Passing For Thin - Support Thread for Those Approaching Goal

[guysis 0]

Look what I found on another thread!

From Physicology Today Article from the author of Passing for Thin

Size and Sensibility

Losing half her body weight was no picnic. But living thin—and expanding her sense of self—nearly made Frances Kuffle’s world blow up

I had been summoned to The Show, the Holy Grail for authors and the fulfillment of all my mother’s dreams. In a harried day of phone calls from Chicago, at the tail end of a snowstorm, the producers of Oprah decided, with 90 minutes to catch the last shuttle out of LaGuardia, that they might want me.

You’d think, on the eve of what could catapult my book to national attention, that I would be too nervous to eat.

I am never too nervous to eat.

As I grazed the basket of goodies in my expensive suite, I had two questions. First: Would Harpo Productions’ bean counters go over my hotel tab and ask, “Isn’t that the woman who lost all that weight? What are these charges for chocolate-covered almonds and honey peanuts doing here?”

Second: Why am I eating all this stuff? I might be on TV tomorrow!

What with Oprah replaying 24/7, everyone in America could count the bread crumbs on my velvet dress.

So much for the can-do kid, who, after 42 years of obesity and missed opportunities, had lost 188 pounds and written a book about it. Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight And Finding My Self is an account of how I used my radical change in weight to turn a small, private worlds of eating and surviving into one as big as my former size 32 dresses. I climbed mountains! I swaddled myself in cashmere and had lovers; I went to Italy. I floated out of the gym after lifting weights, I sat in restaurant booths, wore bracelets, and crossed my legs and took the middle seat in airplanes. Then I used my weight loss to do the next impossible thing: I became and author. Being thin opened the doors to experience and intimacy.

National exposure, however, was an intrusion I hadn’t considered. I am not a pundit or a role model. You’re going to be pilloried, Frances, I thought with the vehemence of a Sicilian curse.

And yet, there I was gobbling Oprah’s $12 Cookies.

I put on my pajamas and pulled back the comforter on the king-size bed. It was littered with wrappers. My cheeks were burning with shame and calories. Tomorrow, I promised myself solemnly.

And when tomorrow came, I smiled and joked, and I was gracious when I wasn’t, after all, needed for the show. I ached not from disappointment but with the hangover of sugar in my muscles, the sour gas in my gut and the heartbreak of being a liar.

After a failed romance and a change of jobs, I drifted into relapse in March 2003, a year before Oprah, I had time on my hands—and time, in my case, is the enemy. I filled it by studying where and how I went wrong, at the office, in the bedroom. Intellectually, I knew that the boyfriend was emotionally frozen and that my former employer was abusive and infantilizing, but I couldn’t shake my ingrained conviction that I was responsible for everything that went wrong.

I stopped going to the gym: I started eating peanuts or rice cakes between meals. A little of this, a little of that, and one morning I announced to a friend that I saw no reason why I couldn’t eat blackberry pie and ice cream, get the craving out of my system and return to my abstinence by noon.

I wasn’t talking about a slice of pie a la mode. I was talking about a whole pie and a pint of ice cream.

A whole pie?

That summer I was reminded at every turn that I needed to be thin to promote my book. “You don’t want those Cookies, honey”, my mom said as I carried off a stack I’d grabbed from the cooling rack. “Remember: You’re going to be in Oprah’s Magazine.”

She was wrong. I did want those cookies, and I didn’t need reminding about Oprah. I sighed and took two more.

When I asked myself what I needed, I was met with an unconsoling barrage of hungers. I needed to know I was not disposable. I needed a resting place. I needed to know I had enough stuff to carry off the rest of my life—enough talent, discipline, and intelligence—and enough sufficiency to protect myself from more heartbreak. I needed enough hope to find the friends and man I mourned the lack of.

From August 1999 to August 2003, I’d gambled that losing weight would get me closer to all that, and I was told what to eat in those years. Now, after three years of maintaining my weight loss, I needed to be told what to feel when everyone but me has an opinion of who I am.

I knew I—not just my body but my very self—was in trouble when I brushed aside a fleeting thought about how fat I looked with the answer “Never mind. You’ll like yourself when you get thin.”

How does one live with self acceptance as a future and an always-conditional state of mind? More pragmatically, in lieu of my size 8 clothes, my career depended on self assurance. When asked, I admitted that I’d gained weight, adding that I never presented myself as the poster girl of thin. I said this with poise, which is not the same thing as confidence. Poise is teachable; confidence is one of the elements missing from the periodic table, three parts self respect to two parts experience.

To get to confidence, I was going to have to listen to my self-accusations and sit with the rejections. Maybe shame had something to teach me. My next recovery period from food addiction would be based on therapy, heretofore more a matter of coaching than peeling back the layers of self. My psychiatrist’s and therapist’s offices became the places I could air my feelings about myself and the hopes I could change my self-perception. “There’s no point in getting depressed just because I’m depressed” I told my psychiatrist, who increased my morning meds anyway.

That October, on a blue-and-gold afternoon, I had Indian food with Lanie, a friend visiting from my hometown, Missoula, Montana. I described how depressed I was by my weight gain until she preempted me. “You’ve been very fat, Frances, and you’ve been very thin. Welcome to where the rest of us live.”

I twiddled my fork in my plate of saag panir. I think of Lanie as being very tall and very thin, but a few months earlier I’d helped her pick out a dress. Her dress size was similar to what I was wearing that day. The event we shopped for had been a gathering of Montana writers, many of them old friends, all middle-aged. One had a rounder face than I remembered; another wore layers of a truly terrible print in the style that catalogs and store clerks describe as “flattering”. Someone else was still very thin but looked drawn and brittle as age caught up with her bone structure.

These were woman I’d long envied for their pretty thinness, and yet I’d been less like them when I was a size 8 than I was now.

At size 8, I had to admit, I was so self-conscious (and secretly, overweening proud of it) that often that was all I was. I could have programmed my answering machine to announce, “Hi, you’ve reached a size 8. Please leave a message and either the size 8 or Frances will get back to you.”

None of the women at that party, or Lanie savoring her lamb jurma across from me, claimed their identities from their weights that night. They wanted to gossip, compare stories of their kids and discuss what they were writing, tell old jokes more cleverly than thy had at the last party, and sample the Desserts weighing down the potluck buffet.

I was not unlike them. Smaller by a size than Lanie, larger by a size than Laura, a little fresher looking than Diane. Of the Americans who lose weight, 95 percent gain it back within five years. I had gained a third of it back. Not all of it. To some extent, I had beaten the odds. I was stronger than the echoes of the boyfriend and boss allowed me to hear.

I was determined not to repeat the mistake of being, rather than having, a thin body. I’d lived through my size all of my life, so acutely aware and ashamed of my obesity that the likable things about me—my sense of humor, my intelligence, talent, friendliness, kindness—were as illusory to me as a magician’s stacked card deck. As long as I defined myself by my body size, I would not experience those qualities for myself.

As fall turned to a snowy winter, I picked through the spiral of relationships that had unglued me the year before. I didn’t blame the boyfriend or my boss for my relapse. I had been half of the problem; healthier self esteem would not have collapsed under their judgments of me. In obesity, I had clamped my arms to my sides to keep from swinging as I walked. I craned my body over armrests in theaters and airplanes, stood in the back of group photos to minimize the space I took up. I got thin and continued to hide. Whatever reasons the boyfriend had come up with for not seeing me, I met with amicability and sympathy. Had I reacted honestly, even to myself, I might have ended the relationship. Instead I’d gambled all my sweetness only to find out I was disposable. Likewise, I had not pressed my boss for an agenda of responsibilities from the start, nor had I clarified with her that her work and recreation styles frustrated and frightened me.

Slowly I began to find toeholds in the avalanche of food and doubt. I worried about how fat I looked to potential readers and what I could possible wear to flatter or disguise the 40 pounds I’d gained.

At the same time, however, I had become the canvas of makeup artists, stylists, photographers and publicists. They weren’t looking at my stomach. “Give me a hundred-watt smile,” commanded a photographer whose censure I thought I’d seen when I walked in. I licked my teeth and flashed a grin only somewhat longer than her camera flare.

“Wow.” She straightened up at the tripod. “That really is a hundred watts. These are gonna be great.”.

When I saw myself in the magazine, my smile was, in fact, the focal point. When I began dating, at the age of 45, my smile was an attribute men commented on, but I hadn’t really seen it until it was emblazoned on glossy paper. It was bigger, it seemed, than my face itself. I’d been a size 8 in my author photo, taken as my food plan was wobbling but not yet in smithereens, in June 2003. I was surprised to see I still looked like….myself, apparently.

The power of my smile fueled me through more publicity, giving me a sense of authentic attractiveness that allowed me to enjoy the process. When I had a couple of days in Santa Monica between readings, I had a chance to assess and absorb at my own pace. Walking along the Palisades, I admired the sea-twisted pines and pearly mist funneling out of Malibu Canyon. I felt as lucky as I had once felt by being hired, by being loved, and I felt worthy of my luck because I appreciated the prettiness of the place, the serendipity that brought me there and my particular grateful awareness that knitted the moment together. I’d tried to rob myself of that by punishing myself for the boss and the boyfriend. You should not have treated me that way, I thought. The emphasis was on “me”, and just then I knew who that was.

I looked around carefully. There was a family reunion going on, or so I assumed until I got closer and realized it was cookout hosted for the park’s lost and unfound citizens. I smiled to myself. How…California. No gritty, iron-shuttered Salvation Army outposts here, no Soup and Jell-O punishment for being a bum. No siree Bob. In California, the homeless are just one more variant on the Beach Boys.

I laughed out load. I’m here, I gloated. I like my own company.

I was tired of the games—with food, with hiding what I looked like under big clothes and my big smile, with waiting until I was a size 8 again to like myself.

I recommitted to chipping at my food addiction, but I let go of some of the rigidity I’d had in the first years of losing and maintaining my weight loss. “I want to be praised when I do things right, and I want to be forgiven when I mess up.” I told people closest to me. “And I want milk in my coffee.”

It was a small list, but significant because it allowed me to fumble as I gained my momentum of eating sanely. Esteem, kindness, patience, forgiveness: By cloaking myself in these qualities, I could build a self that was not afraid of authority figures and charming men who have one eye on the door.

Maybe these attributes will curb the millions of things that make me want to eat, starting with seeing my parents or returning to Montana. I turn into the kid whose mother had to make her school uniform, whose big tummy stretched the plaid into an Etcher cartoon; I became the sad, joking fat college student who was reading The Fairy Queene while her girlfriends were soaking up the half-naked wonder of being 20 years old. I think of my parents’ kitchens, and my mouth waters for gingerbread and well-buttered toast.

I regress when I let people like Lanie, whose struggle is different, comment or take chare of what I eat.

“That’s two Entrees, Francis,” Lanie pointed out when I said I wanted goat cheese salad and roast chicken for our first lunch together in Paris.

“Oh, Well, then, I’ll have the salad I guess,” I settled, grumpily. That’s the way I eat, that’s how I lost 188 pounds; vegetables and Protein. I was allowing her to limit me to a smidgen of cheese, or insufficient vegetables, and allowing her supervision is how I got so mad--the fatal elixir of anger and crazed desire—that I bought all the chocolate in Charles De Gaulle for my untasting delectation.

I am the kid who, when told not to put Beans up her nose, heads directly to the pantry.

“I have got to learn to tell people to stay out of my food,” I reported to my therapist back in new York.

Then again, perhaps this is an evolutionary process rather than a one-time miracle cure. In 2003, I denned up for two months in Montana and ate. In 2004, I struggled again in Montana but I also did a lot of hiking, alone with my dog and with my niece. My slow pace didn’t frustrate either of them. I went horseback riding and got a terrific tan while swimming every afternoon. My thighs did not chafe in the August heat along the Seine, and I was thrilled to cross the Appalachian Trail later that autumn. I had spells of disappointment and fear from the way I ate, but I was living in my body, on my body’s terms.

It’s a small world I’ve pulled from the wrappers, boxes and crumbs in the past two years, but a very human one. I’ve seen my family, close friends and therapists hold on to the stubborn believe that I would come through this. They loved me enough to countenance my mistakes and let me start over. Each day, I venture a little farther from the safety of food, and my courage comes from understanding that I am a lot like a lot of people—a family member, a friend, a dog owner, a recidivist, a middle aged woman, a writer who got a good rhythm going and forgot to brush her hair. There is safety in numbers.

Depression and relapse would have to wait for a different excuse than my size.

I am ready to hope again.

Frances Kuffel is the author of Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight And Finding My Self (Broadway books, 2004). Her website is • Frances Kuffel • author of Passing For Thin - Home

[Boo 3]

Wow...We should all read the book.

[JulieNYC 4]

Thanks for the post, Betty. I'd wondered what happened to her after the book was published.

The book will make you sad, but she's an excellent writer. I wonder if it would make me less sad now that I'm Passing For Thin. Probably not. Lost youth is a big theme for me, and it was for her too. The best I can do is to try not to dwell on it.

[Banannie 0]

Julie - great idea for a thread!

I've been lucky to lose fast, like you. And like you, I also have days where I think I'm still the biggest girl in the room, and other days I have a sexy little swagger in my walk. My head certainly hasn't kept up with my weight loss! And I'm not entirely "comfortable" with all the praise, attention and comments yet....

I'm certainly interested in others who are nearing the "end" of the weight loss journey and how we all start adapting to normal-weight life!

Love the thread!!

[WASaBubbleButt 41]

I have a question.

I know ALL newbies complain of port pain but I'm not a newbie, I'm 7 months out and my port hurts so bad I can't even run on my treadmill anymore. I had been doing 100 minutes daily and now I'm lucky to get in half that before I weenie out. I just can't do it because of port pain.

Is there something to losing the fat pad above the band that can cause it to be irritated or something? It's getting worse daily. Does anyone else have severe shooting pains in your port this long after banding?

[Banannie 0]

I'm also 7 mo out and have no problems with vigorous exercise and my port - I'd say go see your surgeon! Maybe you pulled one of the stitches out that holds the port in place or something... it doesn't sound quite right to me.

[JulieNYC 4]

...I'm 7 months out and my port hurts so bad I can't even run on my treadmill anymore. I had been doing 100 minutes daily and now I'm lucky to get in half that before I weenie out. I just can't do it because of port pain.

I would get this checked out immediately. My non-medical opinion/concern would be whether I had a port infection. Is it hot to the touch?

Now my port definitely bothers me because it sticks out so much -- I'm going to look into getting a low profile. But it doesn't hurt unless I hit it, so it doesn't hurt during exercise. If I lay flat on my stomach on a hard surface, I feel pressure there, but not pain, per se.

Pain is always an indication that something is awry. Check it out with your doctor, is my advice. And keep us posted....

[JulieNYC 4]

Well, I got in my exercise this morning -- 4 mile run with my friend Bob. I so enjoy running with other people. It was also the kind of day where if I didn't have plans to meet a friend, I would have stayed in bed.

I plan to walk home from work too (3 miles) because I'm 0.4 lbs away from moving down a "decade" in weight. Come on 160s!!!

Today is a pretty good day, body image wise. My body has changed again in the last 5 lbs. My shoulders are really standing out and my collar bones are visible at the center of my throat, not just the part that's closer to my shoulder (if that makes sense). I don't remember ever being at a weight where my whole collar bone showed.

Of course, the skin issues on my arms and legs gets worse with every pound lost. If I do pushups (my trainer forces the on me), gravity makes it so that my arms actually wrinkle in the front (across the biceps)-- not just the typical "bat wings" (behind the triceps) we all complain about. Come on December (PS)....

[guysis 0]

Go Julie - come on 60's! Thanks for the info on the panni - I'll def look into that.....................but...........unfortunately..............there is a bit more hanging................ah well................some days it matters and others it doesn't! I think with summer here - it brings it all to the surface a bit more in clothing - I want to wear sleevless, and have perky boobs popping out as well as wear low rider shorts with a firm junk in the trunk - in another life I'll do that and be 5'10"! Today is a great sunny day and I feel blessed to be a healthy grammy in a size 12/14!

Wasabubble - run to your doc - that much port pain not a normal situation! Check it out!

Didn't get to the gym today - had a rough night of "heartburn" - not usual for me, but the past few days have had more than usual - think it's related to all the problems I've had the past few weeks - taking meds for now and see if that will help - I've got a dr's appt for a refill a week from Monday and so if it isn't better will get help.

Off to play Mah Jongg with my girlie friends today - will plan on walking to the movies this eve - a great hour & 1/2 rt walk.

[WASaBubbleButt 41]

I would get this checked out immediately. My non-medical opinion/concern would be whether I had a port infection. Is it hot to the touch?

Nope, no signs of infection. Not hot to touch, no fever, no red skin, nothing. That's why this really confused me. I also haven't bumped it or anything similar.

I am going to Mexico with three friends in the morning, I'll ask my doc about it. I don't actually have an appt but they do. I was just going because we were going to go shopping and have a little fun after the fills.

Now my port definitely bothers me because it sticks out so much -- I'm going to look into getting a low profile.

I just found out something interesting. I was in Mexico with a friend getting a new port. She went to a person in the US that didn't use sterile technique for a fill and ended up with an infection. Our doc removed her port a few months ago, the infection cleared up, and he replaced it last month.

I asked him if he was going to put in a low profile port since my friend is at goal. He said it is standard for most Mexican docs to put in a low profile port when they place the band. He said that they use fluoro for fills in Mexico so finding the port isn't a problem and so he can't justify putting in the standard port in the beginning just to replace it at a later time with a low profile type. He said his cost on each port is $600. So why cause the additional expense and the cost of surgery.

I have to admit, I wonder if my port is going to stick out anytime soon even though I just discovered I have the low profile type. I have NO problem feeling it, it is verrry easy to find. I can't imagine what it would feel like if it was the standard type.

[WASaBubbleButt 41]

PS...

According to Dr.C the low profile port is only a few mm shorter than the standard. So you might want to actually look at the ports and see if you think it will make that much of a difference considering the expense involved. I really think mine is still going to poke out.

Just something to think about.

[edieparks 2]

This is a very interesting thread. I am really enjoying reading it.

I remember when I reached goal, even though I was weighing myself every 3 to 4 days, when I would get dressed I was always surprised my pants would fit. It was like I was in a dream or something. It took me about 3 weeks to get over the feeling. Now I feel so good because I know everything will fit me.

edie

[BabyGotBack 0]

I had such an awesome NSV (non scale victory) the other day. We were at a friends for Fourth of July and someone told me if I could teach them all how to be skinny like me?????

I am at 165 now, down from 190 pre surgury and from 240 my all time highest weight.

I am going for my 3rd fill next weekend. I have 2.4 cc's in my 4cc band and do not have any restriction. I get stuck occasionally though.

I have not really began a good exercise program yet. I have been swimming at least every other day. But I want to start jogging and weight training to tone my arms. My arms and thighs need the most help. But I think because I have lost it slower, my skin didn't suffer.

My goal is 145 or so. I think I need to see how I look at 155. I like to look on the curvy side.

Thanks for starting this thread!!! Audree:D

[JulieNYC 4]

....We were at a friends for Fourth of July and someone told me if I could teach them all how to be skinny like me?????

Yeah, the "s" word (skinny) and the "t" word (thin) are so foreign to me. Actually, I haven't gotten the "s" word yet, but several people have used the "t" word. It's the weirdest feeling. I've never been thin. I'm still not thin, but to some people I am.

The context is, I'm at a new job. I've only been with the firm for 6 weeks. A group of office assistants were talking in the hall about a diet one of them was trying. I was trying to be friendly and get to know some of my co-workers, so I tried to get in on the conversation. One of the ladies was like "yeah, but you're thin, so what would you know about it." (It didn't come across mean like it probably does here). I was like a deer in the headlights. Almost none of my colleagues know the old me.

For the most part, this is a good thing. In a way, I get to see what life is like for thin people, not formerly fat people. On the other hand, I had an extremely hard time (and still am) adjusting to this job. At least a small part of the adjustment was the fact that no one here KNOWS me. How can you know me at all and not know what I've been through over the last year? Even if I told them, they still wouldn't really get it, not having been with me at 350+.

It's really not a complaint. It's just something I'm going through while Passing for Thin....

[Chickie 15]

Am I welcome in this thread? I have been at goal weight for a year now.