Scale It Down

We're not doctors, lawyers, or shrinks - or candlestick makers or even Indian chiefs for that matter. The one thing we can definitely say about ourselves is that the inspiration for this web site came from over sixty years of combined fat experience between us - and we're not talking about a big group here.

What we found most astounding about ourselves, and we're pretty sure we can say this for most overweight people is, we're all very knowledgeable about the do's and don'ts of good dietary habits. We know what foods are high in fat, we know that exercise is good for us, we know, for the most part, what we should be eating and we certainly know that diet fads have never brought us long term success. So why is it, we cling to fighting the battle of the bulge?

We think there are several answers to this question. First, we'd always approached weight loss on a quick remedy basis and ultimately in an ineffective manner. And secondly, we never did what it would take (or even thought about it for that matter) to keep the weight off once we lost it. The C word was just not part of our vocabulary - and it was obvious.

What finally led us to change (okay, we said it) our fat perspective was the realization that something just had to give to break the yo-yo syndrome and that we figured out it didn't have to be as painful as we'd always thought it would be. Changing the way we approached food was indeed a lot easier than we thought. Partly because we accepted the fact that we had to do things differently, but also because we challenged every diet-do-and-don't along the way. We weren't going to give up our fat habits without a fight and by doing so, we found more acceptable alternatives that we could live with than we ever thought possible.

There is one particular fat experience in our repertoire we'd like to share that helped us start changing our fat perspectives.

Have you ever seen yourself in a picture or on a home video and just cringed with anxiety over the way you looked? Believe it or not, there's one thing even worse and that is seeing yourself on television.

We were members of a group weight loss project on Good Morning America called, Lock the Door Lose the Weight. The objective was to bring overweight people of various ages, backgrounds and gender together under one roof to lose weight under the guidance of professional weight loss experts.

The lock up began with an around the clock surveillance for 7 days straight in a vacant 6 bedroom mansion. The cameras were everywhere, except in the bath and bedrooms. (Needless to say, that was a good move.) Stationery web cams were strategically placed around the sprawling house and a camera crew would arrive at 4 each morning to film our fat activities for the day.

The first week's schedule was like a cross between a day spa and boot camp. We exercised 2-3 times a day, were consistently exposed to the concept of making the right food choices (via field trips, lectures and demonstrations), participated in group therapy chats (complete with couches), and ate fabulous low-cal meals prepared by a 5 star chef. It was the experience of a lifetime. It was like being Oprah for a week. (Okay, maybe not, but it definitely was the closest any of us had ever been to living in the lap of luxury and being attended to by numerous professionals at one time.)

We all got to go home for the weekend at the end of our grueling first week and checked back into the fat house on Sunday night. Week 2 was spent commuting to and from our work places during the day and returning at night for group work outs, meals and check-ins with our weight professionals - the point of which was to help prepare ourselves for the permanent return to our own lifestyles. We maintained contact with our fearless fat leaders there after for another week and half, (meeting several times in between), until we flew to the GMA studios in New York to file our weight loss reports on morning TV.

By the end of the 3 ½ week project, our reportable weight losses ranged from 10-18 pounds. (The male participants lost the most and several people in the group weren't quite as successful.) We were ecstatic with our results and returned home with great optimism.

The infamous studio picture - when Ms S flashed her backside to the viewing audience in commiseration that she too needed to lose weight. (She dropped a cool 25 since then, as you may well have heard by now. And by the way, she is a GREAT lady!)

The process of television is an amazing thing to watch. Once you take part in it, your perspective changes forever. The allusion of what you see on a screen and the reality of what it takes to project these images is bubble bursting. Kinda like seeing just how fat you really do look to others.

What we went through in lock up is a story in itself. How couldn't it be? Take 7 strangers and put them together to bare their fat souls and what do you get? Emotional pandemonium, pretty much sums it up. We really didn't know what to be concerned about first - hiding how fat we looked, trying not to say something stupid or existing harmoniously within the group themselves. There were tearful moments, and there were hilarious moments. It was a roller coaster ride of self-exploration and public exposure. It was the experience of a lifetime.

...what we learned in TV land

Optimism - you'd think we should have been cured of all our overweight dilemmas by the time we returned from TV land. Not so. We found ourselves a little thinner, but right back where we'd always been - reveling in that initial weight loss high and wondering how long it would last. The dogma that had plagued us throughout our lives was still there. How could we assimilate our new knowledge, and all the other fat facts and tips we'd learned throughout the years into real life…permanently into our own lifestyles?

Our TV experts invited us to remain in contact for any help we'd need via phone and still maintain that offer to this day. While we appreciated their gesture, we soon realized that unless they moved into our house, the only people who were going to be able to permanently affect our weight change was us.

Personal evolution comes in many forms. It's the events in our lives that we hopefully draw upon and grow from. But when it came to the subject of weight control, it just always seemed our fat mentality took over and sabotaged our good intentions. (Or was it that we'd always allowed it to?)

What helped tremendously to make this weight loss attempt different than all the other failed missions, was that we began asking the right questions of ourselves, and not taking 'no' for an answer. In other words, for every yeah-butt response we had relied upon in the past, we kept asking more questions until we couldn't yeah-butt anymore.

Our favorite yeah-butt excuse: If I was rich 'n famous and could afford all that help, I'd be thin too.

The key to asking the right questions of yourself is to keep asking them until you facilitate a positive end result as opposed to a negative dismissal. (This exercise is a favorite of many motivational speakers and it really works. For some reason, the thought of applying this concept to food had never crossed our minds before.) We began answering every, I can't, Don't like, and No time with, How? And we kept asking how until we came up with a solution. Once we challenged resolve, positive answers really started flowing in. Our how' s turned into how to's and we actually started having fun with the whole process. We even challenged those old diet taboos we never would have questioned before…

How can I eat cookies if I'm on a diet?

How much food can I eat and still lose weight?

How can I avoid giving up fast foods?

How I can I make exercise easy?

How much exercise (at a bare minimum) would it take to still reap the benefits?

It was also during this time when we began wondering about thin people. Not the Ally McBeal scrawny kind, but those people who always seemed to maintain normal weight levels without much effort. Though we hate to admit it now, we knew all along it wasn't because they were blessed with extraordinary metabolisms. The thing that annoyed us the most was when we'd see them eating the same junk that we did but not gain weight. How did they do that? We think (now) that thin people know how to apply the principles of weight control into their lives AND they don't have a fat mentality bone in their body. The way they think about food is entirely different than those of us with weight problems.

Before this epiphany, we'd always limited weight control inquiries to our own kind - couldn't wait to ask a fellow overeater who'd just lost weight, 'how'd ya do it?'. All those years wasted on trying to master the quick fix instead of figuring out what it takes to achieve permanent weight loss and control. Talk about the blind, leading the blind. That is what fat mentality is all about.

Thin people may not have been born with high metabolisms, but we're pretty sure they didn't grow up with fat mentalities and the task of weight control is easier for them because of it. Don't get us wrong either, it's not like we've buried the problem completely. Our fat mentality is still with us, we just work at continually keeping it under control now. It's hard to give up something you were born with.

Baby Fat - We hid behind the excuse of baby fat as long as we could. But at some point, you just can't draw a correlation between the Michelin tire baby and someone who's walkin', talkin', poopin' and peein' on their own.

Grammar School - If it didn't come in Chubbie sizes, we didn't wear it. Chubbies, for girls and Huskies, for boys - that was the Sears moniker for fat kids' clothing. (They were actually half sizes bigger than the average sized clothes.)

Scary, huh?

The worse thing about those clothing lines was that the kids at school, the thin kids that is, knew you were wearing them. Unlike today, manufacturers didn't make the same styles for all sizes and it was obvious which styles came in the larger sizes. It was like being a branded cow.

It was also during the grade school years when our fat stature became a fixation with our families. For girls, it was a multi-generational concern over the predicament of our future. The conversation usually started with, " …you have such a pretty face…", and ended up sending the message that if we didn't stop being fat, people wouldn't like us, we'd never be able to wear cool clothes and we certainly wouldn't be able to get a husband. Sound familiar? It's amazing to us today that health issues were never a part of that pretty face lecture.

For some husky boys, the last years of grammar school marked the beginning of a long career in scale jumping. At the onset of their teenage years, drastic weight reduction measures such as, taking water pills and sticking to 3 food diets (i.e. steak, vegetables and apples) were used to meet weight requirements for team sports. By the time these boys reached high school, they met competitive weight limits by doing things like, fasting and wearing rubber suits to work out in rooms heated to 100 °. (Okay, we give. We'll take the pretty face fate any day of the week!)

...roll 'em, roll 'em, roll 'em

And while we're on the subject of athletics… what was it like being the fat kid in gym class? Demoralizing - especially in grade school. Any skill we couldn't do was, of course, attributed to being fat. Climbing up ropes and standing up from sitting Indian style are the first two things that come to our minds - that and the annual President's Physical Fitness tests we were forced to take. As if it wasn't bad enough being last in a foot race, being timed and being last made it even worse. The icing on this cake came when the gym teacher made big poster charts of everyone's results and plastered them on the gym walls for all to see. The one thing we can say, it was always easy to find our names at the bottom of each chart.

The President's Physical Fitness Test was a nationwide program started in the 60's to promote physical fitness for children. The annual test consisted of track and field events and was conducted in an Olympic theme. The winners were rewarded with ribbons and the losers, with humiliation.

High School - Exlax was one of our favorite diet tools. The quick loss mindset really developed over our teenage years. We'd take the chocolate laxative all weekend long so we could start school on Monday 5 lbs. down. Silly we know, but it was effective and we did get to eat chocolate in the process. ( Believe it or not, the taste wasn't all that bad.)

Fad dieting, though back then, we didn't know that's what we were doing at the time, became a permanent force in our battle of the bulge. Unlike a bulimic binge and purge, we'd binge and surge our way through a myriad of diet tricks to drop weight quickly.

During this pubescent phase of physical growth, we got our first taste of being "acceptably overweight". If you were a tweener, (not morbidly obese, but definitely not thin), you stopped being chubby and moved onto being chunky. It was the first time when there seemed to be a reprise in the peer acceptance of shapes and sizes. (We think this is because we felt safety in fat numbers within a larger student population.) The chunky comfort zone helped our self esteem but also became a crutch we relied upon for years to come.

College Age - At one point we existed solely on yogurt, cheese, crackers and of course, beer and popcorn by the buckets. (One of us actually had a moment's worth of a size 9 during this time period. A moment being, exactly one semester only.) We mastered the art of fad dieting during our early 20's, but generally escalated back and forth between the low and high ends of the double-digit size spectrum.

Overweight peer acceptance enlarged again during this time, and it became quite acceptable to don larger sizes. Maturity seemed to stifle verbal confrontations. (Or was it that people just poked fat fun behind your back instead of to your face from this point on?)

Adulthood - The number of different sizes we wore throughout the years is equal to the number of diets we went on - and off of. If we had just focused on how to stay in one size instead of changing sizes, we could have saved ourselves years of fat anguish, not to mention the excessive expense of stocking and restocking our closets.

It's pictures like this, that really make you cringe!

Understanding where you came from and why, really helps to figure out where you're going. It made us think twice and start asking the right questions of ourselves on how to go about change.

Pregnancy is the only time in life when you get sympathy for being fat.

Turning Point >>> If we kept doing what we'd always done, we'd just keep getting what we'd always gotten…fatter!

As if meeting celebrities isn't intimidating enough, suddenly having to bear your soul in front of them is overwhelming. Fortunately for us, after the first 24 hours or so, we found ourselves pretty attuned to the situation and comfortable with discussing what we thought and how we felt about the perils of fatdom.

The best way to sum up Doc Shapiro's approach to weight loss would be: seeing is believing. His visual approach to the matter put a big dent into our fat mentality. Shapiro's book series, Picture Perfect Weight Loss, focuses on making the right food choices without feeling like you're denying yourself the type and quantity of food you really want.

Shapiro does this by example. In his books, he shows pictures of meals you'd normally eat aside pictures of better meal alternatives you should eat. The bottom line is if you change what you're eating to a better choice of foods, you'll eat more and lose weight. All he had to say was, "eat more" and he got our attention.

While we were locked up, we got to see the food comparisons first hand. Several times a day we'd all meet in the kitchen to view these comparisons. Seeing, really was believing and there wasn't an example we were shown that didn't receive a group gasp of disbelief.

One of the best demonstrations we saw had to do with bread. Sitting on top of the kitchen island (in this house, a massive piece of cabinetry about 10 feet long by 4 feet deep), were 2 small salad plates. On one plate, a deli bought bagel with cream cheese and on the other, 14 slices of low-cal bread with low-sugar jam. Once we saw the example, Shapiro would send his message home: you can have a bagel with cream cheese for 650 calories OR you can have 14 pieces of low-cal toast with low-sugar jam for the same amount of calories…the choice is yours. The visual effect was amazing. What bread lover wouldn't go for the 14 slices? And in reality, you knew damn well you'd never eat the 14 pieces at once to begin with. After we'd seen a couple of these demonstrations, we made a game of it, and all shouted out "OR" at the appropriate low calorie moment in Doc's presentation.

...learning what not to buy at the grocery store.

The fave food demo was ice cream. On one side of the island, sat a typical tulip sundae glass with 3 scoops of regular ice cream, chocolate syrup, nuts, whip cream and a maraschino cherry on top - for a whopping total of 1,360 calories. On the other side of the island, 4 tulip glasses each filled with 3 scoops of frozen yogurt, fruit, chocolate syrup, whip cream and a maraschino cherry on top - totaling the same amount of calories. As far as we were concerned, we didn't need the chopped nuts, real ice cream or fruit for that matter and we fought over who got to eat the 4 better choice alternatives. It was as if a diet siren went off in our heads…you mean we get to have ice cream sundaes and still lose weight? When you break the whole thing down and look at it on a single serving to serving basis, it's astounding. Just by substituting ice milk/frozen yogurt/lite ice cream for regular ice cream and getting rid of the nuts, a dessert that is normally 1,360 calories came down to 340 calories. Amazing!

Our meals in the house were equally amazing. Many times we'd have the lower calorie choices we'd seen in a food demonstration. This tactic helped send the message home even more. Seeing and tasting is believing. In addition to our food demos, Shapiro lectured on restaurant eating, had us work with a food diary and continually reiterated the fact that eating right was not about denying yourself the foods you wanted but about making the right food choices. The right food choices were always in abundance for the taking as well. The cupboards were stocked with low cal dry foods, candies and beverages. The freezer was jammed with frozen yogurts and 50 calorie a stick ice cream treats, and every morning a huge bowl of top grade fruits was put out for the taking. We were encouraged to go to the kitchen anytime to have as much (of the right food choices) as we wanted. Over the first few days of lock-up we pillaged the freezer for the ice cream sticks. We'd eat 3 or more of them a day - anytime we needed a food fix, so to speak. Our fat mentalities thought we were getting away with something by doing so, but in reality we were retraining our psyches to eat differently and more wisely. After the thrill was gone, we began visiting the fruit bowl more often than not.

Doctor Shapiro did something for us that no one had ever done before - he got us to begin thinking differently about weight loss. After years of equivocating dieting to food denial, it was the first time any of us entertained the idea that we could not only lose weight but have our ice cream and eat it too.

To all of you purists out there who say, " I don't like frozen yogurt", here's the real scoop: Either, you've never had it to begin with or you haven't been able to find your own personal palette friendly brand. The varieties out on the market today are truly excellent. There were people in our group who never had low cal ice cream before. Once they tried it, they loved it.

Working with a personal trainer was a first for the majority of us in the group. Prior to this experience, our fitness knowledge was limited to what we had been taught in school and read in magazines. The forms of exercise we had used in the past were driven by contemporary trends (we definitely weren't sad to see step mania fade away) and fueled by sudden bursts of wanting to lose weight.

Jim Karas presented us with a fresh approach to sweat. He stunned us immediately by scheduling 2-3 workouts a day. Suddenly our group of sedentary chubsters were exposed to yoga, pilates, tai chi, boxing, circuit training, strength and resistance exercises, power walks, jumping rope, and just about every piece of cardiovascular fitness equipment available in health clubs today.

...a wobbly attempt at tai chi

Karas' intent was to shock our bodies - needless to say he accomplished just that. And for his efforts, we gave him much verbal abuse in the form of moans, groans and child like whines. But what ensued was equally as shocking. After the first couple of days, we actually started having fun with the process. What Mr. K. knew and we didn't (then), was that exercise doesn't have to be a tedious, mundane or lengthy process. Our work out sessions were never more than 30-40 minutes in length and changing the forms of exercise we performed made it all the more interesting and tolerable.

What Jim was able to get through our thick skulls was that by creating a basic exercise forum ( 30-40 minutes in length, performed 3 times a week) and then supplementing it with different physical activities when possible, we could achieve effective results and streamline exercise into our own lifestyles. He was able to put to rest the misconception that working out meant you had to sweat profusely for at least an hour at a health club. This was definitely big news for us because it squashed the stigma that had always turned us off from exercise in the past.

The notion that exercise could be performed via a barrage of 'physical activities' was astounding to us. In his book, Business Plan for the Body, Karas demonstrates the power of all and any physical activity. His do-the-math approach to overall fitness provides calculations for losing and maintaining weight based on age, height, weight and calorie intake combined with the amount of physical activity over the course of a week. The calculations allow for all types of movement (even just getting up in the morning counts for something).

Jim's approach to exercise was unique to most of us. As with our foibles about food, our preconceived notions about exercise had always foiled our physical motions. He opened our minds to thinking differently about exercise and got us moving like no one had ever before. We also think his charismatic personality helped tremendously - especially when we taunted him with our whining - he never faltered and always had a smile on his face.

Cardio Warm-up (10-15 minutes) - 3 x's / week Performed via machine, walking, jumping rope and/or any movement that gets the heart rate up and blood pumping.

Strength & Resistance Training (30-40 Minutes) 3 x's / week Upper and lower body routine performed via weight machines, rubber bands, fitness balls, hand weights and/or floor exercises.

Supplemental Activities - whenever you can - team or individual sports, walking, running, martial arts, yoga, playing with your kids, and participating in any other form of exertion that fits the bill.

When you've never been in a group therapy situation, it's very unnerving at first. Images of the old Bob Newhart shows haunted us in the beginning, but after our first couple of attempts we soon became a group of ramblin' roses. Sit a bunch of people down on couches to clotch and there's no telling what you'll hear. Our topics ranged from the struggles of weight control to the politics of being politically correct.

...a yack session about to happen.

In addition to our group sessions, the option of sitting down one on one with our therapist was a continuous one. Privacy was protected in these situations, and needless to say we all took advantage (some of us, more than others) of this opportunity while in lock-up.

Our therapist in residence was an amazing woman. Between dealing with us in the group sessions and then on the one to one basis, Susan Amato deserved a bronze star for maintaining professional decorum and her sense of humor. She made spilling our guts out, a very easy thing to do, which surprised most of us to begin with. But what we came away with was new perspective about ourselves. Some good, and definitely, some bad, but new all the same and thought provoking, to say the least. When you see things about yourself for the first time or see them differently than you've ever seen them before, doing something about them becomes a little easier.

Amato made us feel at ease in a very extraordinary situation and was able to draw things to the forefront in the most uncanny and non-judgmental way. She became our house mother and saying good-bye to her when the project was over was like bidding farewell to an old friend.

Watching a real chef at work is an amazing process. For the cooks in our crowd, watching Pete Repak in the kitchen, made us feel like Cooking 101 drop outs. He definitely exemplified the meaning of what it is to be an executive chef .

The culinary work shift would begin by 4 each morning upon the arrival of Repak's kitchen assistant who immediately began making buffet sized pots of coffee. The assistant was also responsible for laying out a separate breakfast spread for the camera crew, which usually consisted of coffee cakes, bagels, croissants, cheeses and fruits. The crew's food was tucked away on the counters of a laundry room just off the kitchen. This room became a daily nemesis for those of us who needed a cup of coffee first thing in the morning, as we had to go in there to get our java fix. Surprisingly enough, it wasn't as tempting as we thought it would be. Just smelling all those baked goods seemed to satisfy our fat mentality long enough to get in there, pour, and get out. ( Or was it that we felt cheating wasn't worth the public humiliation that would surely ensue? )

...the crew at work

Repak and the assistant chef would arrive by 5 each morning to begin cooking the day's strategically planned low calorie meals and food demonstrations. The morning hours were especially frenzied. Between the crew setting up for the a.m. broadcast (which usually took place at the open ended kitchen in a common living area), the GMA staff (clipboards in hand) coordinating the daily schedule of events between the studio in NY along with Shapiro, Karas and Amato, and all of us meandering about, Pete's kitchen was a madhouse, to say the least. He was a master at his work nonetheless, and managed to cook in an environment that was cramped, filled with constant chatter and highly populated. And through all this mania, he maintained a high level of food presentation and service to all of us.

What never ceased to impress us was Pete's unrelenting dedication to service. If he was in the kitchen and we walked in to get ourselves a piece of fruit, he'd insist on cutting it and putting it on a plate for us. It was embarassing at times. We'd walk in with the best intentions of self-sufficiency and walk out with a served plate or glass in our hands. During one of our breakfast meals (our group ate in the dining room down a short hallway from the kitchen) someone had grabbed a package of low fat cream cheese from the fridge and brought it to the table. By chance, Pete came down the hallway and did a double take when he saw the foil package laying on the table. He immediately grabbed it and rushed back to the kitchen. We looked at each other and thought we were busted for making the wrong food choice. Less than a minute later, Pete came back to the table with the cream cheese de-foiled and molded on a dessert plate accompanied by a small spreading knife. We were shocked by his gesture and relieved to know we hadn't been busted after all.

Watching Repak cook was like watching an artist put paint to canvas and his graciousness made it all the more enjoyable.

Remember the skit Mike Myers used to do on Saturday Nite Live - Linda Rothman's Coffee Talk? Our family called it a coffee "clotch". The clotch originated with a group of hefty European women who gathered frequently at each other's flats to gossip openly about the neighborhood. Mandatory at all such meetings, were strudels and cups of percolated coffee served in china tea cups. A clotch wasn't successful, or over for that matter, until at least one strudel was consumed.

That was the trend in our grandmothers' day. In our mother's day, women became more sophisticated and got together under the auspice of "club". It didn't matter whether it was religious, decorative, political or investment based, it was just a matter of getting together for 'club' ala "Coffee and" . Coffee and cakes and cookies and candies.

Today, we tend to gather in the name of our children - first via play groups and then on to soccer fields and ice arenas. The strudel has been replaced with concession stand goodies, but the clotch remains the same.

A clotch can happen almost any place or at any time. Some planned, some not. There's two clotches in particular that come to mind…

Holiday Clotch When we were growing up, family gatherings took on the spirit of a good clotch - especially around the holidays. It all centered around the dining room table: dinner at noon, sandwiches at 6 and lots of cakes and cookies in between. It was non-stop eating and visiting for hours on end. It was a fattening tradition, to say the least. It was, perhaps, the one and only time we can honestly say our grandmothers had a hand in the development of our fat mentality. (Sorry, Gram, but we just couldn't resist.)

Macho Clotch What you hear through the grapevine, is definitely not limited to women. Men clotch just as often as women do, they're just less ceremonial about it. It is our experience that men tend to do their best clotching while playing poker or watching sports on TV. Of course, there's always plenty of pretzels, pizza and pilsners on hand to make the clotch official.