!”

I was taken aback. I had to wonder what Chuck thought of his stepmother but she didn’t keep me wondering for long.

“He’s so unhealthy. He’s afraid he’ll never see his father’s money because I’m going to outlive him.”

I really was feeling for Chuck at this point, even though I’d never met him or even heard of him before this conversation. I offered to subtly talk to him and tell him my story, if she liked.

“How overweight is he?”

I wish I were exaggerating but I’m not. She looked me up and down and said, “Well…”

“Are you saying he’s my size?”

She nodded her head.

And with that, the lady who loved being thin played all her cards and I understood who she was and what she thought of me and all people with extra weight. Who knows what demons she’s fighting. I’ve been successful and perhaps she was jealous. I’m being generous. Perhaps she’s just awful. I don’t know and I don’t care to find out. I do suspect that the disdain for the heavy often comes with thoughts about the suffering and sacrifice the skinny have endured and if they suffer, so should everyone. It’s not that simple.

There are lots of folks who hate fat people. They say it’s out of concern, or worse, love. “I’m just concerned about your health! I want you to live a long, happy life!” How was my last bloodwork? What are my cholesterol numbers? How is my blood pressure? Tell me anything about my health other than that you can see I’m fat.

Now I’m hearing constantly, “You look great. How do you feel? You must feel so much better!” Guess what, I don’t. I feel fine. I did before.

Statistically, until recently, sustained weight loss was not achievable for a lot of people. Reducing calories often met a metabolism that would adjust to fewer calories and insist on even fewer calories to lose pounds. The concept of Calories In/Calories Out for everyone doesn’t work. So far (it’s been less than a year), this is working but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for others yet. The side effects can be brutal but for me, it was worth it and I can understand how for others, it’s next to impossible.

But to value people based on their BMI seems like the worst kind of superficiality. Go study art, learn to cook, raise a child, understand Middle East politics, buy an antique, play a kazoo, refinish an old table, speak a foreign language, play canasta with some senior citizens, start a business, see a movie, finish a boring book…these are all much more interesting than someone’s weight. I’m not discounting any kind of weight loss but to tell a group of strangers, one of whom is still heavier than most, at an otherwise nice dinner party, that you love being skinny, is a weird, sad take on things.

I’m enjoying the “new me”, or the return of the old me, so maybe that makes me a hypocrite. It’s all very complicated and fat is much more than pounds.

I’m not asking for paid subscribers at the moment. At one point, it might be nice to talk more about The Rancho Gordo Foundation, our non-profit that is developing and focusing on agriculture and youth, but for now, I just want to enjoy myself.

I’m flattered you’re here.

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