Chocolate, Please

by Lisa Lampanelli

  But then it was the night before the show, and I stopped smiling. That’s because I looked in my suitcase and found that none of my outfits seemed to fit.

  Having lost thirty pounds on my pre-Tommy Jenny Craig diet—and loving the mucho atención I’d gotten for my new look from Howard Stern, Bubba, and every other radio and TV host the previous year—I had been on a high. But my weight had gone up fifteen pounds since then, and I was not only looking fuller around the thighs, middle, and stomach area, I was in a panic. Every time someone asked me if I was keeping my weight off, I assured them I was. Surely they couldn’t tell I was gaining the weight back. I was doing my best to cover up my weight gain with my vast assortment of pants with built-in Spanx slimmers, suck-in camisoles, and corsets, which is basically the fat girl’s equivalent of the comb-over. But the night before Bubba, I was in a sweat, and it wasn’t the Florida heat or the three-alarm dump I’d taken because of the hot wings I’d eaten. I had packed fourteen—no lie, fourteen—potential outfits for Bubba’s show, and as I tore them off the hangers, I realized that the truth about me and my weight gain would be discovered and I would be humiliated on national radio. If Bubba was televised, I probably would have shot myself right then and there.

  “So what?” you might say. “It’s fifteen pounds. Big deal.” So this, folks. It was a big deal. Food addicts are just that—addicts. We sneak food, we hide food, we try to camouflage our extra poundage with undergarments, and we generally blanch at the idea of people discovering our dirty little secret, much like a heroin addict hides his habit. We don’t shoot smack between our toes—we stuff Twinkies down our pie hole when no one is looking. Now, of course, the two problems are very different—heroin can kill you tomorrow and the food will take a while longer. But either way, both addictions are surrounded with shame at our failings and the feeling of not being good enough.

  That night before Bubba, I was so panic stricken at the thought of him finding out about my addiction that I knew I never wanted to feel that way again. The shame at gaining weight was so overwhelming I called every person I knew from Overeaters Anonymous—I even bothered my shrink at home at eleven P.M. (yes, those are billable hours)—and after many tears and near hyperventilation, I came up with a plan.

  I would do what all women do in a time of crisis—I would use my tits. Oh, bitches, don’t kid yourselves. We are our boobs! Whether it’s Mardi Gras, a screaming baby, or a frustrated second date, all a woman needs to soothe the savage beast is some breasts. So I would show off my rack, hopefully distract Bubba from my expanded waist, and if by some chance he were to mention my weight gain, I would cop to it. I would then divert the discussion with my humor and deflect the ensuing insults onto him, since he had also gained quite a few pounds. I would end the discussion by saying I was going to fat rehab and then, when I came back the next time, the fifteen pounds would be melted off. I hoped.

  If that didn’t work, I would rip one during the commercial, blame him, and leave.

  Well, the gods were on my side that day. Either that, or Bubba’s eyes were so clouded with friendship for me that he mentioned nothing about my appearance except—you guessed it—boobs. He commented on them several times, and even when we both stood side by side to take photos, he called me “skinny,” a feat I accomplished with my flouncy, low-cut blouse and a Gucci messenger bag strategically placed across my middle to hide the spread that wasn’t there the year before. I had escaped unscathed! My secret was safe. Now, if I could just get through my next Stern appearance in May, and then my next Bubba appearance in August, and then Stern again in September, I didn’t need rehab, right?

  Bouncing, quite literally, into my shrink’s office the week after my triumphant Bubba appearance, I was elated. “I did it—the show was great,” I announced to the doctor, who looked at me skeptically but not judgmentally. “He didn’t notice I gained weight, so my secret’s safe. I don’t think I need rehab. I mean, Bubba’s really critical, and if he didn’t say anything, I don’t have to go. It’s not like I bottomed out or something.”

  The doctor gazed at me and in a calm voice said, “So, you don’t think calling everyone you know hysterically crying the night before the show was bottoming out? Carrying fourteen outfits that you’re afraid to try on all the way to Florida isn’t bottoming out? You don’t think all the shame you’re carrying and the secret you’re keeping is bottoming out? Sounds like bottoming out to me.”

  Maybe the doctor was right. I had called him in the middle of the night, effectively ruining any shot he had of hitting it with his wife. I had paid $150 in extra baggage charges to bring over a dozen outfits for a non-televised show. And I had been terrified of the opinion of someone who refers to himself as a “love sponge.” Something was definitely wrong.

  Reluctantly, I had no choice but to agree with him. It sounded like bottoming out to me too. Later that day, I booked my twenty-eight-day reservation at Rosewood Ranch. Good-bye vacation, hello hard work.

  A month later, as I drove the two hundred miles from the Tucson airport to the little one-horse/plethora-of-rehabs town of Wickenburg, Arizona, I was boiling hot but not too scared. The only people who knew where I was going were my manager, my best friends, my group of three “food issues” friends from Onsite, and my assistant, who was instructed not to call or e-mail me unless it was a life-or-death emergency. I had told my parents I was going to my house at Canyon Ranch health spa for a month so they wouldn’t worry about me, since they had seen my place and, after falling in love with it, had agreed that it was a great environment for me to decompress in. I figured it would be easier for them to have a good month if they pictured me getting massages, playing tennis, laying by the pool, and taking yoga classes, rather than imagining me spending sixteen hours a day in twelve-step meetings and group therapy that would ultimately paint them as the bad guys. Some would call this deceiving them, others would call it protecting them. Either way, I figured, no harm, no foul. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them, and my twenty-eight days exploring my past could only help our relationship when I got sprung. Besides, I was a forty-six-year-old adult. I was allowed to have a few secrets, wasn’t I? In fact, after I told them I was dating the blacks, I figured the more secrets the better.

  The drive was pleasant enough, thanks to the air-conditioning in my Toyota, but when I got out of the car to get gas, the dry Arizona heat hit me like a wall. I was wearing what I considered a summer outfit, a sundress from Target, which might have been comfortable in the dense heat had it not been for the black tights and three-quarter-length-sleeve thermal shirt I wore underneath. Let me explain.

  Summer is the chubby/fat girl’s least favorite time of the year—and not just for the obvious bathing suit traumas every girl, even the skinny ones, experiences. It is physically impossible for chubby girls to wear summer clothes, look good, and stay cool. This is because of our several problem areas. The first problem area for me has always been my generous ass and thighs. Wear a summer dress with nothing but panties, and what do you get? Jiggling. And to a fat girl, nothing feels worse than the real or imagined wiggle-waggle as she walks down, say, the boardwalk, ice cream cone in hand. Just thinking about it, I had a flashback to the old Jell-O commercial “Watch it wiggle, see it jiggle.” Fat girl solution? Add a pair of black Spanx footless tights, which, sure, look cute and reduce the involuntary ass movement, but unfortunately add about twenty degrees to the overall body temperature. And isn’t that what every guy wants? A cute girl with a tight body who can’t stop sweating?

  Then there was the three-quarter-sleeve thermal shirt. No self-respecting plump princess will bare her arms above the elbows under penalty of death. The underarm flab where the tricep should be—the “bingo arm,” as we in the Catholic Church like to call it—plus the cottage cheese cellulite must be hidden under an adorable top, even if it cuts off the circulation in the elbow with elastic so tight it makes the joint ache.

  But the important thing was I showed up to fat rehab look
ing decent. I wouldn’t want the other food addicts to think they were cuter than me.

  So, as I drove nearer to the town that would be my home for nearly a month, I was certainly sweaty, but at least I wasn’t petrified. I’d gotten through two places like this before and I could do it again.

  Rosewood Ranch’s Capri Campus looks like any other rundown roadside drive-up motel weary travelers stop at to grab a quick night’s sleep and a lukewarm shower before heading on to a finer destination like Prescott, Phoenix, or even the oxymoronically named Surprise, Arizona. But instead of low-budget RVers and families of wandering Mexicans inside its walls, on any given week, Rosewood Capri houses anywhere from a dozen to twenty-one women with food issues, most of them recently released from Rosewood’s medically staffed main building (Rosewood Ranch) a few miles away.

  There are huge differences between Rosewood Ranch and the Capri Campus. Most interesting to me, of course, was the fact that at Capri, patients are allowed to flush their own toilets. You see, since many of the patients at the Ranch are bulimics and anorexics who tend to hate eating and love throwing up and/or pooping using laxatives, even bowel movements are supervised. Many of the patients at Rosewood—affectionately nicknamed by the girls “Porkers, Pukers, and Purgers”—entered the facility on death’s doorstep, and to its credit, Rosewood has saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. If I ever had a daughter who was a porker, puker, or purger, she’d be on the next train to Rosewood. Well, right after we finished auditioning her for Disney’s High School Musical 4.

  That being said, even on Rosewood’s Capri Campus—the facility’s partial hospitalization program—there are lots of rules. Sure, there might not be the nurse around every corner, the pooping with the door open, or the absence of patients’ cell phones and laptops. But there are rules nonetheless. There’s no Sweet’N Low (which is both an artificial sweetener and my nickname for my snatch), no other sugar substitutes, nor any diet foods (these foods can cause inaccurate hunger signals and reinforcement of the “diet” mentality—very bad). There is absolutely no caffeine, a substance that causes an artificial high, therefore getting in the way of the purpose of Rosewood’s therapy, i.e., feeling your feelings. And all meals are eaten together.

  Now, sure, this might be fun if Capri consisted of twenty fat women sitting around a table chowing down. However, when I entered the facility, I was surprised to find very few fat chicks—about three, myself included. The rest were fifteen women who ranged from delightfully shaped to rail thin to Darfur skeletons. Now, usually, I don’t mind eating with skinny women. But that was on the outside, where there was no rule against eating off of their plates. Eating with the thin women of Rosewood wasn’t gonna be the blast it was in the real world. But I didn’t know how miserable it was going to be until two hours after arrival on my first day there.

  After having my bags searched and looted by a lovely lesbian yoga specialist called Summer, I watched her exit my room with two boxes of my Jenny Craig Anytime bars, about ninety-five packets of Sweet’N Low, all my breath mints (“They have sugar substitute, you know?”), and nine packages of my Dentyne Ice. I couldn’t help thinking that Summer looked disappointed that she hadn’t found anything more contraband in my bags. There was no Ex-Lax (I had tried laxatives once in college but stopped after one day when I spent three hours on the shitter), no drugs (vitamins have always been the only pills in my repertoire), and no alcohol (the few times I’d gotten drunk in my lifetime, I’d suffered too much with hangovers to consider making it a habit).

  As I unpacked, I scanned the room that I would sleep in for the next month. It sure wasn’t the Four Seasons, but it could have been worse. There was an in-the-wall air-conditioning unit that kept the Arizona heat at bay, a small desk for my laptop, and lots of drawer space for the ton of clothes and toiletries I figured I needed for my stay. To top it off, I, unlike everyone else at Capri, once again, had managed to get myself a private room in rehab. Having explained to the intake manager my huge fame and celebrity status, hence my need for privacy, I was allowed to have a room to myself, for an extra three grand. To me, this was money well spent.

  As I killed some time setting up my laptop, I heard a key in the lock, and Summer popped her head in. “Carole needs to see you.”

  Taken aback by someone unlocking and entering my room without knocking, I said, “I’m not doing anything,” as guiltily as if I’d been checking out hotanorexics.com, and shut the laptop. She said, “No problem,” and escorted me to the office of Carole, the nutritionist, who would soon become my favorite person at Rosewood.

  Unlike all the super-skinny dieticians I’ve seen over the years, Carole was what I like to call “normal size.” She was a woman who I assessed to be about a size 12 on the top and a 14 on the bottom, and she seemed completely unfazed by it. Her warm personality and huge knowledge base were going to prove my salvation in the next few weeks, and our first meeting was no different. We chatted easily about my dieting history and my goals (to stop emotional eating and, “if it was meant to be,” to drop a few pounds, like maybe the fifteen or so I’d gained in the past year). I told Carole I had never been bulimic, I had never been anorexic, but I held a lifetime achievement award for compulsive eating. Then Carole weighed me but refused to tell me the number. When I asked her why, Carole explained that women with food issues are too focused on the number of pounds they weigh, so the staff keeps that to themselves. That made sense. I guess weight to a woman is kind of like what penis size is to a man—we hang our self-esteem on it, and once you’ve seen a disappointing figure, you can’t think about anything else. Then she escorted me through the main meeting room and into the kitchen, where the girls were sitting down to eat dinner.

  “Bridget, this is Lisa. She’s new. Please show her how to eat,” Carole told a beautiful young girl dressed in tights, tall boots, a tie-dyed shirt, and a pixie haircut. “I know how to eat,” I thought as I stared at Carole and this little Peter Pan–looking, twenty-year-old hippie. “I know how to eat a little too well. Why the fuck else would I be here?”

  Consulting the food plan Carole had written up for me, Bridget showed me how to measure out the meal that had been cooked that evening by the girls for communal consumption. I was allowed three proteins, two starches, one vegetable, one fruit, and one fat—translation, “Boy, am I glad I stopped at Wendy’s on the way here.”

  As I sat down with my paltry amount of food, some of the girls greeted me, others were too overwrought at forcing their “huge” portions down to say hello, and still others just ate slowly. I kept my part of the conversation to safe subjects like where I was from, how my flight and drive were, and the weather. I had to keep my dinner conversation innocuous since I had received the “Common Food Rituals” sheet a few hours before and was scared to break any of the huge list of don’ts for mealtimes at Rosewood.

  The list was longer than the Ten Commandments and the twelve steps combined. In small part, it read:

  1. No focusing on the food behaviors of peers. For example, my usual commenting on other people’s food intake, like “You’re really gonna eat all that?” or “C’mon, skin-n-bones! That steak ain’t gonna eat and throw itself up” would not be welcome here.

  2. No cutting crust off of bread. Apparently, grade school kids have a lot of food issues.

  3. No pulling sandwiches apart or eating them with silverware. I had no idea what harm that could do, unless being pretentious interferes with your treatment.

  4. No letting food “slip” to the floor. And, in my case, no pretending to tie your shoe so you can eat it.

  5. No hiding food, or spitting out food into napkins. I thought they should add a rule saying we couldn’t stuff vegetables down our pants, but that’s for a whole different reason.

  6. No excessive fluid intake and no ice in milk. Who the fuck puts ice in milk? The only thing I want to stick in milk is a cookie.

  7. No mixing foods together inappropriately. Cripes! If the people at Reese’s h
ad attended rehab at Rosewood, the peanut butter cup would never have been invented.

  8. No smacking lips, making noises, grunts, or groans. No excessive talking during meals. No discussion of calories, fat, or meal plans, and no talk involving profanity or violence. Man, my family would have never lasted through one meal at Rosewood!

  As I was devouring the last of my carefully counted out seventeen red grapes, one of the girls said, “Okay, I’ll start.” What she meant was she would begin what Rosewood refers to as “meal processing,” a mandatory ritual that takes place after every meal.

  “Okay, I was in at a three and out at a seven. I am exactly where God wants me to be. I love my body.”

  Fuckin’ what!!!!???!!!!

  The next girl, a far chunkier one at the head of the table, piped up. “I was in at a four, out at a six. I am a patient and tolerant woman. I am a patient and tolerant woman.”

  I had no idea what these bitches were talking about. And they were going around the table, and it was closing in on me. I was positively tongue-tied—can you imagine that?!? Me? At a loss for words? I looked around desperately, but there weren’t even any minorities to make fun of. (I guess minorities can’t afford the eighteen grand.)

  The girl across from me sensed my confusion and said, “We go around and use the hunger scale to say how hungry we were when the meal started and how full we are when the meal ends. Then we give two positive affirmations about ourselves—if you can’t think of two, you can repeat the same one twice.”

  Riffling through my white Rosewood binder, I found the hunger scale handout. When it was my turn, I began:

  “All right. I was in at a three [definition: You can definitely eat, but you are not on the verge of collapse] and I’m out at a five [You are not hungry anymore. Your body has what it needs and is satisfied].”