Growing Up With a Fat Dad

I grew up with a fat dad — 450 pounds at his heaviest. Every week he would rotate to a new fad diet, and my family ended up eating whatever freeze-dried, saccharin-loaded concoction he was trying at that moment. By the time I was 9, I was an expert on Atkins, Pritikin and Weight Watchers, just to name a few. Did I mention spending four weeks at Duke University’s “Fat Farm” consuming only minuscule bowls of white rice, while my 10-year-old peers were home eating ice cream cones?

 In spite of being shorter and scrawnier than my classmates, I was eating calorie-free astronaut mystery powders and drinking diet sodas, which were the only staples in our kitchen. My dad was obsessed with his career in advertising and his fluctuating weight, which was fluctuating mostly in the wrong direction. Every new diet, no matter how stringent or odd, was the potential solution for his expanding waistline.

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