For Frances Kuffel, life at 338 pounds was hardly a life. There was no great love, no hiking up a mountain, no jetting off to a foreign country. Instead, she would spend her days worrying whether the blood pressure cuff would fit, praying that there would be two vacant seats next to each other on the subway, and hoping that the plastic lawn chair wouldn’t collapse under her weight.
Kuffel’s “aha moment” came in 1998 during an argument with a friend. As she ranted about his drinking and called him an alcoholic, a “voice from above” made her realize she had to make some changes in her life.
She entered a 12-step program for eating disorders and six months later weighed in at 168 pounds. Kuffel, 47, tells about her experience in “Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight and Finding My Self” (Broadway, $24).
Those hoping for a diet “how-to” will be disappointed. The book skims over her diet plan (no sugar, no flour and strict food measurement), and instead focuses on her journey to help her mind catch up to her body.
“Fat people are always going to take up more space, be different and be inconvenient,” said Kuffel, a literary agent, in a telephone interview from New York City. “Despite wanting to be thin, I was really unprepared for what life as a thin person meant.”
That included a first love and shopping sprees and realizing that the face and body in the mirror were really hers.
“You can’t imagine what it is like to be rid of all the weight,” she said. “It is like being reborn a different person.”
