I wish I was genetically predisposed to respond to stress and extreme trauma by losing my appetite and needing to go for a run. Man, fuck those people.

Unfortunately for my pant-size, I channel the extreme emotions stemming from crisis into baking a nine-inch pumpkin cheesecake with gingersnap-pecan crust, two batches of muffins, three batches of pudding, four Thanksgiving pies, 32 scallion and goat cheese buttermilk biscuits, and a rum cake. Thank god there are always six to fifteen other people around, who are only too pleased to numb their grief and exhaustion with one of my many confections. [ . . . ] Continue »

There is a type of deeply revelatory empathy that comes when the average person has a total morbid-obesity eating moment.

Sometimes these moments are private and it’s only while you’re coming down from the high that you are able, with a little perspective and a lot of laxatives, to realize how scary and sad that fatty-moment really was. Laying immobile on the carpet, with all the windows open, stroking the taut, distended, percolating mound of flesh that used to be your abdomen—saag paneer riding so high up your throat you could probably cough up a piece of half-digested cubed cottage cheese—when you think, “Indian buffet was a bad idea.” Oftentimes, however, we are only brutally and painfully shaken out of our four-figure-calorie-blitz-haze when someone else accidentally catches us being a complete fatty. [ . . . ] Continue »