Our big fat wedding!
Marie lost over 13 stone before getting wed
Sunday 8th June 2008
Looking at my watch, I gave a little 'yippee!' of delight.
It was 5pm on a Friday — time to leave my computer sales job and head to my friend Margaret Hveen's house. Every weekend, we'd sit on her settee with a slushy DVD and enough food to feed an army.
'What flavour did you get?' Margaret, then 26, grinned, as she ushered me into the house she shared with her brother, Frankie, 23, and grandparents Margaret and Ralph Lettieri, both 81.
'Chocolate chip,' I smiled. 'And we've got crisps, Coke…'
'I'll dial us a couple of pizzas, then,' Margaret smiled.
Yep, we loved our food. In fact, it was what had made us friends. Margaret and I had met at a party four years earlier, in April 1998. I'd weighed 28st back then, and Margaret was a whopping 50st, so there was an immediate understanding between us. We'd become friends, the pair of us sharing a wicked sense of humour, as well as a love of food. But behind the fun lay an awful lot of sadness.
'I started putting on weight at 13, after my mum died,' Margaret confessed. 'That's when Frankie got fat, too.'
At 6ft 1in, Frankie, a baker, was a hefty 39st himself. I sighed guiltily. I had no tragedy to blame for my gluttony.
'I just love junk food,' I admitted. 'I've been fat ever since I was a kid.'
Although Margaret and I loved our food, we hated being fat. And other people made it worse…
'Fat cow!' strangers would yell. And those were the polite ones.
But if I had it bad, poor Margaret had it worse. She was so heavy, she was practically housebound, and could only walk a few yards from her New York home before gasping for breath. 'Frankie and I have tried every diet,' she told me.
'Me too,' I'd sighed.
But food was an addiction, a friend we turned to for comfort. So in 1999, weighing 26st 7lb, I'd taken the plunge and had a gastric bypass. I prayed it would make me slim. But I still managed to eat enough crisps and biscuits to
stay fat, and here I was, three years later, back up to 25st.
It's just the way I'm meant to be, I figured, as I tucked into my massive helping of ice cream. We were just about to put our Dirty Dancing DVD on, when Frankie walked in. Like I said, he was a big lad. But with his dark eyes and gorgeous smile, it wasn't hard to see the hunk beyond the layers of flab.
'Evening ladies,' he grinned.
'Hi there,' I smiled back.
As I was at Margaret's place most nights, I knew Frankie well. He was kind and funny, and we'd often stay up chatting after Margaret went to bed. Tonight was no different, only this time, Frankie confessed: 'I really like you.'
And suddenly, we were kissing. It was fantastic!
When we told Margaret, she was thrilled.
'You're perfect for each other,' she beamed.
It was true, Frankie understood me like no other man. He knew how I felt about food, how I felt about my body — because he had similar feelings himself.
'I'd love to be slim,' he'd admit from time to time. 'But you know how it is with diets.'
I nodded sadly. Since my gastric bypass had failed, I'd not even bothered trying to lose weight again. But what did that matter now? Frankie loved me regardless.
By Autumn 2003, I was practically living at his and Margaret's house. The three of us would hang out, eating cakes and having a laugh. Some nights, when Frankie and I headed to bed, Margaret would stay up, on internet chatrooms.
'It's too hard for me to get out,' she admitted. 'It's the only way I can talk to friends.'
Even so, I was shocked when I woke on 25 September, to find Margaret still sat at the computer.
'Don't tell me you haven't been to bed yet?' I gasped.
'I know, I know,' Margaret sighed. 'I'm off to bed now.'
She was fast asleep when I left for work just before 9am. But four hours later,
Frankie rang me in a panic.
'Grandad just called,' he said. 'He can't wake Margaret up.'
Grabbing my car keys, I zoomed home. There was already an ambulance outside. I pushed my way into Margaret's bedroom and saw her lying on her back, wearing an oversized T-shirt. A paramedic was knelt beside her, shaking his head.
'She's just asleep,' I sobbed. 'Can't you see that?'
Frankie put his arms around me.
'I'm sorry,' the paramedic said. 'We couldn't save her.'
I was frozen with shock. Margaret was just 27.
How could she be dead?
A daft question really. It was obvious her death was to do with her weight. Frankie and I didn't say it, though — well, look at us. Margaret had dropped to 37st by the time she died, but it hadn't been enough. We were still huge ourselves, and it was too frightening to admit the truth. Instead, after burying
Margaret at St Charles Cemetery, Long Island, two weeks later, we just grieved. Margaret had been a wonderful person. It was heartbreaking to lose her so young, so, as always, Frankie and I consoled ourselves with food.
On my 25th birthday, on 8 October, I came home to find the table set for a posh meal.
'A birthday treat,' Frankie grinned, serving up a generous portion of pasta with prawns. For pudding, we tucked into chocolate-covered strawberries.
Then Frankie disappeared and came back in with a huge chocolate birthday cake.
As I looked at the icing on top, I was stunned. Will you marry me? it read.
And where the dot of the question mark should have been, was a beautiful platinum ring.
'Oh Frankie!' I cried. 'I'd love to.'
But as I tucked into the cake, my happiness was marred by one thought. Margaret should be here.
During the following six months, her death haunted me more and more. I started having terrible nightmares that Frankie had died in bed beside me, but
I was too fat to move and ended up dying next to him. Soon, I was too scared to shut my eyes at night, and started having panic attacks. In May 2004, we discovered the cause of Margaret's death.
'She had an enlarged heart, caused by her weight problem,' a representative from Franklin Hospital, New York, told us. It was a kick up the backside.
'We have to lose weight,' I told Frankie. 'Otherwise, we're going to die, just like Margaret.'
He agreed. But while I was prepared to eat healthily, he didn't think he had the willpower.
So he went to see a consultant about a gastric bypass operation.
'He told me I have to lose weight before the operation,' he said.
'Then let's do it,' I replied.
Frankie started a strict eating plan of just three special shakes and two nutrition bars a day, and I made myself cut back. Four months on, I'd lost three stone, while Frankie had dropped six stone, enough to have his gastric bypass at South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside, New York.
After that, life changed dramatically. Instead of our old monster portions of pasta, cakes and chocolate, now Frankie got busy preparing steamed veggies and chicken. We cut down our portion sizes, too. And when either of us wavered, the other would be there, offering encouragement. For two solid years, we ate tasty, nutritious food, the weight steadily falling off all the time.
'You look like a different woman,' my workmates said, amazed.
I felt it, too. By now, I'd lost seven stone, and, when once I'd been lethargic and breathless, now, I had loads of energy. Frankie did, too. The only downside was all the loose skin on our arms and bellies.
'I don't want huge bingo wings when we get married,' I told Frankie in October 2006. We'd set a date for 18 August 2007. That gave us 10 months
to tone up. So we bought a running machine and some weights, even got a personal trainer. It didn't get rid of all our loose skin, but by the time
of our wedding, Frankie and I were both unrecognisable. Between us we'd lost 40 stone!
Frankie weighed 16st and looked gorgeous in a white suit. As for me, at 5ft 8in and 12st, I fitted into a size-12 wedding dress. We tied the knot in front of
140 guests at the home we'd once shared with Margaret. I only wish she could have been there. Losing her so young was a real tragedy. But her death saved my life and Frankie's, too. And for that, we'll always be grateful.