Fat Chance Read Online Free

Noah’s tiny tighty-whities and then me holding up a pair of what I affectionately referred to as my big-girl panties. Still another shot is of me attempting in vain to squeeze my oversized self into an old size-eight pageant dress that had been hiding in the recesses of my closet. Despite the sobering realities depicted in those images, I like to think my lighthearted, buoyant self shone through.
    At some point that fall, I received word from an NBC representative that the show had gone into hiatus. “And we don’t know when it will resume,” he admitted.
    Months and months went by, which really proved challenging for someone who typically spent her days fretting about how to lose weight. How was I supposed to get motivated about losing weight now that my fat-camp dream, a la
The
Biggest Loser
, might just come true? Regardless what NBC said, I still had great hopes that I’d be cast. Soon enough I’d have all the help I needed—for now, I figured, I’d live it up.
    My hopes crested when I finally heard from the show’s lawyer. Evidently, I needed to submit to an extensive background check, which to me meant that I really was in the running to be selected as a cast member. My hunches were right, and sometime in April 2007, I was informed that I had made it to the final audition and would need to fly to Los Angeles to be pitted against thirty-five others who were vying for spots on the show.
    The naysayers in my life were stunned.
      
    C oming from Florida, I was the last person to arrive in LA. In short order, I was escorted to meetings with more interviewers, a psychologist, a medical doctor and a nutritionist, as well as told to complete what must have been a five-hundred-question survey that probed my family history, my relational intelligence and my reasons for being fat. At last, I was taken to a prep session for what I was told would be my “final interview.”
    I entered a large meeting room at the hotel and remember thinking that I had never seen so many beautiful fat people in my entire life. I immediately took note of my would-be-teammate Isabeau, although I didn’t yet know her name.
Will they cast two girls with platinum-blonde hair?
I wondered skeptically.
    We were asked to have a seat, and then the show’s executive producer, J. D. Roth, said, “We want to hear your story in this interview. We don’t want you to be especially happy or sad or contrive
anything
that’s not true of you. We simply want to understand why you’re here.”
    With that we were dismissed to our hotel rooms and told that within the next three-hour block, we’d be called down for our interview.
    The entire elevator ride to my floor, I cried. After making my way into my room, I let the door slip shut behind me, I fell onto the bed, I dialed Mike’s cell phone, and as soon as he picked up, I cried some more. “I don’t have a story!” I sobbed. “I have to go down there and tell my story, and I
still
don’t have a story to tell!”
    My gracious and loving husband spoke whatever words I needed to hear just then, and by the time I emerged for my interview, I felt competent and capable and strong.
      
    S potlights shone on a single red velvet chair, positioned in the center of the interviewing room. Surrounding it was an arc of forty chairs or so, dimly lit and possessed by faces I could not see.
Intimidating
—it’s the only word that came to mind.
    As I took the seat that obviously was intended for me, I chuckled nervously and said, “Whew! I’m sweating like a Twinkie at a Weight Watchers meeting.”
    A nameless, faceless voice piped up from the back. “Are you nervous, Julie?”
    “Like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers!” I shot back.
    Laughing, another voice cheered, “Give us another one!”
    But I couldn’t fulfill the request. “Sorry,” I said with a shrug and a smile. “That’s all I’ve got.”
    The lighthearted exchange calmed my spirits and settled me for what was to come. At some