What Fat Women Want

Wanting to be thin is only part of the story.

by Frances Kuffel

Life Imitates Class

I didn’t notice the man weaving in and out of the foot traffic and I was so involved with my doughnut-thingie that I didn’t hear him say, as he stepped off the curb to circumvent all of us mortals, “Keep eating. That’s why you take up too much space.” Read More

All I Want for Christmas Is ANYTHING but Another Scarf

I think of them as Fat Lady Gifts, those items that try so hard to make us feel feminine. If you’re giving an overweight woman a gift this Christmas, or if you want to discourage certain repeat offending items, I encourage you to take this advice to heart. Read More

Thoughts on 9/11 from a Close Observer

When there are fireworks a lot of us go home without bothering to watch the show. The sound of helicopters unnerve me. Silence on the streets unnerves me. The smell of candle wax is Proustian. Read More

Love Me

Dogs are what we secretly are or wish we could be. We understand our dogs and we identify with them. I lovelovelovelovelove you: now prove it by rubbing my belly for two hours. Our reward is the hormone suffusion born of such intimate entitlement and desire, the companionship of sentience. Push a dog away and our hearts are pushed away. Read More

Love Letter to the Motherless on Mother's Day

"It was..." My words caught in my throat and tears sprang to my eyes. "It was after I lost weight. They were SO PROUD. That's when I knew." Read More

Hurrah for the Royal Wedding!

There was no back story of trauma with the curling iron and no hurry-up to get to the party portion of the program. We weren't invited to the party. We were invited to listen to instruction, to witness and to promise to lend a helping hand. Read More

Notes from the Situation Room

Waking up to a real problem rather than the unnameable black is waking up to what a weak and cowardly person I am. Poor and frightened, yes -- but that doesn't mean I am prohibited from taking a shower, doing laundry, cleaning a pile that looks like a hoarder's seedling, working on my book or walking the streets looking for loose change. Read More

Why I Won't Tune In for Next Week's Episode of HEAVY

On "Heavy," the trainers, nutritionist (who gets a token appearance because, well, she's just not exciting as the raging drill sergeants) and producers are in charge, and they toss the word "addiction" around because it holds gory promises of drama to the (talk about insatiable) viewer. Read More

In Memorium

When the Black Dog settles in, he sleeps on your chest, making it hard to breathe, hard to stand up, hard to show your real self to the world. He is ravenous, he is smothering, he steals your sleep. Read More

Is There a Middle Way in 12-Step Programs? (Part I)

For all the neuroscience advances that Dr. Johnson touts, no one has handed addicts a pretty pink pill. Dopamine and serotonin be damned! I still get depressed on aximum-plus doses of sertraline and bupropion. Read More

It's About Not Eating

For over a year, sugar quelled the Knot, putting me to sleep muffledin cotton wool and isolating me from the business of mutuality. I didn't leave the house to mingle with the world, I left it like a vampire: at night, headed to a busy subway stop deli staffed by clerks who were too sleepy to want chat or note my visitations. Read More

It's About Eating

It always amazes me how much cravings recede once I eat my planned, abstinent meal. Being full is the best frontline deterrent to giving into cravings. Read More

Part II: It's About the Food

I don't use the word "diet". The word has become finite. Most eating disorder twelve-step programs use the phrase "food plan or "plan of eating" instead of "diet". What I eat when I'm abstinent (that is, abstaining from sugar, flour and some attrocious eating behaviors, the hallmark of my food plan is simplicity. The word "plan" is a blueprint, someting not yet accomplished, a list of tasts broken down into reasonable time spans. Read More

Part One: It's About Food

The Big Book is always a refresher course for me and something new always pops up from the text. Among the small epiphanies I had in the last couple of weeks, is this short fragment: "The idea that somehow, someday he will...enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker."

Substitute "food" and "eater" and you'll hear me gasp in over something I'd forgotten about until I cleaned up my daily fare: I am a strange eater. Read More

The Morning After (or During)

The simple advice I want to give can be used by anyone facing regrets but it's especially pertinent to those of us who are addicts and those of us who live with the Dogs of depression. Read More

Jewel Tones

Three times I've reinvented myself from messy-haired, shower-challenged, mud-spattered dog walker/writer to someone who gets up each day ready to speak, appear, listen, be observed: for the week of my mother's death, my trip abroad, and now to promote my book. Read More

The Visible Need Not Apply

And the facts on most health problems aren't in on obesity. Is Diabetes 2 a fat thing, a food habit thing, genetic or a random occurance? Does the fat person control his blood sugar becuase he stops eating ice cream or because, as a concequence of not eating sweets, he loses some weight? For that matter, should the thin employee who eats a Snickers bar at her desk also be penalized of unhealthy behavior? Read More

I Don't Want to Be a "Night Eater"

Those are the words of Failure, Guilt, Shame, Self-disgust, Self-judgment, Fear, Loneliness -- and they, too, have their uses (at least when one stays away from the ice cream long enough to study them). Read More

Where to Find Kindness from Strangers

I've been writing about my mother's rapidly declining health recently. This week we needed to make some painful decisions about where she will be best taken care of in the short term before we can move my parents into assisted living near family. Read More

Got Talent!

"Never mind all these young acts you've seen out of the back," Morgan said in a tacit admission that in some timgs, age and experience ("Five long years I thought you were my man") add body, figuratively and literally, to a performance. Read More

Survival of the Greenest

It's a perfect game because it's a pan-gender return to childhood when the words "let's pretend" had more meaning than "you're hired".

Lately, I've been disturbed by an old New Yorker article. When container ships offload their cargo, their main pickup is American scrap metal and waste paper that are recycled by the Chinese into more junk we can't live without. It's hitting a little too close to home as I watch my parents' plans for permanance disintegrate in the quicksand of aging.

Euridice Ascending

Entombed in that air conditioned, quiet house with theoretical commitments rather than times in a day book, I need to remember that when people and things belong to someone, that someone is in charge. If belonging is mutual, then so is the power. I'll be there with as much say in the disposition of me as my parents have. Read More

May I Wear Wool After Memorial Day???

All of this turned into more chaos when I noticed that the photo on my personal blog that was taken about a month ago is also eleven pounds ago. My head, when it comes to summer clothes, is starting to turn into the stateroom scene from A Night at the Opera.

Foodies eat for the sake of food. But the other kind of person, the eatie, eats for the sake of eating. At their most extreme, eaties don't care about the food or the company. It's the quantity and its effects that count. Read More

Saved by the Dog

Daisy saved me from the egg dish I didn't realize had bread in it until I'd taken a bite. She huddled as close to me as she could get, making the trips to the buffet disruptions of love. As chocoloates were passed around, she whined to pee and I escorted her to the garden and had a cigarette. After a couple of hours, she turned into a frantic brat. No one was surprised that we were the first to leave. Read More

Conversation with a Fat Friend

Motivation should be removed from the weight loss vocabulary because it is too often a finite prod. I hear it all the time: "I want to be thin for my daughter's wedding" or "my 20th reunion is coming up". The dieter either gives up because realizes she won't fit the perfect evening gown in time or she gets down to her cheerleader uniform size but eats the entire breakfast buffet. Read More