The Elephant in the Room
Tommy Tomlinson
Simon & Schuster (January 2019)
I just got back from WW, formerly known as ‘Weight Watchers’ but now marketed as a wellness workshop. I tell people that over the last ten years I have gained and lost the same 35 pounds twice. And I don’t ever intend to do so again. There are many reasons for my weight gain. I went through menopause–that’s a big one. I live with chronic pain–that’s another. (Because when fatigue sets in and muscles ache, a good ol’ shot of endorphins, released by the pleasure that is all things carbolicious, makes everything hurt just a little less.) Life got rough. Real rough. And I discovered the true meaning of that phrase “comfort food”.
In his new weight loss memoir, Tommy Tomlinson looks at his life and tries to figure out, first of all, how he came to be 460 pounds, and, secondly, how to lose that weight. He writes about his childhood, growing up in a working class home in Georgia, where food was a way to show love and where even though his parents no longer labored in the field, sharecropping, the food they ate was didn’t reflect the change in their lifestyle. He writes about food being a way to connect, a way to feel like you belong–how nothing says bonding like a night of beer and fast food with college buddies. And then there was his career as a sports journalist, where deadlines meant fast-food instead of healthy eating and sedentary days spent writing meant he burned off too few of those fast-food calories.
So for the most part, as pretty standard memoir of weight gain. But where Tomlinson provided a unique perspective was in his quest to figure out why he couldn’t lose the weight. Why few programs or diet plans worked for him. Why, no matter how firm his resolve, after a few weeks counting calories, he would revert to old habits. And so he turned inward.
While he mentioned several discoveries, the following made me wonder how many of us can be this brutally honest about our own reasons for overweight. Tomlinson says “I’ve forged my weight into a shield that keeps me from the risks of a bolder life.” He can blame a lot of life’s disappointments on his weight–people don’t like him because he’s fat, he is “more boring than I ought to be”–and it is that weight that holds him back from taking risks. He writes about his weight being rooted in lies and deception, a character defect that conflicts with his religious beliefs. Tomlinson lies to himself about wanting to lose weight. He lies to his wife that he avoided soda and fast food on any given day. And maybe most poignantly of all (especially coming from a fifty-something man) is that he is overweight because he doesn’t want to fully be an adult–that it is childish to not take responsibility for his health, to petulantly satisfy his every whim when it comes to food.
Over the course of writing the book, Tomlinson lost eight-five pounds–a snail’s pace for most of us seeking to lose. But Tomlinson isn’t concerned about how quickly he loses, but rather that the weight stay off. So that he can live that bolder life–honest and true–adulting all the way.
And I have a suspicion that because his weight loss journey was as much an inside job as an outside one, he will.
As is often the case, NPR did a great interview with Tommy Tomlinson the week his memoir was published.
This is my symphony 