Confessions of a Fat-Farmer

Losing it in Pompano Beach

Comparing the advantages of various fat farms is an obsessive luncheon topic in Manhattan, Georgetown, and Bel Air. Wives of the kitchen cabinet are loyal to the Golden Door. Clare Boothe Luce prefers the pampering at Maine Chance. Barbara Walters opts for La Costa.

I dragged my husband to the Spa at Palm-Aire in Pompano Beach, Florida, where Elizabeth Taylor works out in private and Liza Minnelli does her straddle crunches, noblesse oblige, in the same gym as the hoi polloi. Apart from Wonder Woman, the celebrity during my week was a man who, according to the staff gossip, wished to be introduced as a doctor from West Palm Beach. I saw him first in the eight-hundred-calorie spa dining room, sitting in a fanback chair surveying the plumpish young women eating with their too-thin-forcomfort girlfriends.

"He looks like that man who was accused of trying to murder his wife," I said.

"Nonsense," my husband replied. "What would he be doing in this den of flesh?"

A waitress overheard our argument and settled it by showing us his dinner check. I was right. C. von Biilow was worried about his paunch. "I brought him the wrong food," the waitress told us. "But he was very nice. He said, 'Don't worry, we all make mistakes.' "

Others at Palm-Aire included older women from Newport muttering disapproval of the celebrity guest; young stunners wearing silver leotards in the vain hope of meeting eligible men under fifty; middleweight, middle-aged ladies trying to shrink the large brown-fat cells; desperately overweight people who really needed medical help; and a few gaunt females with arms like chicken wings who religiously followed the eight-hundred-calorie diet. I belonged in the middleweight category, so I bounced on land and water in aerobics classes to elevate my heart rate (the only sure way to reduce fat, the instructor said), attempted to tighten the abdominals in calisthenics classes, pedaled myself into a sweat on the stationary bike, with no one else in the room but von Biilow (who was gingerly trying out the Nautilus machines), and always walked swiftly through the non-spa Peninsula dining room, averting my eyes from the patrons drinking martinis and eating giant pretzels.

I added unscheduled activities like situps and lap swimming (when we kicked each other in the overcrowded pool during water aerobics, a woman said, "There's no room for nineteen walruses in this bathtub"). I avoided facials (non-aerobic) and herbal wraps (claustrophobic) and all evening entertainment, psychic lessons from Anastasia, the wellness workshop, and bingo.

My husband lacked motivation. He spent most of his time lying on an unmade bed, talking diplomatic business on the telephone. In the morning he'd stroll into the easiest exercise class, where a few elderly men raised their arms gently above their heads and condescended to a few knee bends. He always pedaled on the stationary bicycle at a dignified pace. He wearied of the spa very quickly. He was tired of hearing "Mrs. Zipersky, your herbal wrap is ready" over the loudspeaker while he was writing a speech by the pool. He was unhappy with the landscaping— few flowers, no beach, just golf courses surrounded by condominiums. He disliked going to the dining room starved, only to be told that there were no tables available. He was not amused when a diner told him of the waiter's warning that the sauce on the two-hundred-calorie fettuccine "smelled funny."

Disobeying the rules, he stole ketchup, salt, and sugar from the non-spa dining room to make his food taste better.

Guess what. My husband, who's no fatty anyway, lost ten pounds at the spa and has kept it off. I lost all of two and a half pounds, and my weight is creeping up. There's a lesson to be learned somewhere. But no Palm-Aire instructor, nutritionist, or psychic can tell me what it is.

Sondra Gotlieb