When Daphne Merkin learned she had diabetes, she knew she had to get serious about dropping pounds. Which is how she landed in a no-frills weight-loss center in the North Carolina woods. Could she last even a day? Would it matter if she did?
By Daphne Merkin
This article appears in the October 2014 issue of ELLE magazine.It is a sunny day in mid-April and I am sitting in a somewhat institutional dining room, picking desultorily at my underseasoned food, wondering when the vision of a bowlful of oil-drenched sesame noodles will stop dancing before my eyes. All around me, moderately to morbidly overweight people are jotting down the details of their sugarless, saltless, fatless meals in little spiral-bound journals that say "Wellspring at Structure House," and a conversation is raging about calories and sodium counts. How many calories are in onions, someone wants to know; someone else inquires with equal intensity as to how many milligrams of sodium are in a serving of carrots. I dig silently into some pasty string beans and muse to myself that none of us has ended up here, in the Land of Fat, because we have eaten too many onions or carrots. But I don't dare utter this mutinous thought out loud for fear I will be seen as a laggard or, worse yet, a subversive, someone who can't—or won't—get with the program, one that I have traveled a thousand miles and spent thousands of dollars to take part in.
First, though, let me back up and explain how I came to be here at Structure House, in what The New York Times referred to some years ago as the "diet capital of the world," otherwise known as Durham, North Carolina. The town has been milling with all sorts of residential diet clinics/fat farms ever since a German cardiologist named Walter Kempner founded the abstemious Rice Diet Program at Duke University in 1939. I'd been steadily putting on pounds for more than a decade, looking on helplessly as my once shapely body morphed into a middle-aged woman's worst nightmare, with no waist to speak of and a midsection that resembled a beer belly. Over the years, I tried several diet regimens, though with little conviction, and had even headed off to a spa or two in the hope of stopping the accumulation of avoirdupois as well as the gradual erosion of my self-esteem. But there was imperceptible progress until, on a Wednesday evening last December, I received a literal wake-up call: My generally unflappable internist was getting in touch to tell me that my blood sugars had come back sky-high. It seemed that I'd eaten my way from containably diabetic to a full-fledged diabetic state. The news depressed and alarmed me. I didn't feel like coping with a potentially life-threatening illness, but I knew that if I took my usual negligent approach and just ignored the issue, there was a real—albeit slightly melodramatic—chance that I'd end up blind and without feet, stabbing myself with daily injections of insulin.
Clearly, it was time to do something sustainable about my inflated weight and carb-heavy eating habits. A friend of mine suggested Structure House, and after talking several times over a period of two months to its deeply patient and psychologically attuned admissions director, Sandy Falcone, to whom I aired my many anxieties about going, I signed on precipitously and booked plane tickets, leaving myself little chance to change my mind. The program, which costs about $2,500 a week, sounded reassuringly serious and nongimmicky; the fact that it drew very overweight people and not just one-percenters looking to hone their already-size-2 bodies also appealed to me. Although Structure House is designed for a monthlong stay, to allow participants enough time to change instilled habits and work through the program's layered approach, Sandy assured me that two weeks could also do wonders. I committed to that, with the agreement that I'd be allowed to leave after one week if I found the experience not to my taste.
And so it came to be that I arrived uncharacteristically early at the unpeopled reception area of the red brick building, fronted with a white porch and white columns, that constituted the main offices of Structure House. The official check-in hours were from 1 P.M. to 5 P.M. on Sundays, and it wasn't yet noon; I had booked an 8:30 A.M. flight out of LaGuardia just to make sure I wouldn't dash in late, as was my wont, and now I felt foolishly overeager. The reception area had the generic, faux-upbeat look of reception areas everywhere, and for a minute, in the silent surroundings, I was reminded of a psychiatric hospital I'd been admitted to for postpartum depression in my thirties. A lone but friendly staffer finally appeared and offered to show me around the dining room, suggesting I order lunch. I scanned the menu and decided I couldn't go far astray with a scoopful of tuna fish, which proved to be a mistake. It tasted gummy and unflavorful, although I hadn't thought there was much you could do to ruin so basic a dish.
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