In my past posts On Being Fat, I have briefly explored our country’s current history of obesity, and I outlined my struggle with being overweight. I covered—again briefly—the ups and downs of will power and the reaction an obese person’s body has to losing weight. Now the time has come for the cherry on the sundae, so to speak, where I write about a diet regime called Controlled Cheating, which was created by a man named Fats Goldberg. I came across this regime in a very roundabout way.

Fourteen years ago, my friend Barbara Johnson and I went to the Brunswick Library’s book sale, which is renowned in central Maine for the high quality of its books. People get there long before the doors open, and first in line are the second-hand booksellers, who snarl at each other as they jockey for position. When the doors open, the crowd stampedes for the books, and woe to anyone who falls in the rush.

Fortunately for me, the section I am drawn to—the pinhead literary section—is not one that attracts the booksellers, and I was able to browse freely without fear of having a book snatched from my hands. Even then, I had long been a fan of the New Yorker, and when I came across Calvin Trillin’s American Stories, into the canvas bag it went.

American Stories is a collection of Calvin Trillin’s essays, and most of them were originally published in the New Yorker. Many of the essays are quite dark, detailing the rather sordid underbelly of American culture. But not all of them focus on “crimes and misdemeanors,” and one of them profiled Larry “Fats” Goldberg, a friend since high school. Trillin jokingly refers to himself as Fats Goldberg’s Boswell, and indeed Trillin seems to get great pleasure from following Fats Goldberg around and recording what this legendary eater could dispatch in a single sitting. (A lot!) But for me, the really interesting thing was not how much Fats Goldberg ate—although I admit I was somewhat in awe of his Falstaffian appetite—but rather how Fats Goldberg managed to stay slim and yet eat so much.

Apparently, it wasn’t always this way with Fats Goldberg. When he was in high school, Goldberg weighed over 300 pounds, and even then he was a legendary eater. When he was a young adult, one day, for no particular reason he can recall, Fats Goldberg decided he had had enough with being fat and decided to lose weight. He devised a system called Controlled Cheating because he noticed that sooner or later, most people cheat on their diets, and when they do, it is a downward spiral until all the weight that has been lost is regained. (How right he is about that!) Fats Goldberg reasoned, if everyone cheats on their diets, why not build it into the system? And this is what he did. Six days a week, Fats Goldberg ate so well that he would have made Alice Waters and Michael Pollan jump for joy. Goldberg’s diet included the usual things people eat when they want to lose weight—fruit, fresh vegetables, lean meat, all in limited amounts. Then, on the seventh day Fats Goldberg would rest, allowing himself to eat anything he wanted and as much as he could hold. These days came to be fondly known as “cheat days.” However, there is a qualifier that must be added: an hour of vigorous exercise every day. No exercise, no cheat day.

Not only did Fats Goldberg managed to shed half his weight with controlled cheating, but he also kept it off for over 40 years until he died at age 69 from complications related to Alzheimer’s disease.

After reading Trillin’s essay, I was impressed with Fat’s Goldberg’s method and success. As an adult, I had had spotty success with dieting, losing weight and then putting it right back on. A few months of dieting wer all I could really manage before I fell off the wagon and began cheating my way back to what I weighed when I started. I had tried all sorts of methods, but never Controlled Cheating. “Why not give it a shot?” I asked myself. “What’s the worst that can happen? You won’t lose weight. Nothing new there.”

So I tried it, and it worked. I lost about 60 pounds and was the thinest I had been in a long time. I biked and walked. My blood pressure was that of an athlete’s, and my blood sugar and cholesterol were equally as good. I was trim, and I felt great. Six days a week I was a virtuous eater, and I allowed myself 1,500 calories a day. Like Fats Goldberg, my noncheat diet consisted mainly of fruit, vegetables, and low-fat protein. My cheat day was Saturday, and it was the day I lived for, planning it in exquisite detail—donuts, fish and chips, chocolate, ice cream sundaes. What a day!

During my noncheat days, whenever I felt myself flagging, I would picture cheat day in all its glories, and I was able to press on with my diet. However, despite the success of this method, it required a lot of mental energy and constant vigilance. On noncheat days, there was never a time when I could just relax and not monitor what I ate. I had to be on guard all the time, and I had to exercise faithfully for an hour every single day. I was hungry most of the time, and I always thought about food.

For two years, the longest I have ever stuck with a diet, I was able to keep the weight off using this method. But, as I mentioned in a previous post, life took an interesting turn. My husband and I began publishing a literary magazine called Wolf Moon Journal, and it had a full-time staff of one—me.  While I enjoyed working on the journal, it sapped both my time and my energy to the point where I could no longer focus so intensively on my diet and exercise. Slowly the weight came back on, until I gained every bit of weight I had lost.

Two years ago, my husband and I stopped publishing the journal. I still write regularly, but my duties are nothing compared to what they were when we were publishing Wolf Moon. Nevertheless, I continued to overeat. Last May, when I went for my physical, I was alarmed to find I had gained 13 pounds over the winter.

The doctor didn’t lecture me, but I lectured myself. “Keep this up, and you’ll be a candidate for the show Heavy.” (Hugely obese people are shipped to a spa where they diet and exercise until they are ready to drop.) Time to return to Controlled Cheating, which I did not long after that May physical. Because I am post menopausal, I’ve had to go to 1,200 a day to lose weight instead of the 1,500 of my younger years.

Since last May, I have lost 45 pounds and feel so much better. I have dropped two sizes and hope to go down another size or two. People tell me how great I look, but it’s hard for me to judge. I look at myself and see a fat person lurking underneath. (Fats Goldberg mentioned a similar phenomenon, and this seems to be quite common for people who have been overweight.) In truth, I think I look relatively “normal,” although by modern American standards I am plump and probably always will be.

But to heck with modern American standards. If I can get down to a size 14, I will be content.

Just as it was when I went on Controlled Cheating for the first time, every noncheat day is a struggle. I am constantly hungry; I’m always thinking about food. Gum is a lifesaver. So is fruit and peppermint tea. And that shining day, cheat day, is always just around the corner, that one day when I can relax and eat whatever I want.

One more day to go.

“Nobody wants to be fat. In most modern cultures, even if you are healthy…to be fat is to be perceived as weak-willed and lazy. It’s also just embarrassing.” –Tara Parker-Pope, the New York Times

Over the holidays, I met with a friend who has struggled with her weight for nearly as long as I have. Right now, she is close to her ideal weight, and she has worked hard to get there. As we were talking about weight and dieting, she told me about an article in the New York Times—“The Fat Trap” by Tara Parker-Pope. (I started this On Being Fat series by linking to it.) My friend also mentioned how discouraging the article was, but that she was going forward with an optimistic attitude about her own weight, and I said I would be doing the same with mine. (I’ve lost about 45 pounds since May.)

This is exactly what we should do, but let’s face it, the odds aren’t in our favor. My friend and I both have a long history of losing weight and then gaining it all back, and we aren’t alone in our struggle with fat. According to MSNBC, “more than 80 percent of people who have lost weight regain all of it, or more, after two years.” My own patterns of gaining and losing certainly verify this, and the same is true for many people I know.

Why should so many of us who really and truly want to be trim gain weight back after losing it? Parker-Pope provides some answers in “The Fat Trap.”  In brief, studies indicate that genetics and hormones make it difficult for many people to lose large amounts of weight permanently. It seems our bodies don’t like shedding pounds, and when an obese person loses weight, his or her body pumps out a hormone called ghrelin, which stimulates the appetite. At the same time, the dieting body will produce less of peptide YY and leptin, which suppress appetite.  “A cocktail of other hormones associated with hunger and metabolism all remained significantly changed compared to pre-dieting levels.”

Parker-Pope notes: “For years, the advice to the overweight and obese has been that we simply need to eat less and exercise more. While there is truth to this guidance, it fails to take into account that the human body continues to fight against weight loss long after dieting has stopped.”

She movingly recounts how her mother struggled with being overweight, and how, as her mother lay dying, “[i]t was her great regret that in the days before she died, the closest medical school turned down her offer to donate her body because she was obese.” In turn, Parker-Pope struggles with her own weight, and by her own admission, she is at least 60 pounds overweight.

Parker-Pope then goes on to describe some people—the happy few—who have indeed managed to keep their weight down for many years. Readers, I have bad news that will come as no surprise to those of you who have a history of dieting. It takes constant vigilance and will power for a formerly obese person to maintain a healthy weight. Such people can never not think about food, how much they have eaten and how much they will eat. It also requires exercise—at least an hour a day, seven days a week.

Is it any wonder people just give up? I have done so many times in the past when I have just plain gotten tired of always monitoring every bit of food that has gone into my mouth.

However, I do have some good news. I have found a system that has made losing weight and keeping it off a little easier. (Not easy, mind you. Just easier.) I stumbled across it by accident fourteen years ago, and I had more success with this method of losing weight than I have ever had with any other system. Unfortunately, after keeping off the weight for two years, I gained it back, and the reason is fairly simple. My husband and I started a small literary magazine called Wolf Moon Journal, which occupied so much of my day that I couldn’t focus on keeping track of everything I ate, and I no longer had time to exercise.

Two years ago, we stopped publishing the journal. Over a year ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and was told not to diet during radiation treatment, and it was open season on chocolate and sweets, my weaknesses. Last May, after radiation treatment was over, I went for my yearly exam, and I found I had gained 13 pounds over the winter. I was at my heaviest. Yikes!

The time had come to take another shot at losing weight, to return to the system that had worked so well for me 14 years ago. That system is called controlled cheating, and in my final post On Being Fat, I’ll describe the system and the roundabout way I came across it.