O besity is in my genes. My grandmother was liberated from Auschwitz weighing 140 pounds — twice what other people weighed. My entire family is heavy. We like food. My sisters and I are always exchanging recipes and talking about what we’re making for Shabbos. Every occasion — Shabbos Yom Tov a siyum a birthday party — is invariably celebrated with lots of good food.
Yet at the same time because weight is a chronic problem in my family I’ve always felt pressure to eat less and lose weight. At eight years old I was ushered bewildered into Weight Watchers. At 11 my mother took me a psychologist to fix my dangerous relationship with food. I detested having to go to a shrink and after the first session I refused to go back.
For lunch in school I brought whole-wheat tuna sandwiches from home while my friends munched on the school kitchen’s calorie-laden macaroni and cheese. To get even I raided the freezer and pantry behind my parents’ backs stuffing my face with rugelach and cookies.
When I was still in elementary school well-meaning relatives clucked about how I could possibly get married if I was so fat. “You have a beautiful face Nechama ” they would tell me. “When is the rest of you going to match it?”
What they were saying basically was that no one could ever love me because I was fat. I can’t even begin to describe how painful that was. And that was before I even hit my teens.
In general however my home was permeated with simchah. My parents went to great lengths to make Yom Tov special for us — and not just with nosh although there was plenty of that — and to take us on fun family trips. Although weight was a huge issue in my family my parents siblings and I were also blessed with great personalities and a roaring sense of humor. In school I was the stereotypical fat class clown but I was genuinely popular and had tons of friends.
It was in high school that I developed the maturity to realize that I had to take responsibility for my weight. I hated being the girl in the biggest-size uniform skirt who waddled through the halls while my thinner friends sailed past me. I began waking up at six in the morning to work out with exercise videos and at night I went for brisk walks through a local golf course.
While in seminary in Eretz Yisrael I decided to surprise my parents by returning home thin. I didn’t go home for Pesach and since there were no cell phones or digital photos in those days my family didn’t see me from September through June. I lost 60 pounds that year going down from a size 24 to a size 14. I gave away all my clothing in Eretz Yisrael bringing just one outfit home with me. For the first time in my life I was eager to go shopping for clothes.
When I stepped off the plane my parents almost fainted. “You finally match your beautiful face ” people in my family crowed. I had arrived.
I got married shortly afterwards moved to Yerushalayim and had three babies in quick succession. I did not gain any weight during pregnancy; I actually lost weight each time because I was terribly nauseous and sick. After I gave birth however my appetite returned with a vengeance. After nine months of near-starvation I was like a bear coming out of hibernation.
I didn’t feel the weight coming on; it crept up on me slowly until I didn’t fit into any of my clothes. Busy as I was juggling three kids and two teaching jobs who had time for exercising or planning nutritious meals? Cutting up a salad and eating it took a lot longer than downing a can of Pringles. We were living on a shoestring budget too and fruits vegetables and whole grains were not exactly cost-effective.
Weight was a big issue among my friends at this point because even the ones who used to be thin were struggling to keep the weight off as they had babies and spent hours every day in the kitchen. Once I was sitting in the park with a few friends and one of them commented “You know I’m the fattest one here.”
I felt my face turning hot. Did she not realize that I was sitting on the same bench as her? She had 30 pounds to lose; I had well over a hundred.
Any time the topic of weight came up when I was around I wanted to bury myself. I remember sitting at a family simchah with some of my thinner cousins when the topic turned to dieting. I couldn’t get up and leave but at some point I couldn’t handle it anymore and I started crying. “How can you talk about this when I’m here?” I asked them.
After my third child something strange happened. All the young families around me were continuing to have kids but I was stuck. When my baby was three I went to see a doctor who diagnosed me with secondary infertility. “It’s because you’re so heavy ” he said bluntly. “And we can’t give you any type of treatment until you lose weight.”
That’s when I bought a treadmill and started paying attention to what went into my mouth. Two years and 40 lost pounds later, I gave birth to my fourth child, with no medical intervention. Again, I lost weight during the pregnancy, and again, I gained a lot of weight after the baby was born.
Not wanting to risk my fertility again, I went to see a nutritionist. She was thin, as one would expect of a nutritionist, and I felt a little intimidated by her; she clearly had never eaten an entire can of Pringles in one sitting. She put me on a glycemic index diet, which limited my carbs while giving me free rein to protein and vegetables, and she required me to write down everything I ate. I lost weight — but not enough.
Once, when I stepped onto the scale in her office, she pursed her lips and shook her head disapprovingly. “You’re not being perfect,” she reproved me.
Tears welled up in my eyes. “How can you say I’m not perfect?” I wanted to tell her. “You don’t understand my struggle!” But I didn’t say anything. Instead, I resolved at that moment to become a nutritionist myself. I, who understood the pain of being fat and was engaged in a lifelong battle with my weight, was the one who would inspire other people in their weight-loss campaign. I certainly knew better than to make a person feel bad for not meeting their weight-loss goals, knowing firsthand that for someone who struggles with weight, feeling bad about yourself translates into more overeating.
After consulting with daas Torah, I took out a gemach loan and enrolled in a two-year nutrition program. Feeling the need to explain how I, who clearly had a weight problem, could be studying to be a nutritionist, I stood up one day in the middle of class and told the professor, “Had I been born in the Victorian era, when obesity equaled health and beauty, I would have been the most beautiful woman around. Unfortunately, I was born in the Hollywood era, when women have to starve themselves in order to look good.” I added that because weight has always been an issue for me, I am passionate about the subject and feel that I can really understand people and help them work through their eating challenges.
I was fortunate to have a husband who accepted me as I was and never pressured me in any way to lose weight. I can’t say the same for the rest of society, though. At times, random people would walk over to me and gravely inform me that I needed to lose weight. It was tempting to tell them that they needed to gain sensitivity. What did they think? That I wanted to be walking around in a balloon of a body? That I was oblivious to the fact that I was heavier than anyone else around?
Once, my community arranged a symposium on women’s health. A nurse gave a presentation about various health issues, and after she finished her presentation, she strode over to me and announced, in front of everyone, “You are very heavy. You need to take care of it.”
It was one of the most humiliating moments of my life.
Although I am a very sociable person, once my weight crept into the beyond-obese range, I dreaded going out. At PTA meetings, I kept my coat on. At weddings, I had to keep standing up so that people could pass behind my seat. At simchahs or other public events, I couldn’t bring myself to eat anything, for fear of people’s disapproving looks.
Once, I bared my soul to my cleaning lady, an older frum woman who had been with me for many years and had seen my ups and downs. “Why do I have to be fat?” I sobbed. “Why does this have to be so hard for me?”
Her answer brought me tremendous consolation. “Before you were born,” she said, “your neshamah knew exactly what it had to work on in this world, and it chose your body to do that work in. Baruch Hashem you’re put together and beautiful, and you have a great personality. You carry your weight — your weight doesn’t define you.”
When I started training as a nutritionist, I realized that in order for me to talk to clients about positive body image — an important part of nutrition counseling — I would have to first come to terms with my own Victorian-era body. “This is how HaKadosh Baruch Hu chose to make me,” I told myself each time I looked in the mirror. And I reached a point where I actually felt at peace with my neshamah’s oversized abode. I was still trying to lose weight, but from a place of caring about myself, not from a place of self-loathing.
While studying nutrition, I chose to specialize in anorexia and other eating disorders. I had been teaching teenagers for years, and it was only natural for me to work with young women and help them with issues of body image.
I began working as a nutritionist seven years ago. At first, I was nervous that my clients would take one look at me and never come back. Why would anyone want to see a nutritionist who couldn’t follow her own advice? But my clients actually felt very safe with me, because I empathized with their struggles while managing to impart to them my passion for healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle. Rather than pressuring clients to “control themselves” and sit empty-mouthed at a Chanukah party or kiddush, I encouraged them to work their eating plans around the calorie-intensive highlights of the Jewish calendar.
In a short time, I was drawing a bustling clientele of not only young women, but yeshivah bochurim as well. By the time I was two years out of my nutrition program, I had paid back my gemach loan in full.
Four years ago, a good friend of mine who was diabetic underwent bariatric surgery and dropped a massive amount of weight. She looked great, and I began to wonder if I should go for surgery, too.
By that point, my weight was starting to seriously impede my functioning. I could hardly walk; even moving around the house was difficult. One day, I stepped onto a bus, and I felt something snap in my knee, accompanied by a blinding flash of pain. When I went for an ultrasound of my knee, no injury showed up on the screen. “Your body is crumbling inside,” the orthopedist told me. “You’re short, you have a small build, and you simply can’t carry all this weight.”
I thought of my grandmother, who had been confined to a wheelchair at a relatively young age, due to obesity-related health issues. I thought of my mother, who had arthritis in her knee and required a knee replacement but was not a candidate, due to her weight. I thought of myself 25 years down the line, and I was scared. I was only in my thirties, but my knees were already buckling under the load.
My decision to do surgery had nothing to do with cosmetics and everything to do with health. I wanted to lead an active, vibrant lifestyle, not to be constrained by obesity.
My husband was vehemently opposed, however. “These surgeries can have terrible complications,” he said. “It’s too risky. I’m afraid.”
But then the day came when I stepped onto the scale and saw the number 299. That’s when I made an appointment to see a surgeon. Again, I consulted with daas Torah, and I received a brachah to go ahead with the surgery. My husband reluctantly gave me the green light, while Aviva, a very special friend of mine, accompanied me to the pre-op appointments and to the surgery.
The surgeon recommended I do what’s called a mini-gastric bypass, which is done laparoscopically and is less risky than other forms of bariatric surgery. She apprised me of the risks and explained that after the surgery, I would have to take vitamin supplements for the rest of my life, because my digestion time would be quicker and my body would not absorb nutrients efficiently. But that was a minor consideration, considering how much I was suffering due to my weight.
The surgery went well, and for the first two weeks afterwards I was in good spirits, despite normal post-op aches and restrictions. But then the comments started to come in.
“My cousin had heart trouble after bariatric surgery,” one person offered.
“I read about someone who had an intestinal obstruction after having his stomach stapled,” remarked another.
“Did you know that people can get terrible heartburn after these procedures?” said a third.
What really threw me was an innocent question from a heavy family member. “Do you regret doing the surgery?” he asked.
Hmm. Did I regret doing the surgery? No. Of course not. Actually, come to think of it, maybe I did regret it a little, considering the discomfort I was in. Why had I done this to myself? And now that my digestive system was irreversibly altered, I would have to eat differently from everyone else for the rest of my life. Yes, I guess I did regret it. But there was no going back. Help! What did I do to myself?
At around the same time, two-and-a-half weeks after surgery, I tried eating solid food. After downing that first meal — a small piece of salmon — I experienced such intense abdominal pain, I thought I was going to die.
The pain subsided after a few hours, but then waves of panic began to engulf me. Each time I thought about what I had done to myself — of my own volition — my breath became shallow and I found myself gasping for air. What if my stomach wasn’t healing properly? What if I died? My surgeon had told me that the mini-gastric bypass surgery had a negligible risk of death, as compared to traditional bariatric surgery, but who knew? It could happen.
Why so many people felt a need to tell me hair-raising tales about bariatric surgeries that went awry, I don’t know. All I know is that hearing these stories while I myself was suffering from normal post-op pain turned me into an emotional wreck.
For three weeks, I was terrified that I would never again have a normal life. I started to feel my heart beating all the time, which the doctor called, “heart conscious.” It was something I had never felt before, and it unnerved me. I was afraid to go to sleep, for fear that I wouldn’t wake up. Instead of climbing into bed, I sat in a chair all night, trying not to drift off.
I cried to my husband a lot, and he kept reminding me that we had gotten a brachah before doing the surgery and that the rav had said I would have a refuah sheleimah. (My husband was kind enough not to remind me that he had thought the surgery was a bad idea.) My friend Aviva continued to be there for me, walking with me after surgery to get my system moving again and giving me emotional support to get through the rough weeks post-op.
I was also in touch with a woman who had done the surgery a year and a half earlier, and she kept reassuring me that I would feel fine one day, and that the surgery was a gift that would give me a better life and a healthier future.
Upon the advice of my surgeon, after that first ill-fated piece of salmon I went back to a liquid diet for another three weeks. Reintroducing solids a second time was frightening, but this time, I was much more careful — I took small bites and chewed each bite well before swallowing, knowing that my stomach was not the same as it used to be. This time, the experience of eating was not painful.
In the weeks that followed, I learned to eat the way my new body demanded. With the guidance of a nutritionist who specialized in post-bariatric clients, I developed an eating plan tailored to my new stomach, one that involved frequent small meals, 55 percent protein in my total diet, and waiting periods between liquids and solids.
A couple of months have passed since my surgery, and I’ve already dropped 40 pounds. I still have a long way to go — another hundred pounds at least — but already I’m feeling better than I’ve felt in many years. I can climb up a flight of stairs without getting winded. I can walk. I can wear clothing that doesn’t look like a hippo’s hand-me-downs. I can actually carry my own weight.
For the first time in my life, I feel full after eating a small portion. I don’t have this overwhelming craving for food anymore, and I finally understand how a thin person relates to eating: It’s a necessary and enjoyable activity when your body needs food, and not a focus of your life the rest of the time.
I recently started exercising again — something I hadn’t been able to do in years — and I revel in my ability to move around freely. Some mornings, I go for a brisk walk around my neighborhood. When I mentioned to a friend that I go walking, she asked, “Do you walk with someone?”
“No,” I said.
“Do you at least listen to music?”
“Sure I do,” I said. “I listen to the birds, and the wind.”
I feel great about myself today — not just because I look better, but because I’m able to enjoy my life much more now that my body is less of an encumbrance. It’s nice to be able to go out in public and not feel like I’m taking up the space of three people. But what’s nicest of all is that I’m fully comfortable with myself. That, more than anything, is what I try to give over to my clients who struggle to lose weight. “Keep up the struggle,” I tell them. “But be happy with yourself no matter what.”
(Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 650)
The narrator can be contacted through LifeLines or the Mishpacha office.
To have your story retold by C. Saphir, e-mail a brief synopsis to lifelines@mishpacha.com or call +1.718.686.9339 extension 87204 and leave a message. Details will be changed to assure confidentiality.
