“Hey, Cannie.”
Jesus Christ. Gabby was forever sneaking up behind me. For being massive, and old, and deaf, she could be quiet as a cat when it suited her. I turned around and there she was, squinting over my shoulder at the letter in my lap.
“Did you get something wrong?” she asked, her voice full of sympathy as thick, and fake, as Cheez Whiz. “Do we need to run a correction?”
“No, Gabby,” I said, trying not to scream. “Just a little opposing viewpoint.”
I tossed the letter in the trash can and shoved my chair back so fast I almost ran over Gabby’s toes.
“Jeez!” she hissed and retreated.
“Dear Mr. Deiffinger,” I composed in my head. “I may not be a supermodel, but at least I’ve got enough working brain cells to know what sucks when I hear it.”
“Dear Mr. Deiffinger,” I thought, walking the mile and a half from work to the Weight and Eating Disorders office where my first Fat Class was meeting. “Sorry you took offense at my description of Celine Dion’s work, but I actually thought I was being charitable.”
I stomped into the conference room, seated myself at the table, and looked around. There was Lily, from the waiting room, and an older black woman, about my size, with a bulging briefcase beside her, poking away at one of those hand-held e-mail readers. There was a blond teenager, her long hair swept off her face in a hairband, her body hidden beneath a bulky oversized sweatshirt and gigantic droopy jeans. And there was a woman of perhaps sixty who had to weigh at least four hundred pounds. She followed me into the room, walking with the aid of a cane, and surveyed the seats carefully, measuring her bulk against their parameters, before easing herself down.
“Hey, Cannie,” said Lily.
“Hey,” I grumbled. The words Portion Control were written on a white wipable message board, and there was a poster of the food pyramid on one wall. This shit again, I thought, wondering if I could place out of the class. I’d been to Weight Watchers, after all. I knew all about portion control.
The skinny nurse I remembered from the waiting room walked through the door, her hands full of bowls, measuring cups, a small plastic replica of a four-ounce pork chop.
“Good evening, everyone,” she said, and wrote her name— Sarah Pritchard, R.N.— on the board. We went around the table, introducing ourselves. The blond girl was Bonnie, the black woman was Anita, and the very large woman was Esther from West Oak Lane.
“I’m having a flashback of college,” whispered Lily, as Nurse Sarah distributed booklets full of calorie counts, and packets of printouts on behavior modification.
“I’m having a flashback of Weight Watchers,” I whispered back.
“Did you try that?” asked Bonnie the blond girl, edging closer to us.
“Last year,” I said.
“Was that the One Two Three Success program?”
“Fat and Fiber,” I whispered back.
“Isn’t that a cereal?” asked Esther, who had a surprisingly lovely voice— very low, and warm, and free of the dread Philadelphia accent that causes natives to swallow their consonants like they’re made of warm taffy.
“That’s Fruit and Fiber,” the blond girl said.
“Fat and Fiber was where you had to count the grams of fat and the grams of fiber in every food, and you were supposed to eat a certain number of grams of fiber, and not go over a certain number of grams of fat,” I explained.
“Did it work?” asked Anita, setting down her Palm Pilot.
“Nah,” I said. “But that was probably my fault. I kept mixing up which number I was supposed to stay below and which one I was supposed to go above… and then I found, like, these really high-fiber brownies that were made with iron filings or something”
Lily cracked up.
“They had a zillion calories apiece but I figured it didn’t matter because they were very low in fat and very high in fiber”
“A common mistake,” said Nurse Sarah cheerfully. “Fat and fiber are both important, but so is the total number of calories you take in. It’s very simple, really,” she said, turning back to the board and scribbling the kind of equation that had confounded me in eleventh grade. “Calories taken in versus calories expended. If you take in more calories than you burn, you’ll gain weight.”
“Really?” I asked, my eyes wide.
The nurse looked at me suspiciously.
“Are you serious? It’s that simple?”
“Um,” she began. I suspected that she was probably used to fat ladies sitting meekly in the chairs, like overfed sheep, smiling and nodding and being grateful for the wisdom she was imparting, staring at her with abashed, admiring eyes, all because she’d had the good fortune of being born thin. The thought infuriated me.
“So if I eat fewer calories than I burn…” I slapped my forehead. “My God! I finally get it! I understand! I’m cured!” I stood up and pumped my hands in the air as Lily snickered. “Healed! Saved! Thank you, Jesus, and the Weight and Eating Disorders Center, for taking the blinders from my eyes!”
“Okay,” said the nurse. “You’ve made your point.”
“Damn,” I said, resuming my seat. “I was going to ask if I could be excused.”
The nurse sighed. “Look,” she said. “The truth of it is, there’re a lot of complicating factors… and science doesn’t even understand all of them. We know about metabolic rates, and how some people’s bodies just seem to want to hang on to excess weight more than other people’s do. We know this isn’t easy. I would never tell you that it was.”
She stared at us, breathing rapidly. We stared right back.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said into the silence. “I was being fresh. It’s just that… well, I don’t want to speak for anybody else, but I’ve had this explained to me before.”
“Uh-huh,” said Anita.
“Me, too,” said Bonnie.
“Fat people aren’t stupid,” I continued. “But every single weight-loss program I’ve ever been to treats us like we are— as if as soon as they explain that broiled chicken is better than fried, and frozen yogurt’s better than ice cream, and that if you take a hot bath instead of eating pizza, we’re going to all turn into Courteney Cox.”
“That’s right,” said Lily.
The nurse looked frustrated. “I’d certainly never mean to suggest that any of you are stupid,” she said. “Diet is part of it,” she added. “Exercise is part of it, too, although probably not as big a part as we used to believe.”
I frowned. That was just my luck. With all of the biking and walking I did, plus regular workouts at the gym with Samantha, exercise was the one part of a healthy lifestyle that I had down pat.
“Now today,” she continued, “we’re going to be talking about portion size. Did you know that most restaurants serve portions that are well over the recommended USDA guidelines of what most women require over an entire day?”
I groaned softly to myself as the nurse arrayed the plates and cups and little plastic pork chop on the table. “The correct portion of protein,” she said, speaking in the slow, loud, careful voice commonly employed by kindergarten teachers, “is four ounces. Now, can anyone tell me about how much that is?”
“Size of your palm,” muttered Anita. “Jenny Craig,” she said to the nurse’s surprised look.
Nurse Sarah took a deep breath. “Very good!” she said, making a visible effort to sound happy and upbeat. “Now, how about a portion of fat?”
“Tip of your thumb,” I muttered. Her eyes widened. “Look,” I said, “I think we all know this stuff… am I right?”
I looked around the table. Everyone nodded. “The only thing we’re here for, the only thing that this program has to offer us, is the drugs. Now, are we going to get them today, or do we have to sit here and act like you’re telling us things we don’t already know?”
The nurse’s face went from frustrated (and slightly dismissive) to angry (and more than slightly scared). “There’s a procedure to this,” she said. “We explained it. Four weeks of behavior-modification classes…”
Lily started thumping her fist on the table. “Drugs… drugs… drugs…” she chanted.
“We can’t just hand out prescription medication”
“Drugs… drugs… drugs…” Now Bonnie the blond girl and Esther were chanting along as well. The nurse opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I’ll get the doctor,” she said, and bolted. The five of us stared at each other for a moment. Then we all burst out laughing.
“She was scared!” Lily hooted.
“Probably thought we’d crush her,” I muttered.
“Sit on her!” gasped Bonnie.
“I hate skinny people,” I said.
Anita looked very serious. “Don’t say that,” she said. “You shouldn’t hate anyone.”
“Agh,” I sighed. Just then, Dr. K. stuck his head through the door, with the chastened-looking nurse right behind him, practically clinging to the hem of his white coat.
“I understand there’s a problem,” he rumbled.
“Drugs!” said Lily.
The doctor had the look of a man who wanted very badly to laugh and was trying very hard not to.
“Is there a movement spokeswoman?” he asked.
Everyone looked at me. I got to my feet, smoothed my shirt, and cleared my throat. “I think that it’s the feeling of the group that we’ve all been through different lectures and courses and support groups concerning behavior modification.” I looked around the table. Everyone seemed to be nodding in agreement. “It’s our feeling that we’ve tried to change our behavior, and eat less, and exercise more, and all of those things that they tell you to do, and what we’d really like… what we’re really here for, what we’ve all paid for, is something new. Namely, drugs,” I concluded, and sat back in my seat.
“Well, I know how you feel,” he said.
“I doubt that very much,” I shot back.
“Well, maybe you can tell me,” he said mildly. “Look,” he said. “It’s not like I know the secrets to lifelong weight loss and I’m here to tell them to you. Think of this as a journey… think of it as something we’re in on together.”
“Except that our journey led us to the wonderful world of plus-size shopping and lonely nights,” I grumbled.
The doctor smiled at me— a very disarming grin. “Let’s forget about fat or thin for a minute,” he said. “If you guys already know the calorie counts of everything, and what a serving of pasta’s supposed to look like, then I’m sure you all know that most diets don’t work. Not over the long term, anyhow.”
Now he had our attention. It was true, we’d all figured this out (from bitter personal experiences, in most cases), but to hear an authority figure, a doctor, a doctor who was running a weight-loss program say it… well, that was practically heresy. I half expected security guards to come rushing through the door and drag him off to be re-brainwashed.
“I think,” he continued, “that we’ll all have much better luck— and we’ll be happier— if we think instead about small lifestyle changes— little things that we can do every day that won’t prove unsustainable over the long term. If we think about getting healthier, and feeling happier with ourselves, instead of looking like Courteney…”
He looked at me, eyebrows raised.
“Cox,” I supplied. “Actually, Cox-Arquette. She got married.”
“Right. Her. Forget her. Let’s concentrate on the attainable, instead. And I promise that nobody here will treat you like you’re stupid, no matter what your size is.”
I found I was touched in spite of myself. The guy was actually making sense. Better yet, he wasn’t talking down to us. It was… well, revolutionary, really.
The nurse gave us one last disgruntled glance and scurried away. The doctor closed the door and took a seat. “I’d like to do an exercise with you,” he said. He looked around the table. “How many of you ever eat when you’re not hungry?”
Dead silence. I closed my eyes. Emotional eating. I’d been through this lecture, too.
“How many of you eat breakfast, and then maybe you come to the office and there’s a box of doughnuts and they look good and you’ll have one just because they’re there?”
More silence. “Dunkin’ Donuts or Krispy Kremes?” I finally asked.
The doctor pursed his full lips. “I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Well, it makes a difference,” I said.
“Dunkin’ Donuts,” he said.
“Chocolate? Jelly? Glazed that somebody from Accounting ripped in half, so there’s only half a doughnut left?”
“Krispy Kremes are better,” said Bonnie.
“Especially the warm ones,” said Esther.
I licked my lips.
“The last time I had doughnuts,” said Esther, “someone brought them to work, just like we’re talking about, and I picked out one that looked like a Boston cream… you know, it had the chocolate on top?”
We nodded. We all probably knew how to recognize a Boston cream doughnut on sight.
“Then I bit into it,” Esther continued, “and it was…” Her lips curled. “Lemon.”
“Ick,” said Bonnie. “I hate lemon!”
“Okay,” said the doctor, laughing. “My point is, they could be the best doughnuts in the world. They could be the Platonic ideal of doughnut-ness. But if you’ve already had breakfast, and you aren’t really hungry, ideally, you should be able to walk right by.”
We thought about this for a minute. “As if,” Lily finally said.
“Maybe you could try telling yourself that when you are really hungry, if what you’re really hungry for is a doughnut, then you can go get one.”
We thought again. “Nope,” said Lily. “I’m still eating the free doughnuts.”
“And how do you know what you’re really hungry for?” asked Bonnie. “Like, me… I’m always hungry for the stuff I know I shouldn’t be eating. But, like, give me a bag of baby carrots and I’m all, like, whatever.”
“Did you ever try boiling them and mashing them with ginger and orange rind?” asked Lily. Bonnie wrinkled her nose.
“I don’t like carrots,” said Anita, “but I do like butternut squash.”
“That’s not a vegetable, though. It’s a starch,” I said.
Anita looked confused. “How can it not be a vegetable?”
“It’s a starchy vegetable. Like a potato. I learned that in Weight Watchers.”
“On Fat and Fiber?” asked Lily.
“Okay then!” said the doctor. I could tell from his eyes that the unruly chatter of five veterans of Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Pritikin, Atkins, et al., was starting to get to him. It couldn’t be fun.
“Let’s try something,” he said. He walked to the door and flicked off the lights. The room dimmed. Bonnie giggled. “I want you all to close your eyes,” he said, “and try to figure out how you feel right now, right this minute. Are you hungry? Tired? Are you sad, or happy, or anxious? Try to really concentrate, and then, try to really separate the physical sensations from what’s happening emotionally.”