"[LIVING LARGE] will help everyone who knows anyone who's struggled with weight."
- Sylvia Rimm, Ph.D., author of Rescuing the Emotional Lives of Overweight Children and the New York Times bestseller See Jane Win

"Michael Berman's story of life in the throes of food and weight obsessions is, by turns, eloquent, heartbreaking, funny, and poignant. As one who has been there and escaped, I heartily concur that sensible eating, moderate exercise, and self-acceptance, no matter what your weight, are indispensable parts of any treatment program."
- Nadine Taylor, M.S., R.D., coauthor of Runaway Eating

"LIVING LARGE is a candid, sometimes brutally honest story about living with obesity. Anyone interested in understanding obesity and learning how to deal with it needs to read LIVING LARGE."
- Morgan Downey, Executive Director, American Obesity Association

"There is a bit of Mike Berman's journey in anyone who has ever struggled with weight management. LIVING LARGE is not a diet or a how-to book but rather a brilliant memoir full of insight; its special wisdom will help the obese, their families and friends, and their physicians."
- Dr. Arthur Frank, Medical Director of the George Washington University Weight Management Program

Washington Post Chat Transcript

Along the way I realized something else as well: that my best chance for peace of mind and also for controlling my weight lay in accepting my situation. I don't mean giving up on the hope of being thinner; I have always tried to lose more weight, and I always will. I mean being honest and realistic about what I'm up against. I've accepted the hard but liberating notion that I have a disease. My fatness is not a function of "will-power" or "discipline" or "laziness" or "weakness." It's the result of physical and psychological factors that are outside of my control. Like diabetes or flatfeet, my fatness is a chronic malady that can't be cured but can be managed.

Let me make it clear that having a disease is no excuse to shirk responsibility. I have a problem, but I am not helpless. I don't see myself as a victim. I refuse to be passive or self-pitying when it comes to my well-being. Every life has its difficulties, and being fat is one of mine. That's just how it is. Still, I have a choice—a choice made far tougher and more complicated by my disease, but a choice nonetheless—as to whether or not I eat that piece of chocolate, whether or not I keep my appointment with the treadmill.

But responsibility is one thing; guilt is something else. Responsibility is positive, a duty we owe to ourselves, a matter of self-respect. Guilt is destructive. Guilt breeds desperation—and desperation makes it even harder to make good decisions.

In recent years—after more than six decades of living as a fat person—I have finally learned to stop feeling guilty and desperate about my weight. Again, this doesn't mean I am thrilled to be fat or that I've stopped working at becoming thinner. But I have largely moved beyond the torment. The pressure is off. I don't have to lose weight; I'm okay the way I am.

Needless to say, this acceptance has made me a much happier and less frustrated person. But it has had another, completely unexpected bonus as well. I have found that since I don't have to lose weight, I can lose weight—and keep it off more successfully than ever before. These days I hardly ever binge, and if I do overindulge, it's likely to be with healthy foods. I seem finally to have tamed the wild fluctuations of weight that have plagued me all my life. I am in control of my fatness, rather than being controlled by it—and I am proud of this. To me, at least, it feels like a victory.

This book is the story of the gradual, often agonizing, and un-steady progress by which I have learned to manage my weight effectively and to live a full and satisfying life in spite of having the fat disease. I am not writing as an "expert"; I am not a doctor, a scientist, or a therapist, and I have no ambition to set up shop as a diet guru. I claim no credentials other than the life that I have lived.

As a fat boy I was assaulted with taunts and name-calling. As an adolescent I endured the loneliness of living at the social margin, and as a young man I learned the anguish of the blind date, that awful moment when the woman you are meeting quite literally sizes you up and decides, before you've said a word, that you are not the man of her dreams. Even in my professional life, I have felt the need to work harder, prepare more thoroughly—to be better—in order to neutralize the antifat bias of others.

I've been on probably 20 different diets—Weight Watchers, Stillman, Pritikin, Scarsdale, Atkins, South Beach, you name it—in several cases more than once. On three occasions I've entered residential weight-loss programs. I've been hospitalized to go on fasts that permitted only water, vitamins, and minerals; starved for 10 days, I have had the bizarre experience of hallucinating giant cheeseburgers.

In past decades I have had a closetful of clothes with waist sizes ranging from 44 to 58; I hated to throw any of them away, because I never knew when I might be that size again. All in all, I know what it is to live life as a fat person.

I know, as well, how difficult it is to get straightforward, trustworthy advice about the realities of managing fatness. Oh, there's plenty of information out there. Too much information, most of it written by people who are not fat themselves, who don't know how life feels inside the body of a fat person, and who are trying to make money from our desperate desire to be thin. Much of the "information" from these sources turns out to consist of false promises, phony hope, half-truths, and dubious claims that are then disclaimed by the tiny print at the bottom of the label. An ever-expanding weight-loss industry tries to sell us this diet or that pill or some brand-new miracle supplement. But isn't it obvious that if the pills and diets really worked, if the quick fixes delivered what they promised, the weight-loss business would be shrinking, not growing?

If you are reading these pages, chances are that you, like me, are afflicted with the fat disease—or you care about a fat person who is important in your life as spouse, partner, friend, or colleague. I believe this book will help you, that my story will ring true for you. People are more alike than different, and my hunch is that many fat people have felt what I have felt—have experienced the shame, frustration, and disappointments I have known—and can learn to more effectively manage both their weight and their feelings, as I have.

If, like mine, your relationship with food is a charged one—if you look to food not only for nourishment and pleasure but for solace and reward; if you sneak food or lie to yourself or others about your eating; if your weight tends to yo-yo, whether the range is 20 pounds or a hundred; if you've felt mystified and defeated by your inability to keep off weight that you've worked so hard to lose—then chances are your situation, like mine, is a chronic one. You have a condition without a once-and-final cure.

That may seem like a pessimistic statement, but in fact it's just the opposite. Chronic diseases are the ones that don't destroy you! They can be understood, and tamed, and kept under control. But the work of management must be ongoing and must come from within. There are answers, but you won't find them in some trendy diet book. There are techniques that work, but they go way beyond the latest fitness regimen or diet supplement or pill. You can be thinner—but if you want to stay thinner, a single dramatic episode of weight loss probably won't take you where you want to go; you need a long-term strategy that addresses not just what you eat but who you are.

I have labored for many years to evolve a strategy that works for me. I hope this book will provide help and comfort and reassurance as you move toward a strategy of acceptance and management that will work for you.

I STARTED MAKING jottings for this volume way back in 1997. When I was ready to write a proposal, I showed some pages to a trusted friend familiar with the realities of publishing. Although he was intrigued by the material, he urged me not to go public with my story, for fear that it would compromise my dignity. His opinion, motivated by kindness and caring, gave me pause. But on reflection I found that I could not agree.

It is not undignified to be fat. It is not undignified to tell the truth—to admit one's failings and acknowledge one's pain. It's the things we don't talk about that haunt us.

That being so, I have been struck—and bothered—that, for all the torrent of talk and writing about obesity in our society, relatively little discussion has been carried forward by fat people themselves, especially fat men. Why? Is there some perverse taboo dictating that thin people can talk about fat, can preach and scold, but fat people must keep quiet? I can only assume that most fat men have been silent because of embarrassment, shyness, or shame; or maybe weight is just one of those things that men don't talk about. I would be gratified if I could help to change that.

Other friends of mine, people who know me very well, had reactions to this manuscript that really flabbergasted me. Even my wife, Carol, seemed genuinely surprised at how much distress my story conveyed. What people said, in essence, was, "Mike, we hardly recognize the person in this book. This is sad. This is tormented. This is not you!"

Well, it is me ... or one side of me, at least. Like many fat people, I have lived a kind of double life. Viewed from the outside, I am reasonably cheerful, sociable, effective; viewed from within, I have been prey to anguish and frustrations that I generally kept hidden even from my friends. In this book I hope to bring those dark places out into the daylight, both as a catharsis for myself and, I hope, a validation for others who have felt those bleak emotions and been hesitant to share them.

But I don't want to overplay the dark side of my story because the truth is that, fat or no fat, I am basically a happy person. I don't mean happy with the false gaiety of the "jolly fat man," and I certainly don't mean happy all the time. The things that bother most people—rudeness, job stress, traffic jams—bother me too. But all in all I have been blessed with a wonderful life. I've been married to a terrific and accomplished woman for more than 40 years. I've met with success in a career I find extremely gratifying. I have a circle of great friends whom I cherish. I have discovered—somewhat to my own surprise—that fatness does not rule out confidence or romance, nor is it an excuse for holding back from the richness and variety of experience.

Over the decades, I have worked my way toward a simple but, I believe, important understanding that is at the heart of everything I have to say:

It is not the goal of life to be thin. It is the goal of life to be happy.

But again, those two goals are not in conflict. They both become more attainable as you stop beating yourself up for being fat and accept your fatness as a condition to be managed, a challenge to be faced.

Not that acceptance comes easily or magically does away with the difficulties of being seriously overweight. I struggle every single day to control my eating. I'm still a fat person; I'm still preoccupied with being fat. And this would be so even if, by some miracle, I awoke tomorrow morning and weighed 170. It's not about the numbers; it's about who I am.

I still count calories—in fact, I enter my caloric intake in a notebook every day, along with the number of minutes I exercise. I'm resigned to the fact that my preoccupation—some might say compulsiveness—will never go away. Just as a recovering alcoholic is still an alcoholic, a fat person with some hard-won insight is still a fat person.

What I've gained by accepting my fatness, however, is this: When I get on the scale, I understand that I'm weighing only my body—not my self-worth, not the value of my life. I've learned that the scale is only a mechanical device, not an altar for the sacrifice of my self-respect or my contentment.

Would I rather be a thin person? You know, until quite recently I would have regarded that question as a real no-brainer. Of course I'd rather be thinner! Wouldn't everybody?

Now I see the question as being far more complicated. Look, being fat is not for wimps. It makes life harder, in ways both trivial and serious. My heart has extra work to do with every beat. I'm not as mobile as I'd like to be. My knees and ankles often hurt. I'm uncomfortable in airplane seats and at the theater. I sometimes see unease and disapproval in the eyes of strangers.

At the same time, being fat has made me who I am. Having a shape that our society labels unattractive has forced me to emphasize other resources—concentration, competence, humor. Having a fat person's sensitivity to slights and biases has, I believe, made me more aware of the feelings of others and equipped me, I hope, to be a caring friend and a responsive husband. The everyday stresses, both physical and social, of living life as a fat person have given me a kind of strength that comes only from quiet struggle.

Being fat, then, like nearly everything else in life, is what you make of it.

]]> http://www.mikelivinglarge.com/archives/2009/02/living_large_introduction.shtml http://www.mikelivinglarge.com/archives/2009/02/living_large_introduction.shtml Living Large Book Information Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:34:27 -0500

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It is March, 2002.

Michael has been working on this book for about four of the 37 years we've been married. At our wedding in August, 1965 I was down to a size 8 from a 10 or 12, and he weighed about 220, having lost weight in part as a promise to me.

I suppose it is natural for him to ask me to contribute my perspective on living with obesity. After all, I have been witness to his ups and downs, heard the stories, felt his pain, and experienced some of my own.

I welcome the opportunity to write. First of all, this is where I get to defend myself against being a various times a food cop, enabler and even an unwitting saboteur. And if the truth be told, I have faced my own struggles with overeating. While I am hardly in a position to advise on how to lose weight, I think I finally have managed not to interfere with Michael's weight management.

Michael has described our first meeting in another chapter. What he said was true. It was a blind date, arranged by his sister Sheila. I was turned off by his size, and gave serious thought to canceling as I peered through the peephole of my apartment door and saw his corpulence. I was only 24 at the time, and appearances were pretty important. Luckily, I found him so interesting and charming, that I decided it was worth spending the evening. Turned out he also was a good dancer, and a very decent guy. Our values meshed and my feelings for him shifted into second gear that same evening. And then, as Michael waged a campaign to win me over, his plan was so successful that I asked him a few months later to marry me!

His courting plan involved going out for dinner, hitting his favorite restaurants and delicatessens, and taking me to concerts and theatre. It's probably not a coincidence that I found this endearing. I came from a family of eaters, and the rich dining experiences were familiar. It has occurred to me that I might have married him because of the potato salad and rib eye at Charlie's Cafe Exceptionale, the grilled reuben and baked omelette loaded with cheese at the Lincoln Del, and the fondue and baked stuffed eggplant at the Lowell Inn in Stillwater. I loved the fact that he enjoyed going to concerts, and he took me to the Opera and seemed to enjoy it. (After we married, he admitted that he was trying to win my affection and doesn't like the opera, ballet, or symphony).

I think I married just the right guy for me, and the journey has been interesting. I can't separate living with Michael, and living with his obesity, from my own experience with weight management.

Unlike Michael, I was thin as a child. My seemingly limitless appetite was matched by a metabolism that could tolerate enormous quantities. Until menopause.

Michael and I have no children. Unlike couples who are childless by choice, we are childless despite a great deal of emotional pain on my part. It was less of an issue for Michael, whose expressed feelings about having children were ambivalent. After six years on birth control pills, we decided to let nature take its course. Nature didn't budge. After about a dozen disappointing menstrual cycles, I visited a gynecologist. These appointments are, to this day, called, "infertility" visits. I remember asking why it couldn't be called something more positive, but never really got an answer. After several years of often embarrassing and physically painful interventions, nothing worked. The gynecologist told us that the factors were all marginal, and that Michael's obesity was a possible issue. Apparently it affects sperm count. It was interesting to me that the subject never even came up in anything that Michael wrote.

I was approaching forty when the matter was settled once and for all. In the 70's, doctors pretty routinely recommended hysterectomy for fibroid tumors. My fears of early death from cancer, as was the case with my mother and sister, were greater than my determination to continue trying to have a child. It seems to me that the switch from being able to eat anything I wanted was turned off with that surgery. It's unclear whether I started eating more because I was sad, or whether I was eating the same way and no longer burning it as quickly.

At times, Michael has expressed feelings of guilt because my weight has ratcheted up over the years, and blames his own overeating for the fact that it has been progressively more difficult for me to lose the pounds and inches that came after the age of 35. I have tried to assure him that he had nothing to do with it. Books on women's health provide me with confirmation that mid-life weight gain for women is commonplace, and in my case, was certainly very likely if not inevitable.

I don't have extensive records on my weight. I do know that I have tried diets, including some very sensible ones and some ridiculous fads. Among them have been Weight Watchers (more than once), Counterweight (sponsored by Honeywell), Overeaters Anonymous, Diet Workshop, the Atkins Diet, The Stillman Diet, Pritikin, the Kelp Diet, a Protein Sparing Fast, and Diet Center. I've tried a cabbage soup diet, I've tried eating only grapefruit and bananas for several days, followed by days of tomato juice, and once I ate only steak and deviled eggs for nearly a week. My size has ranged from 10-18, and I have clothes in my closet in each of those sizes.

Regardless of Michael's weight, I have struggled independently, interdependently, and at times co-dependently. Let me explain.

For a long time, I have felt that Michael and I compete with one another. We love each other, but sometimes we seem to act like siblings. Even as I think I am being supportive, I compete with him and he competes with me. I think many married couples do that. Maybe it is for this reason that we sometimes seesaw in our eating behavior. Michael eats carefully, and I slack off. I call this our co-dependent relationship.

Because we do not have children, it is as easy for us to dine out in a restaurant as to eat at home. Often we make the decision at the last minute, depending on whether it's been a busy day, and recently, depending on how many calories Michael has left. When we are in a restaurant, the way the three kinds of relationships are manifested.

Co-Dependent: This is the "see-saw" phenomenon. Michael orders fish, no sauce, salad with no dressing; I order a rich gourmet dish. I feel that he is being "holier than thou." He thinks I am digging my grave with a fork.

Independent: When I realize what I am doing, I get it under control and I can function independently, ordering what I feel like eating, without regard to what Michael is eating. We each order pretty sensibly.

Interdependent: Best of all is when we function interdependently. That's when I try to work with Michael to the advantage of both of us. For example, I try to wait until Michael has ordered, and I order the same thing, or I ask if he wants to share, so we both order something healthy. This has been a helpful device in the past few years.

When we eat at home, we sometimes decide to "forage," using leftovers and eating without a particular plan. Michael and I both like to cook, but it is more challenging when you limit butter, oil, cheese, prepared sauces, and other "good stuff." Continuing the categories described above, the way that our dining at home has developed also depends on the state of our eating relationship.

Co-Dependent: When we are engaged in the "see-saw" phenomenon, I might be aware that Michael is doing very well, and yet I will bring food into the apartment that he would enjoy eating. I don't tell him the food is there - it's for me, or for guests. Still, I don't need it either. I am not trying to sabotage his efforts to manage his eating, but it has the same effect. I try not to eat fattening food in his presence, but he is hard to fool.

Independent: This is where we don't plan what we are going to eat, but I deliberately order food that I sense Michael will want to eat. Invariably, he has something else in mind. We end up eating together, but having different food. Sometimes we "forage" and prepare our meals separately.

Interdependent: If we think about it and discuss what we are going to do about meals, the shopping is planned, and our meals are healthier and better organized. We make last minute decisions, but they are mutual.

Michael is a very giving person. I retired from my job three years ago. My retirement plan was Michael's income. He has never expected me to cut back on anything. In fact, he has encouraged me to work out with a personal trainer, go to a spa for a week every year, and spend my time as I see fit. I am pretty lucky.

I have only two complaints.

1. Michael doesn't like to play as much as I do. If you ask me "Would you like to ________?" (fill in the blank—ski, travel, see a play, hear a concert, go to the ballet, snorkel, ride a horse—my answer will be yes. Michael's response will be no way. I have resented Michael's limited desire for such experiences, because I have wanted to do these things together. Even as he became an accomplished photographer, he has steadfastly refused to take a safari, visit the Galapagos, or otherwise travel where his skills could be exploited. However, I have learned to adapt, and just do the things I like with someone else. I still cling to a hope that the more physically comfortable Michael becomes, the more likely he will be likely to say yes, let's give it a try.

2. I sometimes wonder if Michael has used his weight as an excuse not to engage. He isn't exactly shy, but he socializes on his own terms. He has many, many friends stemming from his work and particularly from politics. I seem to be more gregarious than he, so my friends remain my friends, but many of our friends evolved from relationships that began as his friends.

That being said, I think I have the best life in the world. I spend two mornings a week as a volunteer tutor, work at home in a pottery studio that we created in our apartment, a very unusual luxury, work with a variety of nonprofit organizations that make me feel great, and chair our condominium association.

While I am not especially happy with my size, I am happy with myself. I don't think I look glamorous, and at times, that gets me down. But I think I look good enough, and I feel great.

I think the same about Michael. He isn't skinny, but he looks great. He is walking with more of a spring in his step. He is not scary-overweight. To me, he looks handsome. I think we are an acceptably attractive couple.

I wish Michael would stop worrying about losing more, and I wish he would stop worrying about me. I can do that for myself.

These are the things that I do now that help me to live with Michael's and my own obesity:

I do not stock the cupboard with fattening treats. Even if we have guests, they will have to live with the food we offer. Each time I have chocolate in the house, I eat more than I serve to our guests. It simply undermines our habit of staying away from the stuff.

I allow myself indulgences, and separate my indulgences from Michael's. What he eats is his business, and what I eat is mine. We cannot watch each other's food. If we do, we compete. If Michael orders something that is fatty, that is not license for me to do the same, and vice versa.

Regardless of how much I am eating, I work out regularly. I am strong, toned, and flexible. This follows advice that Michael gave me, and it makes sense to me.

Also consistent with Michael's advice, I have regular medical check-ups. I have bad genes. My mother died in her thirties. My sister died in her forties. Another sister died in her early 60's. I used to think I would die when I was in my thirties. Now I think I will beat the odds. Recently, a friend and I had a full body scan and got to see each other's results. I told her that her body looked better than mine, even inside. Still, it was terrific to know that I had undergone this fairly thorough check-up.

I think a sense of humor is essential. I laugh a lot. Michael is very serious, but his wry sense of humor makes me laugh, and some of my craziness makes him laugh. I don't think I have ever consciously laughed about obesity unless it was self-deprecating. I try to find humor that is not at the expense of others. Because we are married, Michael is an easy target. If I find something amusing to say about Michael, he has plenty of quirks that are better fodder than the stuff that makes him feel bad.

I hide things from Michael. He can't tolerate having some foods in the apartment that I want to have around. I figure what he doesn't know won't hurt him. I know he's hiding stuff from me too. That's okay.

Michael has girlfriends. Every Valentine's Day, I share him with about 30 women. Shocking? Not really. This is a man who enjoys the company of women. I love that about him. I love that he is sensitive. I think it's the quality that I detected on that first date, the one that made me fall in love with him. Women enjoy his company. As long as the relationship with these other women isn't a sexual one, and as long as he lets me know that I am number one, I can handle it. Hell, I embrace it.

I try to remind myself of how lucky we are. We have not had to struggle to make ends meet. We have lots of friends and a wonderful extended family, and our life style is enviable.

We are relatively healthy. We have had excellent work experiences. We are able to give of ourselves. As for obesity, it's been a burden at times, but you know, everyone has something. Obesity is on the outside. In the overall scheme of things, it's so much better than bigotry, hypocrisy, cruelty, and the many "isms" that make the world worse.

Living with obesity? Michael says he will always consider himself obese, no matter how much weight he loses. So I guess I can just keep on living with it.

He served as Vice President Mondale's Counsel and Deputy Chief of Staff and Senator Walter Mondale's Administrative Assistant. He was also a Special Assistant Attorney General for the State of Minnesota and in private law practice in Minnesota. He has advised a number of judicial and executive branch nominees subject to Senate confirmation.

While working on every Democratic presidential campaign since 1964, and every Democratic convention since 1968, he scheduled the public sessions at six conventions. He has also served as an advisor to the Democratic Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees and worked on a number of other election campaigns.

He is co-chair of the Board of the Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest gay and lesbian advocacy organization, on the Board of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, and the Board of The Children's Inn at NIH.

He has guest lectured at American University, George Washington University, Georgetown University, and the Kennedy School at Harvard, and on behalf of various national Democratic committees.

Berman served as a member of the Panel on Scientific Responsibility and the Conduct of Research of the National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy.

He has been married to Carol Berman for 40 years and is 66 years old.

Oh yes, as an adult his weight has ranged from 215 to 332 pounds.

]]> http://www.mikelivinglarge.com/archives/2006/02/michael_s_berman_biography.shtml http://www.mikelivinglarge.com/archives/2006/02/michael_s_berman_biography.shtml Living Large Authors Thu, 02 Feb 2006 16:03:35 -0500 March 15, 2006

March 15, 2006

March 15, 2006

March 16, 2006

]]> http://www.mikelivinglarge.com/archives/2006/02/appearances_coming_soon.shtml http://www.mikelivinglarge.com/archives/2006/02/appearances_coming_soon.shtml Living Large Appearances Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:34:51 -0500 February, 2006: Press Release (Word Document)
In "Living Large: A Big Man's Ideas on Weight, Success, and Acceptance," Michael Berman speaks candidly about his experiences as a fat person, a story seldom heard—particularly from a man—and how he eventually came to accept himself and view fatness as a disease that requires management instead of as a personality flaw.

Publisher

Website Contact

Body Mass Index (BMI)

The Body Mass Index is a currently popular method for determining whether you might be overweight. It has the advantage of not requiring any specialized equipment to make the necessary calculation.

This calculation takes into account your height and weight in a manner that scientists have determined provides a reasonable prediction of the level of body fat. It has been adopted by an expert panel appointed by the National Institute of Health as a standard for predicting the risk associated with overweight.

The formula for determining your BMI is quite simple

If you have any health related conditions that can be adversely affected by increased body fat, like high blood pressure the level of health risk moves down one step. For example, the health risk of a BMI of 27 to 30 moves from elevated health risk to high health risk.

Keep in mind that the BMI calculation may not be very accurate in extremely muscular individuals or persons with posture abnormalities. Also, it does not deal with the distribution of fat in the body.

Most important neither the BMI or other indices should be considered an absolute standard. General population standards should be used as guidelines but not definitive markers. Use them as indicators as you make a judgement about how much you decided you should weigh.

I decided to see how our Presidents have done when it comes to their size and weight. After all we expect them to lead us in a variety of ways, why not when it comes to weight. I was able to locate published information for only 23 of the 44 presidents.

The smallest was James Madison who was reported to stand about 5'4" in height and weighed in at 100 pounds (BMI 17.8). The "heavy weight" was William Taft who entered office at 6'0" and 330 pounds (BMI 44.65).

As you can see from the list that follows most Presidents had BMIs that were within or close to the so-called "healthy" weight class (a BMI of less than 25). All but two of them would have been in that class before the standard was changed in 1998 when the top number of the healthy weight class was changed from 27 to 25. (As a result of that change some 29,000,000 more Americans were classified as overweight.

The two heftiest Presidents, Grover Cleveland and Taft were often the subject of editorial comment of one kind or another.

When Cleveland arrived in Washington he was described as a "huge, bejowled man, a walrus in wingtips, resembling Boss Tweed carrying 280 pounds on a small, beleaguered frame. "Porcine" is a another word that was used when describing him while his suits were said to be "like Tarpaulins" and straining at the buttons. Toward the end of his second term he was called "The Fat Knight."

William Taft who was likely our heaviest President was pictured in one cartoon as setting foot in Cuba and sinking one side of the island, in another he was characterized as a kewpie doll. Nathan Miller, in his book "America's Ten Worst Presidents" refers to Taft as weighing somewhere between 300 and 350 pounds. Whether or not that fact had anything to do with how well he did or didn't do as President is a matter of conjecture.

1. Literary References

Fat people have been victims of negative prejudice from a variety of quarters for many years. The Bible includes the 7 deadly sins of which the first was "gluttony." In the 5th century, Aristophanes, described fat men as "bloated, gross, and ... fat rogues with big bellies and dropsical legs.

William Shakespeare seemed to have a "thing" about fat. When Falstaff dresses as a woman he becomes "an old fat woman." He writes of a "fat rogue", "a gross fat man," "ye fat paunch," "fat rascals," "fat villain",and "that fat belly of his." [B20] (Wives, IV, v). (Henry IV: Part I, I, ii, 18,) (Henry IV: Part II, II, iiii, 4);

Apparently, even Hamlet was chubby. Late in the play when amlet is dueling with Larides the queen expresses her concern for him because he is "fat and scant of breath."

In an essay written in 1839 by the resident physician of the Middlesex Pauper Lunatic Asylum at Harwell, we are informed that the "ancients held fat people in sovereign contempt ... certain medieval humanists considered obesity the outward and visible sign of the inward and invisible 'indolence and apathy...and laxity of fibre' chracteristic of decadent clerics durin that period."

Between August, 1862 and August 1863, William Banting of London, England, at the age of 66 and standing 5'5" tall lost 46 of his 202 pounds. Based on his experiences before and during his weight loss, Banting wrote and distributed three pamphlets in 1863 and 1864. Each pamphlet in the sequence adding to the pamphlet(s) that went before it. He titled the original pamphlet "Letter on Corpulence." In that pamphlet he wrote:

I am confident no man laboring under obesity can be quite insensible to the sneers and remarks of the cruel and injudicious public assemblies, public vehicles, or the ordinary street traffic; nor to the annoyance of finding no adequate space in a public assembly if he should seek amusement or need refreshment, and therfore he naturally keeps away as much as posible from places where he is likely to be made the object of the taunts and remarks of others. I am as regardless of public remark as most men, but I have felt these difficulties and therefore avoided such circumscribed accomodation and notice, and by that means have been deprived of many advantages to health and comfort. [B41]

In the 1906 book "The Aristocracy of Health" the author wrote "Surplus fat is to be avoided as an embarrassment to all the internal economy." [B 10]

In the 1890s and early 1900s Sarah Tyson Rorer wrote 54 cookbooks, one of which had sold 152,000 by 1914. She wrote a kitchen column for the Ladies Home Journal and trained thousands at her cooking school. She really hated fat. At one point she wrote " An excess of flesh is to be looked upon as one of the objectionable forms of disease, and must be treated as such."

Political caricatures, popular in that period, showed the following images: a fat man dwarfing a hotel bed, a fat woman plugging up the aisle of a streetcar, a fat couple peering up a narrow staircase or hesitating in front of a turnstile.

An oversize political boss and grand eater was shown being unable to fit into a theater seat, and President Taft was shown getting stuck in his White House bathtub.

Another cartoon depicted a judge sentencing a defendant: "It is the Court's opinion that, although innocent, you are dangerously overweight."

2. Cultural Studies

Researchers have found that various groups in Western cultures have "strong negative attitudes about the obese."

Those who study the subject of discrimination against fat people now suggest that fatness "may now draw more open and widespread discrimination than race or gender or age ...."

Some argue that fat people are the most stigmatized in America. Whether or not that is true, it is the case that "obesity at all ages is associated with decreased social acceptance."

One academic commentator went so far as to say "Not only are the overweight the most stigmatized group in the United States, but fat people are expected to participate in their own degradation by agreeing with others who taunt them."

The antipathy of many Americans toward fat people can be intense and overwhelmingly negative. The intensity of this antipathy is reflected in a study done by Dorothy C. Wertz, an ethicist and sociologist at the University of Massachuetts Medical School. She found that 16% of adults would abort an unborn child if they thought it was going to be untreatably fat. This is about the same number as would do this to an unborn child they thought would be mildly retarded.

Just how mean spirited the manifestation of this prejudice can be is suggested by snippets from several of many letters received by the National Association to aid Fat Americans, after the organization was featured on the Phil Donohue Show.

After observing representatives of your association on the Phil Donohue Show, I was totally disgusted. Sure, people have a right to look any way they please and expect not to be discriminated against..., but how can you support people abusing their bodies in such a way!

Your glorification of your disgusting malady on national television was a pathetic attempt at the justification of a severe psychological disorder.

A great many obese persons use their apperance as a scapegoat for severe antisocial tendencies, You can't imagine how angry I am at you justifying being fat. You make me sick to even look at you ... Yes, some of the nicest people I know are fat, but they could also be nice to look at if they wanted.

Even supposedly educated people can be remarkably insensitive, as is demonstrated by material published by two "scholars" at the University of Illinois in the late 1970s. They calculated that if all overweight Americans were to diet down to their 'ideal' weights, enough energy would be saved in food production to fuel 9,000,000 automobiles for a year, or to meet the annual residential need for electricity in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.

Children and young people are affected more radically in a sense than adults because they are particularly vulnerable. In examining how their peers feel, some of what I learned follows. Children seem to have more negative feelings toward fat children than they do towards children in wheelchairs, missing a hand or facial disfigurement. Even very sick children would rather be sick than be fat.

Normal and overweight children shown drawings of children with rounded body shapes and asked to describe them used words such as "mean, naughty, sad, ugly, lazy, dirty, awkward and stupid. In a story describing the background of a man charged with shooting two police officers at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. a high school classmate had this to say, "Rusty was basically overweight and in small towns like that it's terrible but kids like that tend to be outcasts."

For fat youngsters school can be a totally unpleasent experience filled with prejudice, discrimination and harrassment from students and teachers. From nursery school to college fat young people face ostracism and discouragement.

Studies have shown that fat people, especially women, may be disadvantaged when it comes to admission to those college that require admission interviews.

Roughly the same numbers of fat and unfat men applied to college. A slightly larger number of the unfat men were accepted. While roughly equal numbers of fat and un-fat women applied to college a substantially greater number of the unfat women were accepted. And there has been some demonstration that once they are admitted, fat people got lower grade point averages in college than did tall thin folks.

3. Material Culture

The public exhibition of the negative attitudes toward fat people is all around us.

Advertising

Insurance vendors have used the depiction of a "fat slob" to go along with advertising suggesting that those who are overweight drive up the cost of insurance.

In San Francisco the "24 Hour Fitness Center" posted a billboard which had a drawing of a space alien and read: "When they come, they'll eat the fat ones first."

The Air Transport Association ran full page ads attacking the federal bureaucracy. To draw attention to the ad it included a large drawing of an obviously overfat man slouching behind his desk with his feet up as a symbol of a bloated bureaucracy.

And in a somewhat different kind of advertising, the anchor on a morning show doing the teaser, about a coming segment on a new diet drug, described the new pill as "viagra for fatties."

TV, movies and books

Fat people or being fat are regularly disparaged on television and in the movies.

From the TV program "Bart Simpson": "Union rules, everyone must win worker of week award at least once regardless of 'gross incompetence, obseity or ripe odor.'"

In the last episode of "Seinfeld" there is a scene in which a very fat man is being held up by a robber. Here are selected lines from that scene.

Thief: "Allright, fatso! Out of the car!

* * * * *

Jerry: (laughing) "Well, there goes the money for the lipo!"

Elaine: "See, the great thing about robbing a fat guy, is that it's an easy getaway, you know? They can't really chase you."

George: "It's actually doing him a favor. There's less money for him to buy food!" (everybody laughs)

* * * * *

The "comedian" Martin Short, an unfat person, (wearing a fat suit and related appliances) has created a character, Jiminy Glick, who is very fat and who often has a hard time manuevering his bulk around the stage. Not content to make people laugh with his words he finds a need to parody in the extreme those of us who are fat.

* * * * *

In the movie "You've got Mail" Tom Hanks is talking with Meg Ryan about the man with whom she is communicating by e-mail. Hanks says " maybe he's fat, he's fat, he's a fatty."

Ryan says "I don't care about that."

Hanks continues, "he's so fat that he's one of those guys that has to be removed from his house by a crane."

* * * * *

In the popular Harry Potter series, author Joy Rowlings uses the fatness of Dudley one way to portray his character as spoiled, self centered and generally unpleasant character. Here are some examples. "Dudley had spent most of the summer in the kitchen, his piggy little eyes fixed on the screen and his five chins wobbling as he ate continuously."

"Uncle Vernon clapped Dudley on his porky shoulder."

"Dudley looked furious and sulky, and somehow seems to be take up even more space than usual." "...Dudley had reached roughly the size and weight of a young killer whale."

"Dudley, had finally achieved what he'd been threatening to do since the age of three, and become wider than he was tall."

In Newspapers

Some people just don't like fat people. I came across a letter written to Ann Landers that was written by one of those folks. Here are some of the more "creative" lines.

...obesity is not a disease or chemical addiction...there is nothing in food that causes a chemical addiction in the human body. ...Obesity is due to gluttony....

Please, Ann, let us not shed any tears for that 350-pound woman who can't wedge herself into an airplane seat. She got that way by choice....

If everyone ate and drank everything they wanted, the world would be full of 350-pound hippos....Most fat people choose immediate gratification over long-term health and appearance.

Ann Landers responded in an appropriate fashion beginning with the following sentence. "Your belligerant attitude toward overweight people makes me wonder what is at the root of your mean-spirited hostility."

Those who were at one time among the un-fat and become fat often get special attention as Marlon Brando did from Cindy Adams in the New York Post.

"What they're doing with their tax rebates: Brando's having a mirror installed on his briefs so he can see his feet...."

Dating and mating

"I don't want her, you can have her
She's too fat for me
She's too fat
She's too fat
She's too fat for me"

This is the chorus from a song that Arthur Godfrey first made popular. The title of that song is the "Too Fat Polka." It was the 8th most popular tune in the year it was introduced, 1947.

If we listen to one match-maker who focuses on Wall Street, being fat is a real show stopper. As she said, "I don't do fat, I don't do short, I don't do poor and I don't do schlubs."

"Some men say they like a full-figured woman, and when I say I've found one, they are always careful to say, Well, she's not fat, right?"

After an arranged date is over the match-maker calls her client and asks "Did you like her? Was he smart? Was he too fat? Did he wear cheap shoes? Did she smoke?"

One of the match-maker's clients said " But one of my dates turned out to be a very nice man, but with a huge belly. I called her the next day and said "Woman, what were you thinking....?' I mean really.'" People seeking companionship sometimes advertise in newspapers and magazines. And while they generally don't say "fat people need not apply," they often make clear their preferences.

In a November 2000 issue of the "The Times" of London, there was a secion called "Saturday Rendezvous." It included 32 ads placed by men and women seeking to meet people with a possible relationship in mind.

In 18 of the 32 ads (8 of the 17 ads placed by women and 10 of the 15 ads placed by men) the person placing the ad either described herself or himself as "slim" or indicated that among the characteristics there were looking for in a person was that they be "slim."

4. In Politics

Since I have a special interest in politics, it was natural that I would explore a references to fatness in political exchange over the years and in current venues.

President Grover Cleveland's arrival in Washington in 1885 was described thus:

"And then there arrived in Washington a huge, bejowled man, a walrus in wingtips.(G. Cleveland)...Cleveland was an unlikely looking reformer. He resembled Boss Tweed, carrying 280 pasty pounds on a small, beleaguered frame. Even by the standards of the day - in which heft in a politician was said to be a sign of substance and prosperity - he was considered porcine. His suits were like tarpaulins, and still they strained at the buttons, which would sometimes pop."

During his second term in 1896 Cleveland's opponents began refering to him as "The Fat Knight." William Howard Taft was apparently bothered by his fatness and struggled to get rid of it. "...the stolid Taft was lampooned in 1906 as a fat peacemaker setting foot in Cuba and upending the island, in 1909 as a Kewpie Doll and as Billy Possum playing golf: 'It's a Great Game for us Fat People, Isn't It?'"

In 1981 a freshman Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives referred to than Democratic Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Tip O'Neill, as "big, fat and and out of control."

Another Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich recounted in his book "Lessons Learned the Hard Way" a friend's admonition on how he should deal in public with the fact that he had gained some weight.

"...as we were getting ready for Clinton's State of the Union Address, Senate majority leader Trent Lott, a friend of twenty years' standing, dropped by my office. He came to give me a few tips on how to sit property and look presentable. He told me I should wear a certain kind of shirt, and that I should lean forward so as to minimize for the camera how overweight I had let myself become. I was bathed in embarrassment. Things had obviously gone pretty far downhill."

On another occasion Gingrich is said to have told friends that he would never ride in the back of a plane again. This statement allegedly followed his irritation with the seat he had been given during a trip on Air Force One. Commented the writer of one article on the incident "Of course, that's a plus for other travelers: now that Newt's on the steak-and-mashed-potatoes circuit, they won't have to worry about getting a sat next to a fat man."

At a breakfast of a large number of people in New York City, during the 1998 U.S. Senate campaign, the Republican incumbent Alfonse D'Amato, reportedly mocked a large New York Democratic Congressman by the name of Jerrold Nadler by calling him Jerry Waddler. As if that wasn't enough he is then said to have waddled around in a circle in an apparent attempt to make more fun of the Congressman's size.

This is not the only time that a public official has made an unkind reference to Nadler's then size. In comments during a House Judiciary Committee session, the Chairman Henry Hyde was heard to say, "Early in this meeting, my good friend from North Carolina, Mr. (Melvin) Watt - I don't see him here; he was here a moment ago. Oh, there he is. You were behind Mr. Nadler."

"You always have trouble seeing me, Mr. Chairman," said Watt

"When you are behind Mr. Nadler, it is difficult," Hyde observed."

During the 1998 election, Alabama's incumbent Republican Governor Fob James Jr. was challanged in his party's primary. His opponent, Winston Blount called on Alabamians to "elect a governor who would not 'continually embarrass us.' James, described as "no svelte figure" shot back with the suggestion that Blount was fat. James's wife, then supposedly call Blount a "big, fat sissy."

"CNN's Wolf Blitzer quoted House Speaker Newt Gingrich as saying, "We have a spectacle in Washington of the president frankly as defendant-in-chief." President Clinton's counsel, Paul Begala, fired back: "Getting lectures from Newt Gingrich on ethics is like getting lectures on obesity from Rush Limbaugh."

During a 1999 speech to a forum of world business leaders in Davos, Switzerland, Gerhard Schroeder, the then relatively new prime minister of German expressed some of his feelings toward is predecessor, Helmut Kohl, whom he referred to as "the fat man."

Following the 2000 election former Vice President Al Gore apparently gained a little weight. Beginning apparently with a reference in Newsweek magazine there began series of unflattering references.

In "Newsweek - "Buff to the max early last year, he's ballooned to near-Taftian proportions." In the New York Daily News under the headline " Hey-Hey, Fat Albert, Ex-veep tipping scale" the following from one of the students in Gore's class at Columbia University "His suits are definately at least two sizes too small. I'd say he's put on like 30 pounds."

The Washington Post couldn't stay out of the act and referred to the fact that the New York tabloids has been "tormenting" Gore for "allegedly porking up."

In the National Review there were references to the Newsweek and Daily News articles at the line " Gore's gorging is now international news, as London's Daily Telegraph reports, tongue-in-cheek, that Gore is no 'political lightweight."

5. The Health Care Community

Negative attitudes about fat people also present themselves in the more private but particularly important interactions between fat people and the medical profession.

I suppose it should come as no surprise that doctors, nurses and others in the healing profession are subject to the same "cultural beliefs and attitudes held by society."

In one survey of health professionals involved in the treatment of obesity 87% thought that fat people are self-indulgent. 25% thought they had family problems and about a third thought they had no will power. Intestingly only 10% thought that fat people were indifferent about appearance.

In a survey taken of members of the National Association to Aid Fat Americans, more than half reported dificulties in dealing with the medical profession.

I have been lucky. In almost every case, even before I knew its importance, I have found and been treated by health professionals who dealt with me as they would with other patients or clients suffering from a chronic disease.

Others have not been so lucky. They have found that doctors and other health professionals have treated them disrespectfully and with special disdain because they are fat. As a consequence many fat people report avoiding doctors except in emergencies.

Physicians

Fat people talk of doctors who seem to avoid looking at them and even some who seem to shy away from touching them.

There is some evidence that female physicians treat fat people with attitudes and advice that are more thoughtful and less perjorative than many male doctors.

A group of 77 doctors when surveyed described their fat patients as "weak-willed, ugly and awkward." In another survey, doctors reported their feelings about those of us who are fat. They said that:

• we lack self-control - 67%

• counseling us on weight loss is not professionally gratifing - 47%

• we are lazy - 39%

• we can not maintain weight loss - 37%

• we are sad - 34%

• we cannot lose significant amounts of weight - 29%

There seems to be some tendency among doctors to feel free to criticize fat people because they are trying to help us.

A study of a 100 medical students found that they viewed those of us who are very fat as "unpleasant, worthless and bad. What's worse, after 8 weeks of a psychiatry rotation working with fat people there was little or no change in their attitudes.

One doctor reported that during his medical training, fatness was seen as a character problem.

Nurses

Generally nurses seem to evaluate fat patients more negatively than non-fat patients.

Nurses report a whole series of negative emotions when they deal with fat people; guilt, disgust, embarassment, hopelessness, and resentment.

A quarter of nurses surveyed indicated that taking care of fat people repulsed them and half that number said they would rather not touch a fat person.

Nutritionists and dieticians

This group of practitioners are ambivalent and surprisingly negative about the fat people who they treat. By some we are considered to be self-indulgent and others believe that we cannot set realistic goals or follow eating or exercise programs.

Mental health professionals

In a mid-1980s study of mental health professionals, the investigators found that mental health practioners may labor under some of the same biases as the population at large when it comes to fat people.

6. Navigating the Job Market as a Fat Person

Fat people in the United States carry a public burden of being the target of discrimination in employment. They are less likely to be selected for positions in which they have regular contact with clients or customers or jobs in which the fat person and other employees must work in a relatively small space, like behind a counter. And fat business executives appear to earn less than their lean counterparts.

40% of fat men, in one study, said they had not been hired for a job because of their weight. Another study showed there is a strong relationship between weight, height and income for men. They found that men who were at least 20% overweight made less money those those who were not overweight.

Some owners of small business (10-50 employees), assured of their anonymity, freely admitted they would not hire individuals whom they considered to be obese....

7. Attitudes of Fat People about Being Fat

There have been a number of studies that have examined the attitudes of fat people about being fat.

In one study researchers collected the spontaneous reactions of fat people when they saw themselves in a mirror. One man responded as I respond when he said "Just looking at myself in a store windown makes me feel terrible. It has gotten so I am very careful not to look by accident."

Another study surveyed 47 fat people who had lost 100 pounds and maintained the loss for three or more years. These were people that had chosen surgery to deal with their fatness so the impact of fatness on them might have been particularly extreme.

The respondents were asked whether they would prefer being fat to a variety of other physical challenges.

In previous studies using similar questions it turned out that most physically challenged people would rather have their own disability rather then anyone of a number of others. Not so with those who had struggled with their weight.

Each of those interviewed said they would rather be "deaf or have dislexia, diabetes, bad acne or heart disease" rather than be fat again. A substantial majority chose being blind or having a leg amputated rather than being fat again.

Another study set out to determine whether fat people would choose reaching and maintaining their goal weight or receiving some other benefit. Large majorities chose achieving their weight goals over winning a car or house of their dreams, retiring with full pay, being promoted, winning an all-expense paid vacation or eliminating the national debt.

Roughly 45% chose reaching their weight goals as opposed to winning a million dollars or ending world hunger.

As fat people we are often angry about the prejudice that is expressed against us yet we often have similar feelings about other fat people.

Another recurrent attitude among those of us who are fat is a sense of shame. Psychologist Susan Wooley had it about right when she remarked, "If shame could cure obesity, there wouldn't be a fat person in the world."]]> http://www.mikelivinglarge.com/archives/2006/01/attitudes.shtml http://www.mikelivinglarge.com/archives/2006/01/attitudes.shtml Bonus Content Sat, 07 Jan 2006 11:57:46 -0500 In mid-1972, I had surgery for the repair of a torn cartilage. The hospital record of that surgery provided an interesting example of the same situation being described quite differently by two professionals.

My primary physician, an internist and endocrinologist, wrote a pre-operative summary based on a recent physical exam he had conducted. He described me as "massively obese." The surgeon in writing his post-operative notes described me as "moderately overweight." Both doctors were looking at the same 298-pound person.

In the excellent 1981 book "Dieter's Dilemma," William Bennett and Joel Gurin wrote about some of the confusion caused by the imprecise way words are used. For example, "overweight" (as compared to what standard?), "heavy" (does it refer to fat, or muscle or fluid?), and such terms as "chubby, chunky, husky, plump, zaftig, stout, portly, fleshy" which could be insults or honest attempts at description depending on the intent of the user.

They suggest that "obesity" sounds like a medical condition. And they are probably right, given their view that we use the term "obese" when we want to say someone is so fat that his or her health is threatened.

They opted to use words they thought more explicit: fat, fatness, overweight, and obese, and defined what they meant as they used them. They particularly endorse the word "fat" as having the virtue of simplicity and reasonable accuracy. To support their choice they note, "to use a word other than 'fat' then, would be as inappropriate and unwieldy as calling a lean person 'small framed' or describing shortness as 'underheight.'

They also cite the word's use by such "fat pride" groups as the "Fat Underground" and the "National Association to Aid Fat Americans."

In Living Large, I deliberately set out to establish the words "fat" and "unfat" to distinguish between two populations. "Fat" refers to me and people like me. The term "unfat" doesn't appear in any dictionary but it seems a legitimate way to refer to anyone who is not fat, whether that person is thin, averatge in weight or even slightly overweight. The term "nonfat" has been usurped by the food industry, and refers to a degree of leanness that humans cannot achieve.

A whole variety of terms have been used over the years to describe those of us who are large enough to be noticed for that attribute. In the last half of the 19th century a variety of terms came into use. Around 1850 the terms used included "dumpy, pudgy and tubby" followed by "porky (1860s), sod-packer" and "jumbo (1880s),...or butterball (1890s)."

Now as the language of political correctness sweeps the country even the discussion of obesity has developed an implicit "In" - "Out" list. Here is a list as I interpreted it from an interesting article in the Jan/Feb 1998 Healthy Weight Journal by Miriam Berg, President of the Council on Size & Weight Discrimination.

The following words are "out" - overweight, fat, larger than normal (what is normal?),obese (unless in medical journals or research articles), and morbidly obese.

The "In" words are: larger than average, chubby (only for babies), stocky/portly/big boned (if apt descriptions), heavy set, full-figured, Reubenesque, ample, a person of size, heavy, large, large-size, super-size, plus-size, mid-size, and seriously or severely obese (for medical references).

The same word applied to a woman may carry a different meaning when applied to a man. An example Berg uses is that calling someone a "big" man can have a positive connotation and is less stigmatizing than calling someone a "big" woman.

The use of a particular word may be appropriate and innocuous in one context and hurtful in another.

Berg notes " I call myself 'large' or large-sized' when speaking with someone I know but as I start to discuss the issues of discrimination, I will insert the term 'fat' into my language."

She does seem to look forward to the day when some good descriptors like "fat" can be reclaimed from the land of the pejorative.

In the end it is not the words but how they are used.

I appreciate as much as anyone the hurt that comes when a person is referred to with derision because they are fat. I doubt that my hurt would have been less had someone referred to me as that " person of size" or "supersized." Whether they shouted out "Hey fatso" or "Hey supersize", the speaker's feeling toward me and my size would have been equally clear.

Derision of fat people has grown sufficiently so that there is a term that describes this behavior - sizeism. So, be careful of what you say - you may be branded as a "sizeist."

There are a couple of other words and phrases that deserve to be clarified.

The first of these is the term "diet." This term has come to mean deprivation or some significant reduction in the amount eaten. How many times have you heard someone say "I'm going on a diet, right after this weekend?" If you define "diet" that way then it can not possibly represent something that most people can do for the rest of their lives.

There is a pretty good regimen that is called "The non-diet, diet."

The dictionary definition of "diet" generally ties the term to the food and drink that a person consumes and its effects on health. "Diet" in the greek "diaita" means "way of life." That suggests that a person could follow one diet for purposes of losing weight and then a different diet to maintain their new weight. One could, in fact, engage in a particular diet to gain weight.

I prefer the Greek definition. It is the eating pattern that a person follows whether its purpose is to lose, gain or maintain weight.

Another phrase that warrants attention is "morbid obesity." I found the following as a diagnosis in one of my medical records "exogenous obesity, morbid." I decided to find out what this phrase meant. Rather than looking for medical definitions I decided to start with "Webster's."

exogenous - externally caused (overeating for example)

obesity - very fat or overweight

morbid - characteristic of disease

disease - a disordered or incorrectly functioning system of the body resulting from the effect of genetic or developmental errors, nutritional deficiency or imbalance

fat - having too much flabby tissue

Thus another way to say "exogenous obesity, morbid" might be "very fat as a result of over-eating to an extent that certain body systems are not functioning correctly."

Actually, that was a pretty apt description of my condition at 298 pounds. But I was still not satisfied that I had found the meaning of morbid obesity. I e-mailed my favorite medical obesity specialist, my then personal physician and asked him about the term. Here is what he sent back.

"Morbid obesity is not universally defined or characterized. The term probably comes from health insurance policies that were limited to providing certain kinds of treatment coverage only to those patients with morbid obesity. In those situations it is usually defined as 100 pounds above desirable weight (whatever that is) or more than twice normal weight (whatever that is). The terminology is also sometimes tied to the body mass index."

What is the bottom line? I propose the terms "fat" and "unfat" to distinguish populations, "diet" to refer to a way of life, and "obese" or "morbidly obese" for use only by health professionals. I suggest that people who are not "sizeists" use caution about their choice of words, and to recognize that in general preferred words are those that reflect attitudes of acceptance not rejection. ]]> http://www.mikelivinglarge.com/archives/2006/01/words.shtml http://www.mikelivinglarge.com/archives/2006/01/words.shtml Bonus Content Fri, 06 Jan 2006 12:48:19 -0500 Ambulance

The City of Denton, Texas decided to charge people over 300 pounds, $25 extra to ride in an ambulance. They claim that the need for the additional fee is driven by the "increased risk to parademics."

Airplanes

Traveling on a modern commercial airliner can be the worst.

From the moment that I or any other fat person starts down the aisle people avoid making eye contact and you know they are praying that you won't end up sitting next to them. And when you do sit down next to someone, most all but the thinnest get a look on their faces that says "oh, no."

The attitudes of many airline passengers toward fat people are reflected in a couple of news articles.

From Newsweek magazine: "So, You think it's Hell to Fly? You've got a lot of company. Next time, you're stuck way back in coach, chin tucked under your knees, breathing in as the fat guy next to you breathes out. Remember this. Things could be worse."

In the Wall Street Journal, a passenger on a plane stuck on the tarmac in Detroit, Michigan, for hours during a January 1999 snow storm says he thought to himself, " I've wasted almost two days of my vacation on an airplane with a bunch of crying-ass kids and big fat people I don't know."

It is all about the size of airline seats.

Anyone who has flown in the coach section of a commercial airline knows that economy class seats are small. In most single aisle aircraft produced in the United States, over the last couple of decades, economy class seats are about 17" or 17.2" wide. In a burst of concern about passenger comfort, the manufacturer of wide-body 767 and 777 aircraft, have included economy class seats that are 18" and 18.5" inches respectively.

I am never quite sure which is worse when I am flying coach. The physical discomfort that I feel or what I know or believe my seat mates are feeling or thinking about me and the physical discomfort I am imposing on them.

In 1999 Air France tried to require a 375-lb man to buy two seats to accomodate his bulk. The several articles that I found on this incident varied but the basic story was the same. The passenger claims to have told the airline of his size when he booked the reservation and was told to buy a second seat. The passenger notified the airport police and the French human rights federation.

An airline official was quoted as saying "The passenger is paying for a second seat because he is occupying it ... It's a security problem and we can't take any risks."

One article suggested that the airline had a special fare for such circumstances and only charged half price for the 2nd seat. Actually, the airline has a companion fare, buy one and get the 2nd one for half price. So in this case pay full fare for the 1st 200 pounds and the airline will only charge half fare for the other 175 pounds.

There is obviously additional comfort and seat width in 1st class or in business class of three class aircraft. Business class in new U.S. built planes now runs 20-21" while in first class it is usually 22-23" wide. But strangely enough the first class seats now have so much control equipment built into the arm rests that the 1st class seat on a 757, while more comfortable than economy class, is pretty confining to a person of my size.

And then there are the tray tables provided for each passenger to eat or to work. Whether the tray table drops down from the seat in front of you or comes out of the arm rest the problem is likely to be the same. My belly stops the tray from fully extending.

Another issue is the location of the buttons and plugs that control the movement of your seat and audio/video offerings. When they are located on the inside of the arm of the seat, my body presses against the inside of the arm in a way that makes it extremely difficult to use these controls.

Automobiles

A while back one of my friends came by to pick me up in his new, two seater, sports car. It quickly became clear that I was not going to be able to leverage my body into the car. We decided to try it with the top up and given the additional height I was able to get in but felt like I was in a half cocoon. I have never tried that again.

For me to get into a compact car, let alone a sub-compact, is more aptly described as putting the car on rather than getting in. I can get by in some mid-size cars but usually I require a full size car. There are times when the steering wheel in the car I am driving turns freely without body contact other than my hands. More often it is in continuing contact with my stomach. Of course the answer is that when I am thinner the steering wheel has plenty of clearance but when I am fatter it runs against my stomach.

The last time I set out to buy a car, I went shopping for a sport utility vehicle. The distance between the wheel and my belly was problematic. The manufacturer has a program to make modifications on cars to accommodate various disabilities. I inquired whether the seat could be moved back a few inches or alternatively whether the steering column could be shortened. I was told that that kind of change was not covered by the program because they would require recertification of the car by the federal government. I was also told that there were auto body shops that could make the adjustment to the seat once I purchased the car.

I tried an SUV with a fully electrified seat and found that I was able to position the elements of the seat in such a way as to obtain the comfort I was seeking. Different manufacturers provide more or less room for the front seat so you can shop on this element.

New York cabs, like London cabs are known the world around. But there is at least one big difference. New York cabs are cramped for most people and a real struggle for those of us who are fat (or tall). On the other hand, London cabs are as if made for those of us with special girth or longer legs. They are easy to step into and there is plenty of room to stretch out or spread out.

Subways

Unfortunately, some of the companies that make transportation vehicles weren't paying sufficient attention to the general expansion of U.S. bottoms.

The seats in New York subway cars were 16.5 inches wide in the early 1900s and by 1927 they had expanded nearly a full inch. There wasn't much improvement between then and the early '70s by which time new seats were still only 17.6 inches wide.

In the mid 1980s new subway cars were ordered that were made in Japan. 17.5 inches were alloted to each passenger with a series of ridges in the bench like seating accomodations marking the "territory" of each passenger. Those who needed a little more room, as much as a "seat" and a half simply straddled the ridges. Subway officials got the message and in ordering new cars got rid of the ridges.

Trains (When you can, go by Train)

I have found trains to be a far more comfortable mode of travel than airplanes. Unfortunately, trains take longer, to get from point A to point B and don't go to or between as many locations as airplanes. Seats in train coach class are only 20 inches wide but there is no center post or arm rest between the two abreast seats. The seats in the Club or First Class Amtrak cars are wider and are more accomodating.

Furniture

When I enter a room, whether it be an office, a theater, a home or some other location, the seats or chairs in that room "talk to me." I have learned to hear the "voices" of the furniture.

Some times the furniture says "don't sit on me," it says "I am too small or I am not strong enough." When I see a chair with arms my first instinct is to wonder whether it is wide enough. When I see a booth my instinct is to wonder whether I can fit between the bench back and the table. If the furniture is of questionable sturdiness, I wonder whether I will break it.

I have had people nicely move me away from furniture in their home. Usually, it is with a line like "I think you will be more comfortable over there." But often, their suggestion is preceeded by a look of horror as I move toward an antique piece or other fragile item. They do not leap into action when a smaller person heads toward the chair.

They needn't worry. I am no more interested in sitting in a chair and have the public embarrassment of breaking it then they are in having me break it. I have felt chairs breaking as I sat in them. It is a feeling like none other and not because I might end up on the floor. And I no longer seek to entertain as a chair sticks to me when I stand up.

The other uncomfortable type of seating is that variety of overstuffed chairs and couches into which I sink so far that my knee caps begin to approach shoulder height as I sit down.

Our home

The chairs in our kitchen, where we eat most of our meals, are 20.5" at the seat level and 19" at the waist. Not perfect but comfortable enough.

The chairs in our dining room are mostly armless and the arm chairs at either end of the table are 21.5" at seat level and 20" inches at the waist.

An article in the Washington Post was dedicated to extra chairs that one can have at home to handle extra people that may come for dinner or other. There were 8 chairs described and thankfully they included some reference to those of us who are on the heavy side. Among the "cons" used to describe 3 of the chairs were "too small for heavyweight guests," "not for ample-bottomed" and "curved back is somewhat awkward for beefy guests." As to the latter the chair as a whole was described as "most comfortable chair overall."

Office furniture

My office desk chair has arms but it is 22" wide at the seat and at the top of the arms. The guest chairs on the other side of my desk are 21" wide at the seat and 20.25" at the top of the arms. They are both comfortable for me. I sat in all of them before I ordered them.

Unfortunately, I didn't pay much attention when we ordered the chairs for our conference room. They are only 18.5" at the seat and the waist and I do not enjoy sitting in them. Fortunately, they are well padded so there is a little give in the arms.

At our clients' offices the chairs range from 17.5" to 22" at seat level.

The chair I originally purchased for my home office was only 20.5" inches at the seat level and 19.5" at the waist and it is not as comfortable as it might be. After many years I replaced it with a chair that is 23" at seat level and 21" at the waist, a great improvement.

A large woman (5'10"/440 pounds) went to the furniture department of an office super store to buy furnishings for her home office. She was told by a sales person that the chairs they stocked, more than 100 kinds, would not hold a person of her size.

The sales person said that the "abuse" her size would put on any chair was more than it could handle. It was suggested that she look for a store that catered "to you people." As if it made it better she was also told that a big guy had been in the previous week and been told the same thing. (Obviously he didn't want to be seen as sexist but had no concerns about being a sizeist.)

She left the store angry and embarrassed. When she reached the stores managers were apologetic and responsive.

In Restaurants

The talk about restaurants is usually about the kind and quality of the food and in some circles the wine list. I am interested in the food but I am at least as interested in the seating arrangements in the restaurant.

Does the restaurant have armed or armless chairs? Are there booths? Arm chairs and booths are warning signals.

If you want to start an eating experience off on the wrong foot think about literally stuffing yourself into an arm chair. You won't be comfortable throughout the meal.

When it comes to booths, the big question is whether the table portion of the booth and or the benches can be moved. Usually the benches are fixed and sometimes the table is fixed to the floor or a wall. Booths that have enough distance between the bench backs or a table that can be moved away from or toward one party or the other provide comfortable seating.

All of my favorite restaurants in Washington either have armchairs of sufficient width, booths with tables that can be pushed back and form, armless chairs or some combination of the above.

One of my favorites, the Seasons Restaurant in the Four Seasons hotel in Washington D.C. has armchairs and booths.

I noticed over time that some of the arm chairs were quite uncomfortable and others were quite comfortable. It turned out that the restaurant had three chair sizes. I quickly learned to ask for a table with large chairs or if that was not available I asked the waiter to switch chairs for me. Over time the changes were made without my asking.

There is no reason that most restaurants could not have some armless chairs available that could be requested by diners who are just too large for the furniture and are willing to request change for comfort.

In the end I am prepared to give up a certain amount of quality in food in order to have physical comfort while I am eating.

In Banquet halls

Another eating situation that can be quite disconcerting is an over filled banquet room. Sometimes the tables are placed so close together to accomodate a crowd that even average sized people have a hard time getting through once people are seated.

I recall one event at which I arrived after most of the crowd was seated. I literally could not get to my table without getting several people to stand up. Accordingly, I make it a point to get into tabled ballrooms early. Usually, I stop at the men's room whether or not I really have to go to avoid the possibility of having to make that trip during the evening.

The other uncomfortable banquet situation is too many people are seated at a single round table. There have been occasions when I literally could not get my chair up to the table because my body was too wide.

In Theaters

Theaters are usually a problem. There is no easy substitute for a theater seat, movie or live performance. Many theaters now have space established for those with wheel chairs and large people could use those areas as well except there are no chairs.

When the Disney Company renovated the Amersterdam Theater in New York City, it did a great job in renovating the theater but they seem to have kept or replicated the original seating. The seats are small and the distance between rows is modest.

When Carol and I went to see "The Lion King" I was more uncomfortable than I have ever been in a theater. It really did cost me the pleasure of the performance, which is something quite special. My constant thought was "when will this be over?"

When you are cramped you are not only physically uncomfortable you have some concern about how you look to others and how you are affecting those sitting next to you. In this case it was Carol so that was not a problem. I always try to get an aisle seat so that I can lean out to some extent. As likely as not if I cannot get an aisle seat I will skip seeing a performance.

One of the largest theaters in Washington, the Uptown, was refurbished in the last few years. Many things were improved but even the otherwise comfortable new seats are 19.5" at seat level and there is open space between seats so that isn't bad. But at waist level it is 18.5" and the cup at the end of the arm rest intrudes on that dimension.

Once I squeeze myself into the seat it takes a real contortion to get out. There are some indications that newer movie theaters do have larger seats.

The seats in legitimate theaters in London are among the worst. Most of them are about 17" at the arms and close to 18.5" at the seat. Generally when I go to a show at these theaters I hope that the theater is not full so that I can move to an area where there is at least one seat next to me that is not being used. While it doesn't help at the bottom, it does allow for more comfort in the arms and shoulders. Otherwise you are likely to have to sit with your arms crossed throughout the performance. One theater chain installed seats with retractable arms between them so two people could sit more closely together. This makes for a comfortable seat for a person who needs a fair amount of extra room.

When the Central City, Colorado Opera House replaced 100-year-old 17" wooden chairs with chairs that were 20-22" wide, regular attendees were so excited about the change that an open house was held just so folks could try out the new chairs.

In Stadiums and arenas

A few years ago a new arena opened in downtown Washington. I have tried it twice, for a basketball game and a concert. It is not likely that I will go again unless someone with a box invites me to an event or I get floor seats for a concert.

The seats, in the regular section and on the club level are just too small. And the distance between the rows of seats, modest indeed, makes the seating even more uncomfortable.

Many of the new stadiums being built do have larger seats. The Staples Center in Los Angeles comes to mind. The basic seats are comfortable and the premium seats are even more accomodating. This change is being driven by the generally widening bottoms of Americans and their desire for roominess.

The new Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, home of the Indiana Pacers, has seats the smallest of which are 21" wide, 3" larger than the smallest seats in the team's previous venue in that city.

Confined spaces

Lavatories in general seem to be afterthoughts in many older buildings. In one vary famous building there is a lavatory off the reception room that requires absolute contortions, even for not-so-fat people, in order to access the accomodation. At one point I simply couldn't squeeze in and close the door. I simply abandoned my effort to use it.

Using the lavatory on most airplanes is to be avoided if at all possible. Because the doors open into the aisle it is easy enough to make entry. The hard part is moving around once you are in there. In certain circumstances you are better off backing into the tiny space. There is some relief for this problem in new aircraft but it is still quite awkward.

The downside of train travel are the regular lavatories. The doors open inward. With the door pushed inside the lavatory you then have to squeeze through between the door and the wash basin and then close the door. You then need to repeat the process on the way out. It is a daunting task for a person of size. Once you accomplish that task the lavatories are reasonably accomodating.

If you are lucky you will have a lavatory on your car that is designed to accomodate persons who are physically handicapped. The doorways to those lavatories are larger, making entrance and egress perfectly comfortable.

The Eurostar that travels between London and Paris has lavatories that are laid out in a fashion as to make entrance and exit and movement within quite comfortable.

The size and placement of commodes is another one of my pet peeves. Some of the seats are unfortably small. Others are placed so close to a wall that you have to scrunch yourself in order to sit squarely on the seat. In still others the toilet paper holder is positioned on the wall at such a height and position as to make it impossible for a person to get their leg to fit under it in any sort of natural position.

Telephone booths on land or on a train are another challenge. Once you get in, closing the door can be problematic. And the seats, in those that have seats, certainly weren't designed with people like me in mind.

Revolving doors and turnstiles can also be discomforting. This is particularly true of turnstiles. I particularly recall a seven-foot-high turnstile at a zoo. Once I got in the apparatus I was certain the only way that I would get out was for someone to disassemble it.

The next time you are in an elevator look upward. Think about the prospects of a fat person being able able to get out through the escape hatch in the ceiling.

Clothing

For ever so long it has been difficult if not useless to browse in most department stores for clothes that are designed for fat people. Finding a suit or sport coat over size 40 or 50 was an impossibility.

Clothes for fat men were produced by manufacturers that most of us had never heard of before or after we looked at the label. The few stores that catered to fat men were not very fancy, seemed to be stuffed with products and location-wise were usually a bit off the beaten track of mainstream men's clothing retailers.

Hangers designed to handle men's suits, included those ordered from a big man's catalogue are too small. My suit coats hang over the edges and the width of the trouser portion simply doesn't allow for trousers to be hung evenly.

In addition, many closets aren't deep enough to handle the width of oversize clothes and hangers. In our own home the architect failed to leave room for my hanger size and we had to accomodate my suits with rods that come from the back wall forward.

Happily the wholly inadequate "one-size-fits-all" gowns provided in many hospitals and doctors' offices have been improved. Gowns are usally now available in multiple sizes or a "one size that fits all" that really does that.

Then there are the "one size fits all" bathrobes that you find in hotel rooms. They don't fit all, they just fit some. One hotel manager to whom I complained had a special robe made for me that is large enough to enclose two of me. Thinking of hotels, have you ever seen a scale in a hotel room that goes beyond 280 or 300 pounds?

A few years ago I attended a large luncheon event sponsored by a well known national advocacy group. Part of the post lunch program included a short concert by a youth choir. It was a mixed female, male group. The youngsters were dressed in white T shirts, which carried the logo of the organization.

But there was one exception. A young man who was very fat was wearing a black T shirt. He would have stood out in the group because of his size had he been dressed like the others but wearing black while the others wore white was striking.

I assume that the special white T shirts that had been obtained did not include a size large enough for him. And I don't know how he felt about being dressed differently than the others. But unless he is one of the lucky few fat people who are not self-conscious about his size, I can imagine how he felt.

The headline in a Fortune magazine article read "Levi's tries to Make Fat-Man pants jiggy, Dockers' Relaxed-Fit Cool"

In its' second paragraph appears this sentence: "'The image of Dockers isn't all that great,' sighs Mo, who used the term of art -- 'fat-man pants'--in less guarded moments."

I happen to own 8 or 10 pair of Dockers. They are among the most comfortable trousers that I own. I had never heard the term "fat-man" pants. Was this a way of promoting their pants to those of us who need lots of room or was it something else?

I asked my assistant to call the company and see what she could find out. Her contacts with the public relations department did not produce an answer. In fact what she got was a denial of any knowledge of the term.

I then called the author of the article at Fortune. She was quite forthcoming and explained that the term "fat-man pants" is used in the apparel trade as a derogatory way of describing something that is not fashionable. When I told her about contacting the company, she asked where we made contact because the term is used by many people at the company.]]> http://www.mikelivinglarge.com/archives/2005/06/the_environment.shtml http://www.mikelivinglarge.com/archives/2005/06/the_environment.shtml Bonus Content Thu, 30 Jun 2005 11:44:05 -0500 As I began to write about my life as a fat person, I realized that my weight at various times in my life as well as other health indicators such as blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides and glucose were important markers. So, I set out to create a medical history of myself.

It turned out to quite a journey. But I believe that as part of my effort to deal with the disease of my fatness, it was worth the effort. (For many years I have requested and filed copies of every test that I took.)

I had ready access to records from most of the years from 1967 on except for a period from 1972 - 1976, years in which I was back in Minnesota. For the years that I have lived in Washington I have had only three primary care physicians. The first moved his records to the second when he retired and I still see the second for weight management assistance.

My doctor during those four years in Minnesota was a good friend but he had left Minneapolis. I tracked him down where he is practicing in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He had no idea whether the records still existed. But the other doctors in the practice continued on after he left and he gave me the name of a woman who would know where the records were, if they still existed.

I called her. My luck had run out. She claimed to remember me but the records for that period had been destroyed a year earlier.

Then I recalled that I had been hospitalized three times during that period in the same hospital. Was it possible that the hospital would still have the records from those visits?

I learned that the hospital had gone out of business and been taken over by another hospital in the same city. Perhaps that second hospital would have the records. Not so quick. That hospital had also gone out of business had been taken over by a third hospital, the largest facility in the city. I contacted the records department of that hospital but drew a blank. I subsequently learned that the second takeover involved only the hospital's building, not its records. I was at a loss.

I shared my dilemma with a close friend in Minneapolis, who is a medical malpractice lawyer. He suggested that I call the lawyer responsible for medical litigation in the County Attorney's office. It seemed like a long shot.

When I reached the appropriate lawyer in the county attorney's office he had no idea whether the records existed. He was considerably younger than me but he had read stories about a Mike Berman who was involved in Minnesota politics. When we had established that I was that Mike Berman, he said he would have someone check around.

A few days later he called back and left a message. He had found that if the records from the hospital in question still existed they would be found at a fourth hospital in a neighboring city. The chances of my stumbling on that arrangement on my own was something south of zero.

It was now a few days before Christmas. I called the Records Retrieval section of that hospital. The phone was answered by a person who noted the location and said "this is Sue." I told her what I was doing and asked whether she would check to see whether the records still existed. Her response was pure Minnesota "you betcha."

She thought the records probably existed and faxed me a release form which I quickly filled out and returned. A few weeks and another phone call later and copies of the summary records of all three hospital stays were in my hands.

I spent hour after hour reading notes and looking at various test results going back 30 years as well as doctor's notes about our conversations. There were moments as I reviewed these records that great sadness overcame me. I'll share some of those circumstances and feelings later.

Then I began the compilation of my weight history , a summary of which can be found under "Weight" on this website.

Certain weights I simply remembered, like how much I weighed when I got engaged and how much I subsequently weighed when I got married.

Added all together I had pretty decent records going back to 1961 when I was 22 years old. I also knew exactly how much I weighed when I was born, at age one year and I had a pretty good sense of how much I weighed when I was 12.

I was left with two periods about which I had little information. First, was the 11 year period between ages 1 and 12 and more significantly the 10 year period from 12 to 22. The latter was particularly important because I experienced a considerable weight gain during those years.

As to the period from age 1 through 12 I essentially struck out. The doctors who treated me as a child and as a teen- ager has long since passed away. A call to the medical society in my home town about a possible, repository of records produced the information that a doctor's records are treated as part of his personal estate and are generally destroyed when he is no longer in practice. My parents weren't much help because they didn't remember.

When it came to the 10 years between ages 12 and 22 I was much luckier.

Driving down the street one day at 5:30 a.m. I suddenly realized that I was probably the last person in American of my age still carrying his original draft registration card in his wallet. Did it include my weight?

I pulled to the side of the road and fished it out. There it was. Two days after my 18th birthday when I registered for the draft I weighed 235 pounds.

Then I remembered that my father had started me on a life insurance program, buying the first policy, when I was 15 years old.

When I finished school I took over the policies but they had long since been paid up. Was it possible that the company would still have in its files the original policy applications because the policy had happily not yet been paid out.

I had the most recent reports from the insurance company in my files, so with policy numbers in hand I called the insurance agent who was now assigned to me, a person I had never met.

I asked whether the original insurance policies were likely to exist in some form. He wasn't sure whether the original records still existed but he was willing to give it a try. Several weeks later he called with the answer. At age 15 I weighed 200 pounds and at age 20 I tipped the scales at 268.

I had kept some records from a couple of the residential programs in which I had participated. I tried to get further records but they are destroyed after seven years.

Toward the end of my search for written records, I set out to find the records of my participation in a weight management program at a local university hospital in the early 1980s. My first telephone call to the hospital looking for the program met with a "we have no such program listed."

I then wrote to the records department with a request for access to records of my participation. I included the name of the Dr. who headed the program and the therapist who had worked with me. A followup telephone call to that department resulted in my secretary being told that the records department had no such records but to try the Department of Medicine which she did. That call did not produce any information either.

The people contacted had never heard of the program, the people who ran it and certainly not me in particular.

I had learned that persistence paid off so I made one more attempt with a letter to the office of the hospital administrator. Again I included the name of the medical doctor who was in charge of the program and the clinician who had worked with me. I also sent along copies of a report that I had kept and some other materials.

Just about the time I was giving up hope of ever finding the records, I received a phone call from a woman in the administrator's office who said she had my letter and was going to try to help me. She asked whether I had any further information about the department to which the program was attached. I did not. So she said she would forge ahead and see what she could turn up.

A couple of days later in telling yet another person how odd it was that I couldn't find any records from that program I learned that a person who had been affiliated with the program was now working with my current doctor at his clinic.

I faxed a request for information to her and within hours received a telephone call. She had been the director of the program and told me that it had been terminated a couple of years earlier for lack of funds.

However, she was able to tell me the department with which the program had been affiliated, the name of the person who had been responsible for packing up the records and where they were stored.
She also was able to give me the telephone number of the therapist who had treated me.

Armed with that information I called my new friend in the administrator's office and passed it along to her. A few days later she called with the name of a person who would call me and would be able to help me get to the records. She ended by saying if I didn't hear from him to call her back.

About a week later, he did call me. He said he had good news and bad news. I was right about the location of the records. He had gone through the records which dated back to the 1970s. It had taken a while because of the coding that had been used to protect patient identification.

Then he got to the bad news. He had found records for the approximate period that I was in the program but he couldn't find any record of my participation.

In one last desperate reach I called the therapist to see whether she had taken any records with her. She quickly returned my call. She remembered me but said she did not have any records of my visits and that the only records that had been taken out of the general files were those specifically requested by the patients.

Finally, it took me a number of requests to my parents for information about their weight at various times in their lives. They were perfectly happy to give me information about their size at the time they were married. They were more reticent about their weights in recent years. But when they realized that I was very serious about wanting the information they