Category Archives: Personal

Outward Bound/Homeward Bound

Posted on by
14

eastbound amtrakAt 9:15 on a Sunday morning, we put our daughter Emma on the Amtrak train that will take her from the West Coast to the East Coast.

Then we sail back home on the freeway, strangely clear of the traffic that normally chokes it.

Less than half an hour after hugging Emma goodbye, I am at my yoga class, my routine barely interrupted by her departure.

When I emerge, all stretched out and relaxed, I wonder how Emma’s doing. Has she gotten up yet to stretch her legs? Where is she now? The train has surely hurtled beyond the bay, beyond the suburbs we consider home turf, possibly beyond the great wetlands near Sacramento that attract millions of migrating birds as they touch down between Canada and Mexico.

Our migrating daughter will touch down in Chicago, then New York before continuing, airborne, on the last leg of her journey to St. Petersburg, Russia, for an artist’s residency.

At home I make salad and grilled cheese, using the leftover bread from the Italian restaurant we went to for our last dinner together the night before. It’s delicious. I wonder if Emma has broken into her stash of salami sandwiches. Her food must last for three days. Has she eaten any PB and Js out of boredom, or homesickness?

It’s not as if Emma’s alone in the wilderness, though. There’s a dining car, vending machines and even cafes at the stations where the train stops. Emma has money—not much, but enough—to augment her supplies.

As I eat my lunch, I pick up my book. Has Emma begun the one she selected for her train ride—Wild, Cheryl Strayed’s memoir about losing and finding herself on the Pacific Crest Trail. Strayed really was alone in the wilderness, and ran out of food and money—even her hiking boots! The book’s a good choice for my daughter, who’s about the same age as Strayed was when she made her trek. Emma is not as poorly equipped or facing such daunting challenges in her quest for self, but she, too, seeks something equally elusive and necessary.

At night I go into Emma’s room, relishing the unfamiliar tidiness, mourning the emptiness. As I strip her sheets, I wonder if Emma is settling down for the night—the first of two spent upright in Coach. She might treat herself to a meal in Chicago, but she is too poor for a sleeper berth and young enough still to withstand the price her body will pay for lack of a real bed.

I text Emma, wishing her goodnight as she glides through Nevada and Utah in the darkness. I do not hear back right away, but in the morning Emma’s text alerts us that the snow-covered Sierra was indeed beautiful. No doubt the upcoming Rockies will be too.

I can’t remember when Emma will arrive in Denver; Chicago’s ETA is even fuzzier, Penn Station’s a complete mystery. I am beginning to regret that I discarded the Amtrak brochure with the schedule of all the stops and times—so linear and straightforward, so easy to track.

I am losing track of my daughter. And even if Emma had a smartphone, which she doesn’t, I have not the will nor the desire nor the technological savvy to keep her under constant GPS surveillance. She needs to roam beyond our reach.

We go about our usual lives–dinner, Netflix, laundry, work–as our daughter travels farther away. Soon Emma’s across the mountains, across the prairie, changing trains in Chicago, swept up in the swirl of New York City. We text and talk many times, of course. There are three “Have fun, be safe, goodbye, I love you!” calls alone on her last stateside day. Then Emma boards the plane, lands in Russia. At least Skype and email will keep the connection strong until she returns.

Our forebears, who made this journey in the opposite direction, were not so lucky. The three continents and an ocean they crossed opened many doors, but one closed shut behind them. Home remained as a dream, a memory, a yearning to those who ventured forth—while those left going about their days prayed that their loved ones had enough to eat, a place to sleep, and home carried always in their hearts.

 

Nature’s Valentines

Posted on by
11

Sunrise from downtown San Anselmo

Chocolate is fattening, florist mark-ups are exorbitant, and restaurant reservations are impossible to get (not to mention that your Groupon won’t be honored even if you do snag a table).

Fortunately, nature supplies a lot of wonderful valentines for free, at least for those of us lucky enough to live in the San Francisco Bay Area. The run-up to Valentine’s Day here is always my favorite time of year because it’s our spring, with an incredible display bursting forth.

Here are some of the confections I’ve been enjoying on my walks around town this week:

*

What is your favorite no-calorie Valentine freebie?

Wishing Well

Posted on by
10

Wishing Well JPG

The picture above is a wishing well in San Francisco’s Japanese Tea Garden. “Wishing Well” is also my title for an essay of mine that just appeared in the Washington Post. That’s a terrible title for our Internet age of tags and clicks and not caring whatsoever about clever titles with double allusions that mean nothing to anyone who hasn’t read the essay. Which why would they because what the hell is it about, anyway? Why take a risk on something that sounds confusing and suspiciously literary?

So the Washington Post’s title gets right down to it: “My legacy to my daughters: BRCA and cancer?” That’s right: My essay is about an unwelcome legacy in our family; what it’s like as a mother dealing with the fact that I might have passed on the gene that greatly elevates the risk of breast and ovarian cancer to my daughters; and how they feel about getting tested for the BRCA mutation. If you haven’t read my essay, you might want to do so now before reading the rest of this post. (In other words: “Spoiler Alert!”)

The essay ends on an ambiguous note, which prompted a Washington Post reader to ask, “But where is the ending? What about Emma?”

What about Emma, indeed? It’s so hard not to know what happened! At the time I wrote the essay, and at the considerably later time when it was accepted, we did not know Emma’s BRCA status because she did not want to know. Those of us who dwell in the BRCA land of No Good Choices in the Face of Risk swing back and forth between twin slogans: “Knowledge is Power” and “Ignorance is Bliss.” Emma chose the latter, as did I for a while, until my own uterine cancer forced me to come into knowledge I did not necessarily want to possess. So I understood Emma’s decision, even though it made me anxious. (If she had decided otherwise, I also would have been anxious.)

This is how things were for three years. Then Emma changed her mind about testing. Partly time softens us for readiness. But what really made the difference for Emma was an NPR report about how women who work with someone with breast cancer are less likely to get their own routine screenings because they are frightened seeing the disease up close and personal. Their denial snapped Emma out of hers (another reason you should support NPR).

Less than two weeks before my essay was published, Emma learned her test results. She does not have the BRCA mutation. We cannot believe our good fortune that both daughters have dodged this bullet. The wishing well granted my wish!

I debated long and hard about whether to contact the Washington Post editor to add an epilogue. After all, as the reader’s plea reminds us, we like to know how things end. We especially like a happy ending, and I feel a bit churlish to have withheld it.

But it so easily could have gone the other way. I had also seriously debated whether or not I would ask the editor to pull the essay altogether had Emma’s news been bad.

In the end, I decided to leave the essay as it stood. The point, after all, is that legacy is multi-faceted, we rarely know the ending of anything, and we must bear the anxiety of not knowing (especially as parents). The flip of the coin went our way this time, but it won’t for many facing the same dilemma, and it won’t for us other times. That’s just how life goes.

But for you, dear Shrinkrapped reader, I’m happy to provide a happy ending to this particular story, and happier still to have one to provide!

 

 

 

Upstairs, Downstairs

Posted on by
20

StairsOne of the advantages of living in a five-story house is that you don’t need a Fitbit to make sure you’re getting in your 10,000 steps a day. We’ve stayed pretty spry just taking out the trash, hauling in the groceries, and running up and downstairs retrieving little odds and ends we constantly forget like books, dirty dishes, and car keys.

The stairs are not so great for my father-in-law, though, who has reached the age where walking down the corridor to the dining hall at his assisted living facility is a big challenge. He’d hauled himself up 19 stairs from our garage to our dining room for Thanksgiving, but the prospect of a repeat performance for Christmas looked dubious. And at age 95, who knew how many Christmases he had left? Since this was the first time in five years both our daughters would be home for the holidays, it felt even more important to celebrate together in traditional style—tree, stockings, lights, decorations, and Christmas dinner with all the trimmings.

“No problem,” I said to my husband. “Surely the four of us can carry him up the stairs.”

We decided to practice by hoisting Emma, our eldest, in the safety of our living room. Staggering, we dropped her onto the rug in about ten seconds, envisioning the domino effect of three generations meeting with disaster on the stairs into the garage. It was time for Plan B.

“The important thing is that we’re all together,” my mother-in-law and I said to one another, agreeing we’d eat instead at their favorite Chinese restaurant.

Which turned out to be closed on Christmas Day.

My husband made a reservation at a Thai restaurant instead.

In the meantime, my friend Eileen told me about a friend who’d had been carried into his house by firefighters after he was discharged from the hospital with a severely fractured leg.

“You should call the fire department,” Eileen urged.

“You’re kidding! They do that?” I replied, silently thinking, “What a waste of taxpayer money!”

And even if I didn’t think so, my in-laws surely would. I could not imagine them agreeing to such special treatment. We like to joke that they hate to impose on people so much that we won’t know that they’re dead until two weeks after the fact.

Still, I couldn’t let go of the idea, debating it back and forth in my mind, even putting “Call the fire department” on my to-do list. Like most things on my to-do list, there it stayed.

“Enlisting the firemen is a crazy idea, right?” I mused to my daughter. “We’ll be fine at the Thai restaurant, right? The important thing is for all of us to be together.”

Emma nodded.

The following day, my morning walk took me on a route I don’t usually take—one that ends a half a block from our fire station.

“What the hell—no harm in asking,” I said to myself, going in.

“I have a crazy question,” I said to the man at the desk, then explained our situation.

“It’s not crazy at all. We’re a full-service fire station, and that’s what your money supports. We do this all the time.”

My in-laws were surprisingly game.

“Some people might be too embarrassed to be carted up the stairs,” my father-in-law chortled over the phone. “But not me! I think it’s marvelous!”

On Christmas Day, four firefighters met us at the base of our stairs, strapped my father-in-law into a special chair, and deposited him safely in the living room. They arrived precisely at the appointed departure time, and reversed the procedure.Firemen and Grandpa, Christmas 2015

It was the best Christmas ever. Thanks, taxpayers!Jenny and Katie with Grandma and Grandpa, Christmas 2015

And yesterday, to celebrate my father-in-law’s 96th birthday, we all went to his favorite Chinese restaurant, this time without any assistance beyond his portable walker. It was the best birthday celebration ever.Hugh's 96th at Lily Kai

Buche de NO-el

Posted on by
4

Buche-De-Noel_1366

Every year I have the intention of making a Buche de Noel for our Christmas Eve feast. And every year I revise my plans as the reality of unwrapped presents, unpolished silver, and undecked halls lays claim to my diminishing time and energy. My daughter tried a few years ago when she was organizing my recipes to curb my hoarding tendencies and delusions by saying, “Get real–when are you ever going to make Buche de Noel with Meringue Mushrooms?” But I stopped her from throwing away the yellowed clipping. A woman can dream, can’t she?

This year, I was determined that my dream would finally become reality. I had more time to prepare, and more help, what with my husband retired and both daughters back in the area. Plus I planned to outsource the meringue mushrooms to the fancy Italian bakery that churns out such delicacies in exchange for a small fortune.

Make that “churned.” Alas, Rulli’s no longer makes meringue mushrooms. No matter. Summoning my inner Martha Stewart, I rummaged through the cupboards for the pastry bags I knew I’d bought long ago, so I could concoct the confections myself.

Except that I had finally donated said pastry bags to the Salvation Army just weeks before (hoarders are correct in thinking that you will come to regret throwing away something you haven’t used in years). I also discovered that, reckless purging of unused household items notwithstanding, I was too late with my culinary dreams for meteorological reasons as well. After four years of drought, the weather forecast promised a week of rain. Too bad every meringue mushroom recipe began, “These should only be made on a dry day.”

But couldn’t I just put real mushrooms on the log? Or just extra “holly” fashioned from mint leaves and cranberries?” So I proceeded undaunted to the Buche proper. That’s when I discovered I would need a candy thermometer. Would a grocery store model suffice, or would I have to fight the crowds at the mall? Reading my ancient clipping and all the online recipes more carefully, I noted the several warnings about not tearing the sponge cake when getting it out of the pan, or rolling it up, or carefully spreading it with buttercream. “A lot of trouble,” wrote more than a few reviewers.

Meanwhile, visions of brownies with orange buttercream frosting and chocolate ganache, Russian teacakes, chocolate crumb bars, and almond filled shortbread danced in my head.

Who was I kidding? Ours was not a sponge cake family anyway, but one with a preference for mainlining dark chocolate and butter.

“We’re not having a Buche de Noel. Not now, not ever,” I announced. “I’m over it.”

Here’s what we had instead:

Liberated from a dream I now know will never be fulfilled, I’m looking ahead to the new year wondering what other fantasies I might jettison—and what other delicious possibilities will take their place.

*

Have you ever made a Buche de Noel? What dreams have you relinquished for the better?

Suicide by Gun

Posted on by
4

Means Matter logo

Once again, America is transfixed by a mass shooting. No doubt the list of massacres will grow to encompass other shattered towns and families, evoking fear and horror every time.

Yet almost two-thirds of gun deaths do not make national headlines. These are the more than 21,000 people–many of them teenagers— who every year kill themselves with a gun.

As someone who has worked in the field of suicide prevention for decades, I know that the best way to prevent these tragedies is to restrict access to guns. Current research contradicts the commonly held but false belief that suicidal individuals will just find some other way to kill themselves. In fact, self-destructive feelings are often impulsive and fleeting, dissipating as the crisis passes. Ninety percent of those who survive an attempt never go on to die by suicide. But when guns are involved, the crisis can quickly escalate, precluding safe resolution. Fast and deadly equals no second chances.

According to the Harvard School of Public Health, those states with the highest rate of gun ownership also have the highest rates of suicide. Access to lethal means is a far greater risk factor than mental illness. Although some promote the fallacy that a gun in the home makes you safer, the opposite is true. The risk of suicide is two to five times greater for all household members in gun-owning homes. In one study, 82 percent of children 17 and under who shot themselves to death used a gun belonging to a family member. Homes without guns have the lowest suicide rates, but even in homes where firearms are present, risk decreases if they’re properly stored—unloaded and under lock and key.

When it comes to preventing suicide, means matter. We always ask why people kill themselves. But we’re better off focusing on how so many people die.

It’s the guns. If we really want to save lives, restricting easy access to such lethal means is our best approach.

*

The statistics cited here are from these sources, which provide a wealth of additional information:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/health/blocking-the-paths-to-suicide.html

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/

http://actionallianceforsuicideprevention.org/sites/actionallianceforsuicideprevention.org/files/Reducing%20a%20Suicidal%20Persons%20Access%20to%20Lethal.pdf

 

 

 

 

Out of the (Gratitude) Closet

Posted on by
2

Gratitude closet

I love my colleague Tina for many things, but especially because she drinks her coffee from a mug that announces, “I Don’t Do Perky.” False Positive is the title of an article I wrote for psychotherapists about the downside of positive thinking. And a humorous essay of mine begins, “This gratitude craze bugs the shit out of me.”

So it may come as a surprise that I’ve recently begun keeping a gratitude journal.

Call me a hypocrite. I prefer to think of it as similar to the time I went from being a person who doesn’t much like dogs to owning one. I could really relate to canine-indifferent friends who couldn’t express an enthusiasm they did not feel for such lovable behaviors as tail-wagging and that (not so, to them) endearing doggy lean-in.

Likewise, I understand why someone who is suffering can feel even worse when asked to embrace positive emotions. It’s not that I’m a depressive ingrate by nature (at least not most of the time). But I’m wary of efforts to sanitize thought and speech. Too often, expressions of negativity are met with rebuke instead of empathy, and I’ve seen the damage this causes, personally and professionally.  I thus try to champion all those nasty feelings we feel pressure to squelch: anger, sorrow, bitterness, envy, vengeance. Superimposed gratitude is like a thin coat of whitewash that seals in the toxins.

And yet, stubborn resistance is equally problematic.

So during a hard time this summer, I relinquished my protestations and started a gratitude journal, figuring that it couldn’t hurt.

It’s nothing fancy, just an old 5×7” Reporter’s Notebook covered with my daughter’s grade-school scribbles . Every night I write the date and “I am grateful for/that . . . “ Then I list 3-5 things. I try not to repeat myself (though our latest addiction, the TV series Nashville, has made it into several days, and there’s a sprinkling of entries that say “RAIN! RAIN! RAIN!”).

Here are some of the things I’ve jotted down recently:

(And although this isn’t a current event, I’m grateful to my daughters, whose persistent dog lobbying brought Button into our lives for 15 years.)

Button

Two weeks into my gratitude journal, one of the things I wrote was “Feeling way less depressed.” Though the ritual of giving thanks surely helped, there were other things at play as well: I’d resumed weekly therapy after cutting back; the post-cancer scans that always make me nervous were clear; I finally followed through on my intention to volunteer; my weight finally started heading in the right direction; things started to go better for the Democrats; the summer drought of movies yielded to a fresh crop of Oscar worthies; our actual drought yielded (a little) to rain and the promise of more to come.

There is always more to come.  Assuming El Nino delivers on its promise, I look forward to jotting down my gratitude for SUN! SUN! SUN!

That’s how it goes, the chiaroscuro of darkness and light that makes up life’s full spectrum.

I’m grateful for it all.

*

Ever felt (or promoted) the prohibition on negative feelings? How’d it go? What are you grateful for?

Beanie Baby

Posted on by
6

Beanie BabyOh, how sad!” I inwardly gasped, brought up short on my daily walk.

There at my feet was a bit of dirty orange plush. It looked like it had been run over by a truck. One leg was missing entirely; white fluff spilled out from what was left of an arm: A beanie baby bear, lying face down on the asphalt.

Briefly, my empathy flitted to the forlorn child, the parents desperate to soothe, placate, substitute, bribe—anything to stop the wailing. I remembered the sleepless nights of misplaced lovies, the routes retraced until we found Sock Monkey or Pink Doggy, or whoever else had escaped unnoticed from my daughters’ clutches.

Mostly, though, I was horrified by how far this particular orange bear had fallen from its original pristine condition. Back in the late 1990s, Beanie Babies were not supposed to be the victims of botched surgeries performed by aspiring veterinarians, or sacrificed in the service of sibling torment. They were not supposed to lie on the ground getting dirty. In many families, they were not even supposed to be played with at all!

It didn’t start out this way. When Beanie Babies first appeared, they were just cute plush toys that cost five bucks. I didn’t care what my daughters did with theirs, as long as I didn’t break my neck tripping over them on the stairs.

Then things went a little crazy.

Thanks to a clever marketing strategy of “retiring” beloved characters, scarcity drove up demand. People willing to pay anything spent hours tracking down the elusive creatures, convinced their value would skyrocket. One man made national news when he bought $100,000 worth of Beanie Babies, gambling that their ever-increasing value would put his kids through college.

Suddenly, Beanie Babies became not a child’s favorite cuddle buddy, but investments. To protect their assets, people bought heart-shaped plastic covers to place over the manufacturer’s label (the very same label that in saner times would have been removed as a choking hazard). Truly zealous collectors entombed each Beanie Baby in a special acrylic box. Kids could forget about playing with their Beanies, since they couldn’t be trusted to keep them in mint condition.

Skepticism and a reputation as a tightwad inoculated me (and thus my kids) from all but the mildest case of Beanie Baby fever. Still, we occasionally were part of the grapevine of kids and mothers alerting one another to a rare Beanie sighting at some far-flung store. I confess to rushing out and paying $13.00 for a floppy-eared bunny rumored to be worth more because its tag had a misprint. During the Princess Di craze, when all the shelves were stripped bare of royal purple bears, my girls and I were overjoyed when the clerk dug out an overlooked one from the storeroom. (I was even more overjoyed when she didn’t jack up the price beyond the $20 retail “value.”)

Eventually, the bubble burst and my daughters grew up. Now there is a giant box of gently used Beanie Babies stowed high on a closet shelf. They’re awaiting future grandchildren, not a market rebound. Sadly, the Beanies were useless for college tuition, possibly because the unprotected but still-affixed labels showed a little too much wear and tear.

Not as much wear and tear, however, as the bedraggled orange bear I’d stumbled across on my recent walk. As I looked down at the heap of soiled plush at my feet, I thought of The Velveteen Rabbit, whose shabbiness was an emblem of how well-loved he was.

I imagined again the bereft child whose beloved orange friend had gone missing.

Then I pondered further on the time when kids were deprived of the chance to love someone to decrepitude because we encased their Beanies in plastic and put them out of reach.

*

Were you or your kids afflicted with Beanie Baby Fever?.Memories from that time?

The Pull to Be Positive

Posted on by
6

happy and sad face“Fake it till you make it.”

I thought of this adage when I took a friend who had never been backpacking into the wilderness years ago. We encountered a stream crossing that involved balancing on a log high above the roiling waters below.  I was terrified, but I never let on. My confidence was key in helping my friend safely across. It also helped me become as light-hearted as I had pretended to be.

Three years ago a cancer diagnosis thrust me again into the territory of needing to go on despite my fear. I wanted to lead everyone who cared about and depended on me, especially my children, through the treacherous waters without raising undue alarm that I’d go under, taking them with me. My darkest feelings were confined to my journal, my therapist, my husband, and a couple of trusted friends. For public consumption, I presented a sunnier side, writing breezy blog posts about wigs and Chinese medicine, stressing my gratitude and good fortune. It wasn’t a stretch: I was tolerating chemotherapy well, and felt truly lucky about early detection, great health insurance, an excellent prognosis, and lots of support.

The plaudits poured in.

“You’re so strong!” I was told all the time. “You’ll be fine because of your positive attitude.”

The implication that it would be my fault if things didn’t turn out fine always brought me up short. But being strong for others helped me be strong. Inspiring others kept their and my own spirits from flagging. I loved and needed the admiration.

I also hated it. For what if my spirits sagged? If I expressed too much doubt and fear, would I be letting down my fan base?

More important, would people desert me?

No one means to withdraw, but it happens: the involuntary recoil, the averted gaze, not knowing what to say, so saying nothing. I couldn’t bear the burden of people’s fear and helplessness. I couldn’t bear my own. So I tried not to add to it. Besides, who doesn’t want to flee the quicksand of negativity? Emphasizing the positive truth, even if it wasn’t the whole truth, was an act of self-preservation.

Only much later, long after treatment had ended and I knew I was fine, could I fully let in the darker side. It reminded me of the time years ago when I tripped and fell carrying my newborn daughter, asleep in her car seat. The seat, with Ally in it, landed hard on the concrete walkway. Fortunately, it remained upright, my baby safe and unperturbed.

“Oh, thank God,” I’d silently gasped, brushing myself off, scooping up Ally in her car seat, and continuing on, barely registering the close call.

It was only later that I could allow in the terror, all the What ifs? Ally is 24 now, and I am still overcome with dread whenever I think back to that moment.

Cancer is never over in a moment. Even when it’s gone, the possibility of its return menaces. Of course I celebrated leaving treatment behind. Yet the more chemotherapy’s protective shield of poison withdrew from my body and faded into the past, the more vulnerable I felt.

As previously disavowed feelings of fear and sadness bubbled up to the surface recently, I happened to tune into a TED Radio Hour about fighting cancer. A hospital chaplain who herself had gone through the ordeal stressed that only well after treatment has ended can survivors even begin to process their cancer experience.

Finally! Someone willing to challenge the platitudes about looking forward, not backward, the claptrap about cancer’s gifts. I listened eagerly as the chaplain described meeting with a woman a year after the latter had been declared cancer-free.

Revealing the suffering and fear she’d repressed during treatment, the woman remarks, “I felt like I was crucified on the cross.”

I waited expectantly for the chaplain to enlighten the TED audience about the isolation of cancer; the need to express what it’s really like; how crucial it is to listen to what’s hard to hear.  Instead, the chaplain recounts what she said to the woman:

“Get down off your cross.”

My worst fears were confirmed: Fake it till you make it, or you may find yourself having to make your way alone.

*

What’s your experience with the pull to be positive? Upsides and downsides? What’s your best (or worst) “Fake it till you make it” story?

Martian Plateau

Posted on by
2
Source: www.latino-review.com
Source: 123rf.com

The Martian continues in the great astronaut film tradition of reminding us that although we live in a broken world, duct tape can repair just about anything. Even better, as far as fixing human nature is concerned, the movie provides an antidote to racism, sexism, despair, global violence, and science denialism by celebrating human ingenuity, diversity, teamwork, and international cooperation. And, of course,  science. This nerd’s delight is winning plaudits for its scientific accuracy.

The Martian is accurate on another count as well: how incredibly difficult it is to lose weight! As a lifetime member of Weight Watchers, I know it’s a scientific fact that the body will not relinquish one ounce no matter how much you exercise and how little you eat.

An uninformed person might think, for example, that a guy who has to stretch 60 days of NASA rations to last four years might quickly drop a few pounds, even if said rations are calorie-dense (or “high in points” as we Weight Watchers say) and supplemented by a bumper crop of potatoes. Weight loss might occur even faster if the guy is laboring to set up a Martian greenhouse, hydration system, night-soil composting facility, and solar panels. Even without a lot of gravitational pull, such physical exertion burns a lot of calories, particularly when wearing a heavy space suit.

Yet Matt Damon, who looks pretty hefty at the beginning of the film, looks exactly the same several dozen food-restricted sols later. Talk about plateaus!

I blame the potatoes. Sure, they save Matt Damon’s life and are listed as a Weight Watcher’s Power Food when eaten plain (or with Vicodin powder as a zero-point flavor enhancement). But you have to be careful with potatoes. I, for example, just spent a weekend hiking in the mountains. I also spent a whole bunch of points on a half batch of delicious French fries. Despite vigorous exercise, I gained three pounds.

We weak-willed earthlings usually throw in the towel at this point. But Matt Damon is a man of science and discipline for whom throwing in the towel is never an option. Also, even if he wanted, understandably, to indulge in a little stress-eating by binging on yummy carbohydrates, he can’t: all his potatoes are nuked into oblivion by a sudden deep freeze.  So it’s back to extreme-portion-controlled MREs.

Still, Matt’s weight stubbornly refuses to budge. At Weight Watchers, we have a saying for this: “It’s in the bank!” This promise of earned weight loss yet to be realized keeps hope alive despite the unfairness of the laws of physics. Just refrain from self-sabotage and remember: Your weight loss is in the bank, and those pounds will eventually roll right off!

And lo! That’s exactly what happens in The Martian! Matt Damon goes from endlessly looking cute but downright plump to a screen shot labeled “Seven Months Later,” in which a gaunt body double emerges naked save for a long scruffy beard and wild hair. Apparently, facial hair is also in the bank, as we have seen nary a trace of stubble in the considerable time we spend with Matt before seven months suddenly pass. Then, in another tribute to reality, Matt is back to his full-figured self soon after the camera turns away from his anorexic body double.

I love The Martian  for illuminating the reality and perils of yo-yo dieting. It also shows that confidence, competence, and good cheer have nothing to do with weight. For which we Weight Watchers are grateful.

We are also grateful for the incredible hope the movie conveys. Sure, a post-racial, post-sexist, science-loving era of international cooperation to solve big problems is nice. But here’s the real hope: When all else fails with your weight-loss mission, and you just can’t break that plateau, head to Mars. You’ll find that no matter what your lying (or depressingly truth-telling) scale says on Earth, you’ll cut that number by about two-thirds on the Red Planet.

If you don’t believe me, just check out this science-based handy conversion calculator.

And whatever you do, stay away from Jupiter.