Through Thick to Thin--How Two Overeaters Conquered Their Obesity

With visions of pecan pie still dancing in our heads, we face each new year filled with resolve. We will lose weight. Out with the chocolate chocolate chip ice cream. In with the carrot sticks. Alexander Woollcott said it--anything that is enjoyable is “immoral, illegal or fattening.” But there is help for those truly bent on being thin. Gyms, weight reduction centers and clinics offer strategies ranging from sweating it off to behavior modification to aversion therapy. For those who seek the encouragement of a group, two of the better-known are Weight Watchers, which advocates a carefully controlled diet plus weekly weigh-ins and pep talks, and Overeaters Anonymous, a support group for compulsive overeaters that borrows liberally from the “one day at a time” philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous. Here, two former “fatties,” who together have lost 330 pounds, tell their stories.

Richard

For Richard, an actor, the moment of truth came during the filming of the 1980 release, “Fatso,” in which one of the other characters died from overeating. Richard, who by his own description was then “a 400-pound tyrannosaurus,” said that suddenly “it clicked. I realized that I was going to die.”

He was known in the industry in those days as “Big Richard” and he was, he said, “the jolly fat man. Jolly, and dying inside.” At 45, he was a mess, physically and emotionally.

Never mind his professional image, that of good-natured buffoon--the crooked deputy sheriff on “Kojak,” the bartender/bouncer on “Starksy and Hutch,” Rudolph Valentino’s bodyguard in “The World’s Greatest Lover,” a wrestler nicknamed Elephant in “The One and Only.” “Whenever they needed a fat character actor, he said, “I got the job.”

‘Just an Excuse’

Now and then he’d admitted to himself the truth, that he was eating himself to death because of self-hatred. But then denial would take hold and he’d convince himself, “ ‘If I lose weight, I’ll never work again.’ It was just an excuse to keep eating.”

At first, food was comforting; eating obliterated the fears and anxieties and inferiority that he felt. Later, he said, “I went over that brink. I had no defense against eating. I didn’t even know what I was eating. I’d go out to dinner with friends and, as soon as I left them, I’d have something to eat.”

Still, he wasn’t alarmed. He reminded himself, “I can lose weight anytime I want. I just lost (and gained back) 150 pounds last year.” Then came the jolt of the script in “Fatso.” There followed an ultimatum from his agents: They weren’t going to re-sign him, despite his potential, because, they said, “We feel you’re killing yourself.”

An actress friend prodded him to go to his first Overeaters Anonymous meeting, in West Hollywood, in July of 1979. He recalls, “I was the fattest one there and had the longest hair and I was really a mess.”

Richard wasn’t impressed with what he saw--”I thought they were all nuts and some kind of Jesus freaks.” But later he remembered a story told by one young woman at that meeting, of how she used to make chocolate chip cookies and eat half of them before they hit the oven, of how she would eat cold lasagna at 3 a.m. “I related,” he said. “I did the same things.”

Still fearful that “they were trying to hook me into this God stuff,” Richard decided to return, to commit to weekly meetings. Finally, he knew, he had found others who “understood what it’s like to have an obsession with food.”

Today, at 52, he is a trim 6 feet 1 inches and 215 pounds, aiming for 200, “to see what it’s like.” And, through Overeaters Anonymous (whose rules prohibit him from divulging his surname), he is encouraging other fatties to make a spiritual and physical commitment to thinness.

Overeaters Anonymous follows the basic precepts of Alcoholics Anonymous and has adopted AA’s “One Day at a Time” philosophy. For Richard, that means, “I don’t say I’ll never eat Winchell’s doughnuts again. But just today I can get through without a Winchell’s doughnut.”

As a child, Richard was “a chubby boy” whose eating “was always kind of out of control,” but athletics enabled him to keep his weight down during his school years. At 17, wanting to escape the life of a street kid in the Bronx, he dropped out of high school and joined the Army where, he said, “I wasn’t allowed to be chubby.” When he was discharged in 1954, he weighed 170 pounds.

Away from the discipline of the service, he continually “borderlined on being hefty” but, during a seven-year marriage, kept his weight under control with diet pills.

With the trauma of a divorce in 1965, concurrent with separation from his two daughters, he gained 100 pounds in a year, “eating non-stop, eating out the guilt.” He says he “was not capable of being a parent or a friend because I hated myself.” Still, at 300 pounds, he set his limits, such as a 42-inch maximum waist size--”I didn’t want to go to a big man’s store.”

Food was his escape. It was a disorder that dovetailed nicely with his new job as bartender at Catch a Rising Star, a restaurant/improvisational bar, in Manhattan. A normal workday started at 4 p.m. and ended at 3 a.m. Then he would head for an all-night restaurant for a snack--perhaps a three-egg omelet with sausages and bagels and a half-dozen rolls, or grilled knockwurst with home-fried potatoes, all washed down with quarts of soda pop.

Always Eating

Bedtime was 6 a.m. and, rising at noon, he’d put away “a huge lunch,” sometimes stopping on the way to wolf down a slice of pizza or a hot dog with sauerkraut. Halvah, a calorie-laden Middle Eastern pastry, or a bag of cashew nuts might see him through until 4 p.m. when, reporting to work, he said, “I’d have the chef make me an order of onion rings. And I’d have a couple of hamburgers. I don’t remember ever going an hour without something in my mouth.”

By 1974, he was fatso. That was the year he met Dustin Hoffman, playing softball in Central Park. Hoffman offered him a part in a Broadway show he was directing. The role? That of a fat Greek shoemaker. Richard huffed and puffed his way through a “Never on Sunday” dance number.

With Hoffman’s encouragement, Richard decided in 1975 to move to Los Angeles where his hopes of being an actor were quickly realized--”I immediately started working like crazy.” There were roles for a fat man on “Baretta” and “The Blue Knight” and “Laverne and Shirley.” He was building a career around his weight problem.

But, by Thanksgiving of 1977, Richard, a 375-pound borderline diabetic with soaring blood pressure (180 over 130), was at Duke University, home of the famous rice diet, on a 700-calorie grapefruit-and-eggs regime that in three months netted him a loss of 150 pounds. “Then,” he said, “my daughters came back into my life, and the fears and responsibilities and the pressure. And all the things I learned at Duke went right out the window.”

Between the spring of 1978 and the spring of 1979, when he filmed “Fatso,” his weight zoomed. During a visit to Griffith Park Observatory, he learned the truth from an earth weight-moon weight scale: he weighed 405 pounds.

By then, Richard knew “it was abstain or die. I felt it was my last chance. I was willing to do anything not to eat.”

He’d gone on enough diets and reducing programs to know what didn’t work. He’d tried a diet of shrimp cocktails, a diet of baked potatoes and water. He’d gone days without eating. He’d tried electric shock and aversion therapy. He’d taken injections of pregnant women’s urine. The weight would roll off and, he said, “Then I’d go berserk and gain it back in a week.” As a fad dieter, he never cracked 250 pounds.

He found the answer in Overeaters Anonymous, which is not a diet program but, rather, a spiritually based support group for overeaters. Admitting that he was sick, and out of control, he turned to others for help, calling his sponsors in the group daily and eating three healthful meals, about 1,000 calories a day, with only no-calorie drinks between meals.

As the weight started to come off, he found, his self-esteem began to grow and that, he said, “gave me the momentum for the following day.” When he craved a pizza, he’d make a phone call or stay away from places where food was available.

Today, he tries to limit himself to about 1,500 calories daily. His typical breakfast is 8 ounces of low-fat yogurt and a Granny Smith apple--Granny Smith because “they’re big. My apple’s like a condominium.” Lunch is 4 to 6 ounces of protein, a salad with diet dressing (he carries his own) and a plain vegetable. Dinner is, typically, chicken or turkey or fish, a big salad and steamed vegetables. He doesn’t use salt, sugar or condiments.

He insists, “I don’t have a diet mentality. I have a health mentality. I just don’t enjoy putting junk in my body. I like the way my body looks and I intend to keep it that way.”

Avoids Fried Foods

He has learned to stay away from foods that he cannot eat in moderation, such as breads and desserts and “any kind of fried foods.” At Thanksgiving, he cooked and stuffed a turkey for dinner with his daughters, with whom he has reconciled. There were apple pie, yams and chocolate chip peanut butter cookies on the table. Richard ate four ounces of turkey (no stuffing), a cup of salad with diet dressing and a cup of steamed vegetables.

Christmas dinner was a repeat; when the dessert was served, he excused himself and went to visit friends. On New Year’s Day, invited by friends, he took his bowl of salad and his hosts provided a can of tuna.

He rarely eats red meat, but is not a fanatic; if he’s invited to a barbecue, he’ll eat the beef “but I won’t eat six buns. You have to be flexible.”

Pictures of “Big Richard” on the wall of Richard’s West Los Angeles apartment are a reminder of another life.

Eating, he said, was “a spiritual, physical and emotional addiction.” Another addiction was nicotine. In January of 1980 he “quit cold,” kicking a four-pack-a-day cigarette habit, despite warnings from other smokers that he would gain weight. “I stopped smoking and lost another 30,” he said, “so that bogyman was out of my closet.”

Recognizing that “I don’t know how to drink moderately,” he doesn’t drink anymore. As a normal-sized happy man, he said, “I don’t need to drink.” He toasted the New Year with a cup of coffee laced with Sweet-n-Low and nonfat milk.

He has resumed speed walking, an activity he took up while at Duke, and five years ago, he joined a Nautilus club, one of countless lifetime gym memberships he had taken out, but never used. This time, he plunged in, signing up for an aerobics class. “After 10 minutes,” he said, “I thought I needed the paramedics.” Now, he goes to five or six classes weekly and says, “I absolutely love it.”

From time to time, Richard has slipped. Last year, his weight crept up 20 or 25 pounds. “I started getting cocky,” he said. “I started eating like normal people.” Since November, he has taken off 20 pounds.

Richard is realistic about mortal failings. “I’ll never say to you that I’ll never have a cream puff again,” he said, “but if I have this real compulsion, I’ll wait 24 hours.” Avoiding temptation is a key. Overeaters Anonymous has a saying--”If you don’t want to slip, stay out of slippery places.”

And, he swears, he no longer fantasizes about food--”I fantasize about being an aerobics teacher. Life is better than fantasy to me.”

Marathon Runner’s Pulse

Looking back, he says, “It’s a miracle I didn’t drop dead.” Now, he boasts, “I have the pulse of a marathon runner.” His blood pressure has dipped to 110 over 74. Close to his all-time low weight of 205, he has set himself a goal of breaking 200.

Being thin has not, however, been a boost to his career. In 1979-80, the period of his big weight loss, he said, “I didn’t work at all.” He shrugged off that reversal, reminding himself, “It’s only a career. I’m going to live another 40 years.”

Since, he has done a “Charlie and Company” sitcom segment with Flip Wilson, has played a priest and a justice of the peace on cable television shows, a real turnaround--”I used to play only bad guys.” And he has just finished a part in a Mel Brooks film, due out in June, “Space Balls.” He plays a creature who is half man, half pizza.

Richard recently flunked a tryout for a Jack-in-the-Box commercial--”They told my agent I wasn’t roly-poly enough. I’ve been turned down a lot for not being fat enough. And I couldn’t be happier.”

He has his residuals, and he has his commitment to Overeaters Anonymous to keep him busy. And, he said, smiling, “I don’t spend much on food.”

Verra

It was during a family outing to Knott’s Berry Farm that Verra Mendrin realized she could no longer hide the truth inside yards and yards of muumuus. She remembers, “My husband and I couldn’t go on the Sky Jump together.” For safety reasons, the park limits each chute to 400 pounds and, Mendrin said, “I weighed 300 by myself.”

Around the same time she had been watching home movies and, for the first time, she saw--really saw--herself. She recalled, “I looked at my husband and I said, ‘Honey, I didn’t know I was so fat.’ It made me sick. I looked very unhappy. I looked like I couldn’t breathe.”

A Familiar Trap

The Mendrins, Verra and Morrey, had then been married for nine years. She was a full-time homemaker and mother of three daughters, immersed in domesticity, and she and her husband had fallen into a familiar trap. She smiled and said, “You see each other every day and you just sort of grow together.”

She had grown. And grown. Up from her newlywed weight of 180 in 1976. Up and up. At 5 feet 4 inches, she had not thought of herself as fat at 180 but, rather, as “Russiany” (her ethnic heritage). Morrey describes her as having been “healthy looking.” She was, she said, “content and happy” and losing weight was not a priority.

Oh, she was willing to go along with a neighbor to a Weight Watchers meeting that first year of marriage but it didn’t take--”I guess I just wasn’t serious enough.” She stuck with it three or four months, lost 25 or 30 pounds and in time gained all of it back.

By the time she became pregnant with her first child, Sasanna, now 5 1/2, Mendrin weighed 276 pounds and in the nine months of pregnancy gained another 34. Although her doctors voiced concern for her health, she “went through it like a breeze” until delivery. After three days of on-and-off labor, Sasanna, weighing 9 pounds, 4 ounces, was born by Caesarean section.

Not long afterward Mendrin decided to give Weight Watchers another try, and this time, she said, “I lost close to 50 pounds.” But by the time she became pregnant with twins Sarah and Katie, now 4, she was back up to 277 pounds. And she gained another 37 during the pregnancy. Nevertheless, the babies, weighing 8 1/2 pounds each, were delivered safely by Caesarean. “The doctors were kind of amazed,” she said.

‘I Could Barely Keep Up’

Most of the extra pounds stayed on. She had hit 298. Still, she said, “I never worried about my looks because I love my husband and my husband loved me.” But in time Mendrin found that being the mother of three toddlers was no breeze-- “running around with 300 pounds, I could barely keep up with these girls.” And her weight was beginning to interfere with living. “I didn’t want to go anyplace,” she said. She shunned swim parties and dress-up events, fearful of being made fun of.

She began to think about doing something about her weight.

One day when the twins were 2, Mendrin had taken them to the supermarket. She’ll never forget the woman clerk saying, “What cute little girls! Do you baby-sit your granddaughters every day?” Mendrin was shocked. “I was 28 years old. I looked at myself and thought, ‘I must look 20 years older with all this weight.’ ”

But it was not vanity that drove her back to Weight Watchers for a third time. It was fear. “My neighbor had a stroke,” she said, “and I realized it was very possible for me to have a stroke.” Her blood pressure was ominous. “I could have been dead in a month,” she said. “Morrey and I had tried real hard to have those kids. I thought, ‘I’m overweight, and he’s overweight. Who’s going to stick around to take care of them?”’

Now about three pounds shy of her goal weight of 155, Verra Mendrin has lost 133 pounds since joining Weight Watchers in June of 1984. In conversation, she refers to her former self as “a blob.”

Weight Watchers, which combines weekly pep talks and weigh-ins with a low-fat, low-calorie diet program, has worked for her where diet-suppressing caramels and “fat-burning” vitamins ordered through a magazine did not.

“When I made up my mind,” she said, that was it. “I lost eight pounds in three or four days, most of it water, of course. The first year, I lost 105 pounds.” The second 18 months have been “real slow,” she acknowledged, but she reasons, “it’s old fat.”

Her stick-to-it-iveness has yielded a Size 11 dress size. Mendrin isn’t certain what her old dress size was--”I wore muumuus.” Her blouse size was 52 (bought in a store for large-size women) and she usually sewed her own pants. They were voluminous; Mendrin has an “after” picture in which both she and her 118-pound niece had slipped into a pair of her old pants--and there still was room to spare.

After the first week’s loss through Weight Watchers, Mendrin began to become interested in her looks. Later, she would discover the joys of shopping in a regular store instead of in a big women’s shop where, she said, one pays a premium and “you still look the way you looked, anyway.”

‘Thrilled to Death’

The first time she felt like a “normal person,” she said, was when she was able to get into a size 12 from K mart. “I was thrilled to death.”

She is an attractive woman and, for the first time in years, she feels that way. Recently chosen over 50 others as the first member of the month by Weight Watchers of Los Angeles County, she received a full-day makeover, including hair styling and coloring (a hint of auburn to enhance her natural light brown) and a makeup consultation.

She was chosen not just for the total pounds lost but for her commitment to a new, and healthful, life style.

When she was fat, Mendrin said, “I liked the butter, the bread, the gravies, the meats, the heavy, rich food. Why grab a piece of fruit when there was a cupcake?” She had a passion for potato chips.

After 2 1/2 years of healthful, sensible eating, she has found that she has a limited tolerance for steak, chips give her “the greasies” but tuna tacos are a real taste treat. When she limited her carbohydrates, however, she developed a sweet tooth, which she satisfies with a reduced-calorie dessert from Skinny Haven restaurant in Lakewood. (A sinful-looking sundae is only 130 calories).

Every once in a while she wakes in the night--”I’m having this dream and in my dream I’m fat again.” Mendrin smiled and said, “I guess that’s a nightmare, not a dream.”

Mendrin’s first official weigh-in after the holidays showed a weight gain of one pound, not bad considering the temptations of Christmas with the relatives--turkey and stuffing, tamales, chile, fresh-baked cookies, pecan pie.

Even though she took along her reduced-calorie desserts and “ate cucumbers and tomatoes for breakfast,” she admits that she sinned. “My sister-in-law is the best baker in the world,” she said. “It kind of got out of hand.”

She does not view a slight slip-up as an excuse to revert to her old habits. In 2 1/2 years, she said, “Probably 150 times I’ve picked myself up off the floor. But I’m still going forward. You’re always going to be ahead if you keep going.

“If you buy a car, there’s a commitment to make your payments. This is a commitment to being well and healthy.”

When she has been bad, she simply reminds herself, “Look how far you’ve come.” And she “sticks with the vegetables and the fish” for a while.

Mendrin is dedicated. She has memorized the Weight Watchers program--she knows, for example, that she may have a maximum of 12 ounces of beef weekly, four ounces of cheese, four eggs (optional). Hers is, basically, a 1,300-calorie-a-day diet and she has learned to use the weekly 500-calorie bonus permitted to splurge on forbidden foods such as pretzels or sour cream.

Planned Menus

If she will be eating out, she plans her day’s menu around the restaurant meal. She does not go to the supermarket when she is hungry. And she tries not to keep forbidden foods handy. She has been known to flush a sugary food down the toilet so as not to eat it. Sticking a food in the freezer to get it out of sight does not work, she has found: “As my (Weight Watchers) instructor says, ‘I love frozen Snickers bars.’ ”

She has broken herself of her habits of eating whenever she felt like it, now taking a cup of black coffee if she craves food between meals. And she doesn’t buy anything and everything she likes at the supermarket.

With three small children and a non-dieting husband in the house, it isn’t easy to stick to a strict regimen. But Mendrin has learned to be more assertive, for the time being to put her own needs first. If her husband wishes foods that she is not permitted, he knows he must fix them himself so she is not tempted to taste.

A fringe benefit of her diet, she has found, is that she is rearing three nutrition-conscious children. Sasanna often asks before eating, “Is this not good for me, Mommy?”

Mendrin is no longer discouraged when she hits a plateau and the scales don’t budge. She does not weigh herself each day, considering that counterproductive. And she doesn’t blame the scales if the numbers go up. She reasons, “When the weight comes back on, you darned well deserve it.”

The plateaus are downers but she has found that sooner or later “Your skin catches up with your body and you’re in for a good loss. You hang on because you know something’s happening there.” To firm up, she jog-walks a mile three or four times a week, rides her stationary bicycle for 30 minutes daily and works out at a gym when she can.

As a reward for her huge weight loss, her husband bought her an off-road dirt bike, bright red. She jokes, “It was either this, or a one-carat diamond ring.” When she reaches her goal weight, she likes to remind him, he has promised her a life membership in a gym.

But not all of her rewards are tangible. Now and then Sasanna gets out the family photo album, scans the “before” pictures and shows the twins, “Look how fat Mommy was!”

Ironically, Mendrin’s greatest source of support has been her husband, Morrey, who is significantly overweight, but not yet ready to do something about it. He once tried Weight Watchers, but was not sufficiently motivated. Of his weight he says, “It’s not a problem until you think it’s a problem.”

In fact, he said, “I never realized Verra was fat”--what he saw in her was not skin-deep.

Gently, “in a loving way,” she is trying to motivate him to lose weight. She’ll say, “If you want to see your girls grow up. . . .”

When she’d become discouraged at her own progress, she said, “My husband was my pillow-talker. Every time, he’d find the right words to tell me to stick with it.”

Now, she says, “We’re going to work on him. He’s got a New Year’s resolution. And he’s got me as an instructor.”

Mendrin cannot imagine herself ever again being a fat person. She says, “I remember asking God ‘If you help me, I’ll never do this to myself again.’ God helped me get this far. If I ever go up 10 pounds, it will be time to get serious. I’ll catch it.”

As a thin person, she is setting new goals. “I’d like to go back to work,” she said, perhaps as a school bus driver, which would mean vacations dovetailing with those of her children, perhaps even as a Weight Watchers instructor. (Before the birth of the twins, she was a vault teller in a bank.)

And, she said, “We’re thinking of having another baby. People say, ‘But you’ve just lost all this weight!’ ”

HOW IDEAL AMERICANS WEIGH IN

About 24.2% of American men and 27.1% of American women between 20 and 74 years old are at least 20% above their ideal weight, according to 1980 data, which is the latest available.

In 1980, the average man was just over 5 feet 9 inches tall, up almost an inch from two decades before. The average woman was just over 5 feet 3 1/2 inches, an increase of slightly more than half an inch in 20 years. The average man weighed 172 pounds, the average woman, 144 pounds.

Below are ideal weight guidelines for persons between 25 and 59, weighed wearing one inch heels and clothing that averaged 5 pounds for men and 3 pounds for women.

MEN

Small Medium Large frame frame frame 5’ 8” 140-148 145-157 152-172 5’ 9” 142-151 148-160 155-176 5’ 10” 144-154 151-163 158-180 5’ 11” 146-157 154-166 161-184 6’ 0” 149-160 157-170 164-188 6’ 1” 152-164 160-174 168-192 6’ 2” 155-168 164-178 172-197

WOMEN

Small Medium Large frame frame frame 5’ 3” 111-124 121-135 131-147 5’ 4” 114-127 124-138 134-151 5’ 5” 117-130 127-141 137-155 5’ 6” 120-133 130-144 140-159 5’ 7” 123-136 133-147 143-163 5’ 8” 126-139 136-150 146-167 5’ 9” 129-142 139-153 149-170

Information from National Center for Health Statistics, based on data from Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.