The Bookshelf

Not only do I have issues with food, I am also a closet foodie.  I call myself closeted because I am unable to dine in some of the places I read about.  I have loved cooking, food, restaurants, newspaper food sections, cooking and food magazines, and now blog forever.  I love when all my worlds collide and they did with Joe Bastianich article in Runner's World.  This article is from 2010, a year before I started running, but I had heard that he used to have a weight problem--here's another one of those moments for me---I just didn't believe it, so I start searching around and saw pictures and frankly, I still can't find his face now in the pictures when he was overweight.  Incredible!!!  So my searches led me to this article and when you read it, although it's in Runner's World, it's a foodie article, love it!!!
And then I found out that that he would have a book coming out, Restaurant Man.  I started reading it over a month ago and just finished it.  It's very revealing, in more ways than one.  He tells trade secrets, a lot of them, I was enthralled.  Now for the good part:  he devotes only about 6 pages to his chubby kid to marathon runner comeuppance.  "The doctor told me if I didn't stop I would have full-on type 2 diabetes in five to ten years and either die of a heart attack while I was sleeping or begin to go blind from glaucoma and start losing limbs.  It was a nice picture he painted for me.  He told me to take a look at my father--he had type 2 diabetes, which he did not control.  He had glaucoma.  He had poor circulation and neuropathy.  I knew I had to change my life.  The real aha moment is when I stopped looking at food as an indicator of social status or as a reward and started looking at it as fuel for my body." (Hardcover p. 228).
I love how his doctor painted him a picture, he got it and did something about it.  Sometimes this is the way is goes for some people.  But what I really wanted to note is that he doesn't seem as though he stresses out about gaining it all back.  And in his world of pasta and wine, that's saying a whole lot.  He states that running improved every part of his life.  I love that!!! "...it keeps my weight off..."  Again, I just find Maintainers so uplifting and encouraging.  To be reading something about food and to come across him was wonderful and enlightening.  I just wanted to share this.