One time when I was going to take swimming classes I didn't want to have to be seen in a bathing suit--and I was only 5 years old! I remember the teacher joking about how fat I was and the other kids also laughing at me.

REGAIN CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE You must be reading this for a reason. If you're in the position that I once was, if you're fat, unhappy with your life, whatever the reason-- if you want to change, if you've got strong desires, then you've come to the right place. Now I feel as if I have my life back-- and I know anybody who has problems with food or other issues can get theirs back, too.

There wasn't a time that the family wasn't on a crash diet. Every meal would be dry, broiled meat with very little flavor. We never had any butter and rarely used any margarine. We would never have desserts in front of the rest of the family but my mom and I would secretly binge every night. We were constantly dieting. There was constant pressure for us to be thin and to be perfect.

EATING TOGETHER IN SECRET
My mother was obese. She took an extra-special liking to me, I think because she was so fat and I was a fat little reflection of her. We would eat together in secret. She had chocolate candies hidden in every drawer of the house. There were cookies in places you would never expect, like in the library with the books, and we had a whole, a separate deep freeze full of ice cream. There must have been a hundred pints of ice cream in that deep freeze and we would eat them everyday.

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In addition to the ice cream I ate during the day, I always ate a pint, sometimes a half-gallon of ice cream every night before going to bed. Recently I looked at the calorie count for a pint of ice cream and it's anywhere from 900 to 1500 calories per pint. That's two-thirds the amount of calories that a thin person eats in a day. Food played a central role in our family. Plus, there was a lot of stress and confrontation and arguing going on. My father would criticize me, when he was around. At the dinner table we would talk about how awful things were and what difficult problems were happening.
DESSERT: MY MOTHER'S FAVORITE THING IN LIFE
We never really had much fun, and the only comfort in our house was food. About the only fun thing we did together was eat and since we were always dieting, meals were no joy. I remember my mother saying that she didn't care about drinking, sports, movies, or much of anything else other than dessert. Desserts were her favorite things in life.

To her, there was nothing better than a delicious chocolate cake or an ice cream sundae. My mother and father were constantly telling me that I was too fat, that I had to lose weight. My mom had gone on a crash diet when she was in her 20s and gotten to where she was fairly thin. But then she gained all the weight back again. She lamented for years how she could never lose the weight again. Therefore, she was always on a diet.

IT WAS HARD TO MAKE FRIENDS
When you're as fat as I was, people don't like to be seen with you, so I didn't have very many friends. I certainly never was able to hang out with the kids that were cool. It was hard to make friends and it was very hard to keep friends. A technique that I used was to be really happy, to be the class clown and to be the best listener that anyone could ever meet. The friends that I did have had lots of problems, but they were true friends. I was with the intellectual group and the theater group. Somehow in literature and theater I found comfort and company. I could be a little bit different even though I was a 400-pound freak.

WHAT I ATE WHEN I WAS 400 POUNDS
When I was still in high school I had a job at the local television station as a producer and director. I would have a huge breakfast, three or four eggs, potatoes, a bowl of cereal--a giant version of the so-called healthy American breakfast. Then I would have a couple of doughnuts on the way to work. While at work, I would have a couple of candy bars and several Cokes for a mid-morning snack and then it'd be time for lunch and I would go to McDonald's. This was my standard order, I remember it very well: Three Big Macs, two large fries, a large coke, and then I would come back and have two apple pies and a chocolate shake. Then I went to school.

If I made it in time, I would have another lunch at the cafeteria, then during the day, while in class, all I'd be thinking of was how to get some more food. I kept candy in my locker, big bags of chocolate candy with peanuts or candy bars or jellybeans. After school I'd head to the doughnut shop and have maybe four, five, or six doughnuts, maybe a couple of pieces of cake. Then I'd go off with my friends and smoke cigarettes. Just before dinner time I'd stop again at McDonald's and have a couple of hamburgers, maybe french fries, and then I'd go home and have dinner with the family.

A "DIET" MEAL, THEN ICE CREAM
We would have a diet meal. We would have broiled meat with no fat, or skinless chicken, and a boiled potato, and maybe some green beans with no butter. That would be dinner. And then around 8 o'clock Mom and I would drive off, say we were going on errands, and we would immediately go right to the ice cream store. Every night I would have at least three or four dips of ice cream with hot fudge sauce. Then we would drive across town and go to another ice cream store.

Often I might have the double, triple-decker, super-duper mountain top, which was something like seven scoops of ice cream with hot fudge and nuts and whipped cream with a cherry on top, every single night. I got to the point where I was unable to sleep at night unless my belly was completely filled up with ice cream. That was the typical day of a 400 pound teenager. Crazy, huh?

I had a hard time as an adolescent. Most kids my age were beginning to think of the opposite sex and to be romantic and to start dating, I couldn't do any of that. I did ask a few girls out, but no one would go out with me.

Imagine being a normal weight and thin, wanting to be cool and popular at school and being seen with a 400-pound guy. It just doesn't work. I wanted to go to the high school prom but no one would go with me, so I simply pretended that I was above it. That it was stupid to go to the prom. In hindsight it was the only choice I had.

I got cheated out of being a teenager because I was too fat. And I will never be a teenager again. I've learned to accept that, but for a long time it hurt. To tell you the truth, though, when I lost all this weight, I felt like I was a teenager again. I was suddenly 17 with a new body, a body that was useful. I could walk, I could run, I could play. It was great. I had a sex life.

TRYING TO FILL THE EMPTINESS WITH FOOD
I never, ever had a date until I was 21--and after I lost 130 pounds fasting. Years later I realized that I had been in a lot of pain and had a lot of repressed anger, but I wasn't really aware of that. Now I know that many people who are fat feel the emptiness that I felt. When you feel empty, when you feel ashamed, when you feel that you're worthless or no good, you want to try to soothe that. My way of trying was to eat.

It's hard to feel pain. From an early age, I never wanted to feel pain or discomfort. I didn't want to have to struggle. I had the crazy idea that everything was going to be easy and perfect. Life just isn't like that. To live a full life means to be both happy and sad. It means to have joy, but also some struggle and pain, and to learn to cope with the pain, to get to the other side of it without compulsively overeating.

Until my 30s I didn't understand that. I kept trying to be happy, kept pretending to be jolly, that everything was fine. I could never feel full. I couldn't fill the void. I was seriously, deeply, hungry all the time. No amount of food in the world would fill me up. I hated my body. I couldn't stand myself. I couldn't walk up a flight of stairs without being totally out of breath.

I couldn't stand being 400 pounds. I couldn't go to a movie theater and sit in a regular seat, so I didn't go to movies. I couldn't sit in an airplane seat. I broke chairs. I couldn't walk anywhere. I had to drive or be driven. It's horrible to weigh 400 pounds. I pray to God that I never weigh that much again.

Right after I had lost 130 pounds while fasting, some friends of mine introduced me to Catherine Stine, a painter. Actually, I didn't like her at first, although I was very intrigued by her. But something inside me liked her because I started having romantic and erotic dreams about her. We became good friends. Then we started going out on dates and lived together for a while and then, after four years, got married. I ended up gaining the weight back. Fasting and diets, all the various programs, none of them worked. I've gained and lost 1,000 pounds.

A LAST RESORT
There was one big turning point in my life when I was 32. I was smoking three packs a day, I was about 330 pounds or so. I could barely move. My wife and I weren't getting along. I hadn't worked in almost a year. I was desperate and I knew at the core of my existence that my life had to change or I would be dead soon. I couldn't continue living the way I was living anymore. I had tried every diet, and nothing had worked. I couldn't unravel the mystery of my obesity.

BROKEN CHAIRS I've broken so many chairs in my life, it's disgusting. There was one time when I went on a job interview and I got taken out to a very fancy restaurant. I got seated in a chair that didn't have any back legs. It was one of those Z-shaped bent metal chairs. I knew I was in trouble, so I sat at the edge of the chair the whole lunch--but I could feel myself sinking, sinking, sinking, down, down, and finally, bang! The chair broke and there I was lying on the floor of the restaurant. Suddenly all of the people stopped eating and looked at me, I turned crimson. It was totally humiliating and I thought, well my God, what is this interviewer going to think of me! I couldn't even get up I was so fat. Some kind waiters rescued me and they got me a new chair. Unfortunately, the only kind of chair they had in that restaurant was one of those bent metal types. And so there I sat again. This time I sat on the edge of my seat, really not even sitting in the chair, balancing all my weight on my legs and it was really excruciating. I did end up getting the job though. That was a nice boss. He understood my predicament.

So the last resort was going to a meeting of people who had the same problems that I did. I called the telephone number in my town and found out about that group and went. Unfortunately, there was nobody there. So I sat in a dark place in the meeting room of a church all by myself, desperate and miserable. At the end of the hour, after nobody had shown up, I left. On my way out I ran into a very thin, straggly punk girl who was late for the meeting. She gave me a list of other places to go, other meetings, other support groups.

So the next morning I went to one of them. That meeting, also at a church community center, was filled with about 40 people. Mostly women, but I didn't care. It was a 90 minute discussion group and at the end of the time, I was the last person who hadn't spoken and everyone looked at me and I said, Well, I have this problem and I can't manage it and I'm willing to do whatever's necessary to lose weight and to have a life. I just burst into tears. I didn't know what else to do.

All sorts of people walked up to me and hugged me and gave me little slips of paper with their phone numbers on it. That was incredible! What a high! A better high than I could get from overeating.

A NEW DESIRE TO LIVE
So I went to work and, I'll never forget it, I felt so good from that meeting but I also thought about the dozen brownies at the corner bakery. Those brownies were calling my name and pulling me out the door so I got up out of my chair and went to the door. Something stopped me. I think it was that desire to not die, to not eat myself into the grave. I thought about the list of steps that I had heard about at that meeting.

I thought, I'll try one of these. So I got down on my hands and knees and even though I thought it was corny, I said a prayer. I said to God that I was willing and needed help with this problem. I couldn't do it alone. While I was sitting on my hands and knees praying, the phone rang. It was a major network calling to say that they were going to give me a half a million dollars to develop and produce a television movie.

GOD IS THE PRODUCER OF THIS SHOW, NOT I
I couldn't believe it. It was like a miracle had happened. But just as soon as I hung up the phone, the brownies were calling my name again. And I had a choice. I could go to the bakery or I could go to another meeting. I decided to go to another meeting. At the back of the room was a table with all sorts of books on it and I happened to pick up a book that said Thoughts for the Day. And I looked in that book to September 6 and the thought for the day was, 'God is the producer of this show, not I.'

At that moment, I thought: I'll do whatever it takes to lose weight and get my life back. And today I'm 150 pounds thinner than I used to be. I'm full now, not from overeating, but from my life.

This didn't all just happen at once. For years I'd been reading and taking courses in nutrition, psychology, religion and philosophy. The recovery program I ended up devising didn't fall together with one big click: the pieces slowly fit in with each other over several years. Certainly all the negative experiences I'd had were very important, particularly when it came to diets, which are so destructive and so useless. The particular self-defeating shame that we suffer is so debilitating.

"The final piece of the puzzle was my realization that I could get help from God and find joy in the process of learning simple, moderate eating and activity. I also realized that I not only needed God's help, I needed other people's as well. There was no reason why I had to be alone in my suffering, and the process of personal change didn't have to be painful. In fact, it was joyous! That's why I've written a book and produced a television show and video called "The Joy of Weight Loss." There are excerpts of them here, on this website. I'd love to share the joy with you! Just click on the menu."

Or buy the eBook version, it's much cheaper! Only $7.95!