Frances Kuffel - Angry Fat Girls: 5 Women, 500 Pounds and a Year of Losing It...Again

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Table of Contents

To Katie, who advised and discussed the issues herein so generously
throughout the writing of the book, and who held my hand
on Saturday nights for a summer.

To Lindsay, for calling every morning for a year to prod me
to write, and for pointing me toward the best feminist literature
on the subject of women, food, and weight.

To Mimi, whose genius for listening and gentle advice has helped
keep me sane for the last three years.

To Wendy, who always called when I was in crisis and kept me
laughing the rest of the time.

Having loaned me your lives, please accept this portion of mine.

Then theres only one thing to be done, he said. We shall have
to wait for you to get thin again.
How long does getting thin take? asked Pooh anxiously.
About a week, I should think.
A week! said Pooh gloomily. What about meals?
Im afraid no meals, said Christopher Robin, because of getting
thin quicker. But we will read to you.

A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Most, most loving thanks to my parents, Marie and Leonard Kuffel, for their faith in me, their generosity, their sense of humor, childhood summers at Flathead Lake, and school years full of nuns.

Transcendent thanks to Fredrica Friedman for your faith in me and in this book, and to Denise Silvestro for your passion and your brilliant editing. Andie Avila has been a voice of reason in the editing of a sometimes controversial book and I feel lucky indeed to have had the luxury of two editors.

Im in debt to Pam Peeke for her brutally tough questions, and to Lybi Ma at Psychology Today and Judith Moore at the San Diego Reader for encouraging me to delve into this subject before the book was an idea. I wish wed gotten the chance to be friends, Judith.

Tasha Paley continually kept me in a sense of we, and Gerry Dempsey and Ann Marie Carley fed me dinner and kept me from reverting to an early hom inid when Id been alone with the dogs and the computer for too long. David Seiter wrenched my heart after Id given up on men and he keeps reminding me of how lucky I am. Jonathan Elliotts rueful remarks when we meet on the street reminded me I have a brain as well as a useful eating disorder.

My daily peepsBarley, Boomer, Chance, Henry, Hero, Malachi, and Rogerhave owners who have been my cheering section and source of excitement about writing. Thanks not only for the [mostly] Lab Love, but thanks also to Susan and David Clapp, Ann Allen-Ryan and Leonard Ryan, Susan Sidel, Rene Dittrich and Jo Foster, Grace Yoon and Steve Kilroy, Renette Zimmerly and Tim McLaughlin, and Regina and Steve Rubin for everything youve done for me over the years and for being my most frequent human contact. And if Im thankful for Lab Love, I have to acknowledge mine, Daisy. She makes me get up and think about something other than myself every day.

Ive made forty-two thousand cyberfriends since the beginning of my blogging days. Most of us havent spoken but youve become a part of my contentment in life.

And finally, but not least, my special love to my brothers, Jim Kuffel and Tom Graves.

AUTHORS NOTE

Angry Fat Girls is a story of five women. It is based on the spirit of their lives, but I have heavily fictionalized those lives in order to preserve their anonymity within their families, social circles, and workplaces.

The story I tell about myself in Angry Fat Girls is factual, although I have changed the names of the people in my life.

I have created these fictions with their knowledge, active participation, and approval of the finished book. In many ways, they wish they could openly join me in welcoming you to our circle of friendship, but this invitation is presented in spirit even though it lacks their return addresses.

About the Angry Fat Girls

I. After The End

In the winter of 2004, I published Passing for Thin, an account of my midlife weight loss of 188 pounds and about being part of the world of normal-sized people for the first time. While the critics response to the book was laudatory, individual readers opinions ran the gamut from finding me self-involved and heartless to believing me to be a voice speaking about their own body experiences.

I tried and failed to respond to all of the emails. They were painful to read. Many were desperate; some described experiences similar to mine. In the year before the book was published, I began to regain my weight, so I often felt like a liar for giving advice I couldnt follow or sympathy I couldnt give myself. Congratulating the successful either made me twinge with envy or worry that my correspondent would feel my fallibility was theirs.

In the years of regaining half of my weight back, I did not give up on the hopes of permanently resuming abstinence and my 12-step program. I had intermittent periods of abstinence and weight loss. It was during these spells that I was more energetic and buoyant, and I tended to attack my backlog of emails during them.

There have been a number of iconic Poster Girls for Thin in the last several years. Sarah, the Duchess of York, Kirstie Alley, Valerie Bertinelli, Ricki Lake, Marie Osmond, Phylicia Rashad, and Oprah Winfrey have all discussed their weight gains and advocated particular methods for losing. I dont compare my modest fame to theirs, but when it came to my inbox, I, too, found that Id become a Poster Girl for Thin. But I was a poseur even as the advance publicity for the book began.

II. Frances in Blogland

The genesis of Angry Fat Girls started with the author blog I began on Amazon in the winter of 2006. Initially, I wrote about friendships, dogs, the writing process, having to ask clients for overdue money, what I was making for dinner, why I couldnt fall in love with a man I was seeing. I resolved some loose ends from Passing for Thin. I was open about my weight gain and depression, and I came to wonder if I was becoming the Anne Sexton of Amazon.

Mimione of the four other women who share the story of Angry Fat Girls, and the first of the four to comment on my blogwrote, Im glad you are being personal. After reading Passing for Thin, I felt as though Id made a friend who was able to be honest about herself.

I was surprised at how accepting readers were that I hadnt maintained my weight loss. They identified with my seesawing and bingeing. They, too, were between rocky road and a hard place.

Is there anything else that can make you feel so completely useless and terrible and weak and awful? B. responded. Its nice to know Im not alone in these feelings.

... Those of us who feel like freaks for not being able to control a food addiction dont feel like were the only ones out here... wrote H.

As readers confessed their own stories, ranging from child abuse to their diet plans, a string of thanks kept showing up. Thank you for talking about your weight gain. Thank you for talking about how hard it is to lose a best friend. Thank you for talking about standing up for yourself. Thank you for talking about being depressed.

By April, my blog became a virtual watercooler in the politics of being female in the new millennium, a place where readers could discuss with each other what they felt other people in their lives didnt understand. This has become sort of my online diary, M. wrote, and Mimi, one of the Angry Fat Girls youll get to know, described what was happening most poignantly: Were all trying to walk new paths without using food as the fix to get there. Working out the kinks, a.k.a. anger, hurt, fear, without feeding them is a process... It is like learning how to speak another language. You have to practice it every day.

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