THE MAN WHO COULDN'T STOP EATING Inspiring Account of a Personal Transformation
	APRIL 2005

by Manuel Villalpando
Photos by Russell Byrne

I never thought I could ever really stop eating. The life of an obese person is often filled with pain and usually with shame. I was so heavy when I graduated from high school, for example, that the largest gown available would not nearly encircle my ponderous girth. I would have spent graduation at home watching Gilligan’s Island except for the fact that my mom’s seamstress friend found some matching material, and spliced a large panel of the stuff into the back of the garment so that I could finally zip the thing up and march with the rest of my class.

They say that overweight children often turn into obese adults. That was my story, for sure. I was a chunky kid by the time I was seven years old. My weight ballooned over the years until I was tipping the scales at 327 pounds by the time I marched in that High School graduation.

My Weighty Problems
The adolescent years are tough for almost everybody, I think. Even athletes and cheerleaders endure times of great misgivings and discouragement. Kids on the fringes — the nerds, kids with acne, with voice defects, with strange names, with ragged clothes, with any mental or physical handicap, too tall, or too short, — are marginalized and treated by the mass of students with jeering and leering contempt.

The most savage student behaviors are often reserved for kids who are homosexual or obese. Since I was both of those things, my life at school was often agonizing as other students shouted obscenities at me, teased me, threw things at me, and generally made it their personal mission to make my life as unpleasant as possible.

My mom was a rock during those terrible years. “Don’t listen to them,” she would tell me. “Don’t pay attention to them.” I tried to follow her advice. You can do that for a while, but eventually the scorn, contempt, and physical attacks wear down your spirit like flowing water will finally erode the most rigid barrier.

As an adult I continued to pay a heavy price for my heavy condition. Imagine if someone strapped a 200-pound outboard engine to your back and you could never remove it. What would your life be like? My back, legs, and especially my knees hurt me. I had sleep apnea and had to have a machine by my side every night to assist me with my breathing. I remember looking at that machine in disgust one night and thinking that it would take the place of a bedmate until I died.

Simply buying clothes was a trial. At my heaviest I wore 64-inch waist pants and 5X shirts. The largest sizes in Macy’s, Mervyns, and Gottschalk’s didn’t come close to fitting me. I had to go to a specialty store in Concord called Casual Male Big and Tall, since that was the only place that sold my sizes. It always seemed unfair that I couldn’t go shopping where my friends all went. “What’s wrong with these stores,” I would wonder, “that they can’t provide clothes for large people like me?”

A seriously obese person has a difficult time living a normal day-to-day life. I love to fly, for example, but getting on an airplane was a nightmare. I always prayed to God that there would be an empty seat next to me. Or if someone sat next to me, I would pray God that it wouldn’t be someone who would make me feel undesirable or evil. I sat with my arms crossed, trying not to intrude on my neighbor’s space.

Going into a restaurant for dinner was always a trial. People would stare at me. Getting a comfortable seat in any public place was a challenge. I remember going to Cirque Du Soleil and discovering that the seats in that place were so small and so close together that they were snug even for a normal size person, and were agony for an immense person like I was at the time. Things got much worse when I went to use one of the porta-potties, which provided the only lavatory facilities in that place. The stall turned out to be so small that it was unusable by a person my size.

My experience in the porta-potty was a breaking point. How horrible it made me feel! “Who wants to live like this?” I asked myself. For a time I considered taking my life. I even knew how it could be done; I would simply eat and eat and eat until I finally died of a heart attack and would thus be killed by the very act of food consumption that had brought my life to such a desperate, despairing point.

Fighting Against an Impossibly Strong Enemy
The basic symptom of my disorder was an uncontrollable urge to eat. I’ve been a hairdresser for 19 years, which is an occupation that lends itself to developing poor eating habits. In a busy day we sometimes don’t get breaks from morning till late at night. I would go home famished and fix myself a big, fattening meal just before going to bed.

A couple times every week I would treat myself to binge eating. Thursday was my pizza night. I would order a large pizza, with an order of Buffalo wings, a side of cheesy bread, and a quart of Pepsi. I would eat the entire order in a single sitting. No problem! Saturday was my Jack-in-the-Box night during which I consumed an Ultimate Cheeseburger with a large order of Fries, a large order of potato wedges with extra cheese, and another quart of Pepsi. I topped the meal off with one of their specialty Monster Tacos. The Monster Taco by itself would be too much for some people to eat in a sitting but I put one of those things away just to round off that colossal meal.

Obesity is a bewildering condition. Nobody who hasn’t experienced the problem can comprehend in the slightest what the experience of being uncontrollably fat is really like. Friends and even acquaintances would make well-intentioned but pointless suggestions, such as “All you have to do is simply quit eating so much!” They might as well tell a man in a gas chamber to simply quit breathing or tell a man falling to his death to simply fall more slowly. You never in your life encountered a seriously obese person who wouldn’t immediately stop eating so much if he or she could only learn how to do so. Not even doctors and dieticians who never had a weight problem can imagine what the life of an overweight person is actually like.

My confusion about my problem was compounded by the fact that I had periodic times of successful weight loss. I lost over 130 pounds three times in my life, which means, statistically, that I should have ended up weighing less than the charm on a woman’s bracelet. I was never able successfully to fight the condition for more than a month or two, however. The weight would eventually come rolling back like some personal slow-motion tsunami of lard. Believe me, I went on every diet I could think of — Hollywood, Soup, Weight Watchers…. All of them failed; or at least they failed over the long haul.

I tried diet pills, both prescription and non-prescription. I even tried recreational drugs to lose weight, but I really hated that part of my life. People look at you differently when you do drugs. I wasn’t that kind of person; taking drugs was a denial of my integrity. I hated them, even though they did help me lose weight. I really ballooned after I quit using drugs.

I did Jazzercise for a while. I not only practiced step aerobics, during one period of my life, I actually taught a class. But during one session I injured my lower back. Only through therapy with chiropractors and doctors was I able to heal that injury. Of course, by the time my back was healed I was up to my impossible great weight again.

My problem was partly the result of conditioning and partly heredity. I was a really big man descended from a family of really large people. We were doing the Nutty Professor thing for sure! I had twelve aunts and uncles, plus a multitude of cousins and many of them have weight problems. My mom died at 60 from heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and a number of other illnesses that came directly from the fact that she had been seriously overweight almost her entire life.

Sources of Encouragement;
Resources for Life
My mother raised me to be good and to have faith in God. She encouraged me to keep going no matter how difficult life might become. Following her death I continued to draw a lot of support from clients, friends, family, and especially my co-workers — who are also family to me and know me better than my biological family ever could.

The thing that sustained me throughout my adult years was my relationship with these people, who were glad to accept me for what they knew me to be. They realized that inside my oversize body there dwelt a loving and caring human being. I had a number of friends who didn’t look at me as a fat person; they looked at me as a good human being.

For example, I am a compassionate person. If you are carrying some heavy burden, come talk to me and I will help you carry it if I can. I’m a loving person. Tell me about your new promotion or romance and I will rejoice with you. Or tell me about the cancer you just learned of and I will weep with you. I’m also a person of great integrity. If you give me a fifty that you thought was a twenty I’ll chase you down with your change as soon as I discover the mistake.

It seems to me that being able to say about someone, “He’s a compassionate person!” Or “He’s loving!” Or “He’s honest!” is to call attention to far more important characteristics than to say, “He’s really fat!” Or “He’s a queer!”

Many of the seriously overweight people you will meet are sensitive and ready to be loved and cared for. Even if they aren’t, they are still human beings and deserve your respect, honor, and (if you have such grace within yourself) they are worthy of your love.

Finding and Implementing the Solution
Over the years I heard about gastro-bypass surgery. My aunt had this procedure about nine years ago and lost over 250 pounds. She told me that I should look into it. When my weight finally tipped the scales at 389 pounds I decided to talk to my doctor, Dr. Hugh Miaocco, about getting the operation. I have incredible confidence in this man since he has been my doctor from the moment he delivered me until now. It took me two years to convince Dr. Miaocco to recommend me for the procedure. It turned out that his recommendation was only the first step in what would become a long journey.

During that time God sent me a great champion in the form of a client named Valerie Andrieu-Olsen. She herself had the operation three years previously. Valerie’s transformation was phenomenal! She became my mentor and inspiration. “You need to have this done,” Valerie told me. “It will be the best thing you ever did!” She helped me get the information I needed and let me use the research she had conducted herself. I thank God for Valerie. “If I can do this,” she said, “then you can do it, Manuel!”

More people want to get this operation than there are doctors who can perform it so there was a rigorous process leading up to my being accepted. The criteria for even being considered as a gastro-bypass candidate includes being more than 100 pounds overweight, diabetic, and having a recorded history of weight-management problems. I had no problem whatsoever with those.

Much more difficult were the requirements placed upon me as I actually entered the program, which included losing at least ten percent of my body weight, working closely with a dietitian, and passing a rigorous psychological evaluation. Fortunately, my Blue Cross program provided some important resources. Dr. Stephen Lewis, an endocrinologist specializing in diabetes, worked with me to lose the required ten percent. With his help I persevered and finally shed the 35 pounds that completed that part of my eligibility.

Securing approval from a psychologist proved to be a very stressful, emotional process. Of course, they wanted to identify the causes of my weight issues. “How did your weight problem begin?” “Why do you think you have a weight problem?” “Are the sources of your problem physical? Mental?” I showed them the years of dieting and exercise, plus medical problems on both sides of my family. The psychologist recognized that I, in fact, had a genuine physical problem.

Operation and Recovery
I finally had my surgery at Stanford Hospital on November 17, 2003, with Dr. John Morton and a team of specialists performing the operation. The operation creates a new pouch the size of an egg to replace the football-size stomach. Stanford is an amazing hospital and I was given outstanding treatment. The first three months following surgery was the most difficult part. I had to learn to eat all over again — beginning like a baby with liquids and soft foods. It took a month of eating liquid foods to accustom my new stomach to its functions. I was restricted to puddings and Jell-O for another month. Then I began gradually to introduce semi-soft foods.

Perhaps the most effective part of the process was the absolute revolution in eating habits and patterns that the operation forced upon my life. I couldn’t possibly stuff a large pizza into a space the size of the palm of my hand. There simply was no place to put more than one or two pieces. Of course, this was the amount of pizza that a normally weighted person ought to eat. I began to develop good eating habits only through awful, even nauseating demonstrations to myself that I could no longer practice my old, dysfunctional eating patterns.

I ate so much one day that I really thought I was going to die. It was like having a heart attack because food that my body couldn’t process was exerting tremendous pressure on my heart. When I recovered I made a decision, “I’m never going to do that again!” I’m a slow learner, I guess, because I repeated the awful experience six more times. Following the seventh episode, however, a light finally went on. Six months after the operation, reality finally penetrated my mind and heart.

I’m still not completely finished with the process, since the skin my body created to cover my former bulk continues to hang around. I feel like a little kid trying to wear his dad’s overalls. My final surgery will serve as a fitting for my birthday suit and, in the process, will remove as much as 15 additional pounds of weight. My doctor for the operation will be Dr. Eric Mariotti — a fantastic surgeon from Concord. The man’s an artiste. He’s amazing!

Transformation
Following the operation my weight simply sloughed off my body like a flood tide setting out to sea. The loss of weight had wonderful effects on all parts of my life. My back felt better, my knees and legs quit hurting, and I began sleeping better. My sleep apnea ceased and I tossed that accursed breathing machine out of my bed forever. I can sit with my legs crossed!

Fourteen months after the surgery I tipped the scales at 198 pounds down from 389 — A 191 pound difference. In other words, I’m nearly down to half my previous weight. The outboard motor is gone! One of my clients said to me, “Manuel, you were carrying me around on your back.” Some of my clients are petite; I might have been carrying two of them around.

Buying clothes nowadays is such a pleasure! My 64-inch waist pants became a 34; my 5X shirt became a medium. I buy clothes because I like the look and the style, not simply because they will go around my body.

My biggest fear these days is that I might fail. Gaining the weight back would be far worse than to not have gotten the operation in the first place. The fear makes me cautious about putting myself on the line by sharing my story, as I’m doing in this article. However, I can’t let fear of failure hold me back from any good thing, so I’m taking the chance. For one thing, I want to help others with my story.

Let me help you! If you are reading this and you’ve got some chronic compulsion, don’t give up! Hang in there! You don’t have to accept whatever dysfunctional behaviors are diminishing the quality of your life. Fight against them! Don’t let anyone stop you! Don’t talk yourself out of it! God is in heaven and good people surround you like a cloud. This is America, after all. Solutions are available. Go find them!

I stopped over-eating. We can change! I’m proving it!