Journey to the "planet of thin"

You describe entering this new body almost like entering adolescence.

Along with anything else that happens to somebody who loses this much weight, their closets empty out. I had a manic period where I was just snarfing clothes up as quickly as I could. There was an inevitable crash after that, too. You can do all the fixing up and glamorizing of the outside that you want and still feel obese and unworthy underneath.

I think everyone has an original myth about themselves. Mine has to do with being given up for adoption and feeling like I need to be pathetically grateful and therefore pathetic to make my way in the world. It wasn't something I was taught. I come from one of the nicer parents in the world.

How old were you when you learned that you were adopted?

I always knew. There's a whole wonderful story about how my parents got a call the night I was born, but in my little demented imagination, I think I turned it into this big brouhaha.

Do you think your "original myth" affected your eating habits?

No. I could've been as happy as George W. Bush, and I'd still be eating. I'm just a compulsive overeater. Yeah, I have pain that goes along with it, but I don't blame my myths or stuff in my childhood for it. I'm a great piece of biology. Two thousand years ago, if we were trying to survive in Ukraine in a terrible winter after a disastrous summer, you'd lose, I'd win.

Early in your memoir, you say that you and your two older brothers, Jim and Dick, "lived in an unpredictable muddle of shifting alliances, imminent violence, and a subtle electric undercurrent of predatory sexuality that our busy parents were not hep to. Dick turned it on Jim and me, leaving us to exorcise the taint (not quite a stain; he didn't go that far) by finding safer harbor in our own ways. My safety was in food." You go on to say that your oldest brother, Dick, was rapacious, and you suspect you may have been shielding yourself from him with your obesity.

He was. They often say obesity is protection against intimacy or sexuality and that could be what I did. But I truly think I was going to eat anyway. It might have added fuel to the fire that I had a problem with it.

You were a compulsive eater, even as a young child. Do your parents remember when it started?

My mother said my first sentence was, "Eggs are done." We had this egg timer, and I apparently loved soft-boiled eggs. When I was 6 months old, my mom said I had a beatific look on my face at my first taste of ice cream. I think probably every baby has that reaction to ice cream. Still, they knew that there was a major problem. My father was a physician, and my parents were worried, but I think they saw that it hurt me so much -- that it was so humiliating that they didn't want to hurt me any more than I was hurting myself. If I wanted to go on a diet, they would try to help, but there was very little pressure. My parents went, "This freaks her out so much to talk about, let's just back off. She's a smart girl. We love her, and when she's ready to do something about it, she'll do it."

Is your family used to the "new Frances"?

Yeah. They have nothing but delight. This summer I bottomed out. I was eating (the only major post-diet relapse). My brother Jim said, "I always worried this would happen again. But this is the first time I know that you're going to get it together. You'll take care of it." That was the thing that allowed me to get it together. I miss food. Food was such a cure-all.

Any particular kind of food?

I'd always go for the baked stuff. Then I would go for the salty stuff. Always the carbohydrates. Flour, flour, flour. I miss being able to turn on and off certain functions. If I was bored I could eat. If I had a lot of reading to do I could eat. If I was scared of people I was having dinner with, I had the food to focus on. I ate as a metronome, especially for reading, or watching T.V. I have the attention span of a gnat.

Is getting used to your new self an ongoing process?

A friend said to me last night, "You are heavier, and I know you are upset about that. But you continue to change and it isn't just body size. You're prettier than you were when you lost the weight, and you've gotten prettier every year." In that first year or two (of being thin), there was a ragamuffin quality to me. I was trying to figure out stuff. I was always so worried: Would people recognize me? I always manage to get it wrong. I'll introduce myself to someone I've known in the past, and they'll just look at me like, Are you a lunatic? Or I don't, and 10 minutes into something, they'll go, Frances? I was walking around pretty hunched in those days. It took a long time to loosen up and trust how I looked. All of that metamorphosing still goes on.

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