Heaviest Woman Happily Loses Unhappy Title -- Weight Drops From 1, 050 To 302 Pounds

SELLERSVILLE, Pa. - The digital scale in the Chesapeake Bay Seafood House was too tempting for Rosalie Bradford to ignore. She put in her quarter and it spit out a piece of paper with her current weight - "302.4 pounds!"

That's the good news.

The bad news is the new dress with belt and half-moon buckle she bought in a smaller size doesn't fit and probably won't until she breaks 300.

"I thought it would be a lot less," said Bradford.

Her impatience is understandable. After dieting for 5 1/2 years, Bradford is closing in on her goal - to weigh less than 200 pounds - after once tipping the scales at 1,050 pounds, earning her the title of world's heaviest female in the 1993 Guinness Book of World Records.

Or, as Bradford puts it, "I was really fat; now I'm not so fat."

After being abandoned by her mother as an infant, Bradford said, she sought comfort in the stomach-expanding meals cooked by her Mennonite foster family. Chicken and dumplings, mashed potatoes and gravy, creamed corn - for Bradford they were as soothing as a warm embrace.

At 12, she weighed 202 pounds. At 14, she weighed 309 pounds. She continued to grow until she could no longer move and was confined to bed for 10 years, where she grazed on potato chips, pizza, sandwiches, cheese, consuming up to 15,000 calories a day. Her health suffered. She tried to kill herself by swallowing a handful of sedatives, but because of her size, they only made her groggy.

Then God and Richard Simmons intervened.

When Bradford developed congestive heart failure in 1987, a friend wrote to the diet guru begging him to help. He called Bradford on a Sunday morning and asked her to try his diet plan. It took several months for her to summon the courage to eat a low-calorie breakfast and a few more months to stay on the diet all day. Simmons gave her encouragement throughout.

"I didn't know if I could deal with it physically and emotionally," Bradford said in her kitchen, where she has a framed picture of Simmons chained to a large fork.

After a decade in bed, Bradford is hard to pin down these days. She attends college, counsels obese people and appears on talk shows and with Simmons at his popular mall shows.

Bradford, who admits she used to "go crazy" if she didn't have food nearby, stared at a box of chocolate cupcakes in her kitchen. Asked whether she is tempted, she made a face.

"It's just not a priority anymore," she said. "I'm beginning to feel like a worthwhile person. No amount of pizza and hoagies can make me feel like that."

For most of her 49 years, food was the most important thing in Bradford's life.

After dropping out of college, Bradford continued to balloon. She tried every weight-loss plan out there: Weight Watchers, liquid protein, diet pills and surgery.

In the early 1980s, she said, she was angry, cynical and pushing 600 pounds when she contracted septicemia, a kind of blood poisoning. It took her 1 1/2 years to recover and was the beginning of her 10-year "nap," as she calls it. "

She spent holidays alone in bed, waiting for the plate of food her husband and son would bring back from dinner with relatives.

When it looked as if she would have to live in a nursing home, her husband quit his job to care for her.

"I took my marriage vow seriously," said her husband. "When you love somebody, you do what you can to help them."

She took up two hospital beds. If she fell, the local rescue squad had to bring special equipment - the kind used to lift cars off of accident victims - to prop her back up.

She kept a list of things she wanted to do when she "got better," never admitting that it was her weight that was holding her down. They were simple things, like driving or cleaning her home. She lived vicariously through friends, extracting every detail of their lives when they visited.

In 1987, Bradford was hospitalized with heart failure. She couldn't fit in the hallway so the ambulance crew had to slide her onto a tarp, fold her flesh on top of her, strap her in and slide her out of the house. It was the first time she had been outside in more than eight years.

After her four-month stay in the hospital - "Everyone has to come look at the fat lady down the hall" - Simmons called. Although she is crazy about Simmons, Bradford attributes her recovery to her faith. "Richard is just my gift from God," she said.

Bradford dieted for almost two years before she hit 1,050. She estimates at her peak she hovered around 1,200 pounds.

As part of her recovery, she has undergone several operations to remove excess skin from her arms, legs and sides. She also spent 1 1/2 years in therapy.

Still, life these days tastes sweet. Buying clothes and jewelry is a joy. Last May, Bradford went to a beauty salon for the first time in years.

And, best of all for a woman who always wanted to be one of the crowd:

"People don't look at me anymore. I'm just another hefty lady."