Porcello interjected: "You like getting that kind of attention?"

"No," admits Primm, who goes on to reveal that at one point she had lost a great deal of weight.  "And as soon as I was losing, I got all this attention, and it made me extremely uncomfortable and I started to eat again."  Another patient, Julianne Abbruzzese of Long Beach chimes in.  "I agree!  I want to blend in, I don't want to stand out.  It's positive when you lose weight, but there's this pressure that you have to keep it up."

Relaxed Atmosphere
Not far away, a crowd cheers, not for Primm and Abbruzzese's insightfulness, but for someone who got a hit in a softball game.  While this may sound like a typical therapy session, no one is sitting on a leather recliner with boxes of tissues next to them.  Rather, they're on lawn chairs.  And Porcello's credentials - a doctorate and a certification as an eating disorder specialist - are not on display.  If they were, they'd be nailed to a tree.

This group is gathered in Eisenhower Park's Field 1, on a hot summer Saturday morning, for Porcello's innovative "walking Soles" program.  In it, she and her patients met for a brisk 30-minute walk and then have an hour-long group discussion about their emotional eating issues, moderated by the psychologist.

"People who struggle with losing weight and eating disorders often isolate themselves," say Porcello, who weighed 400 pounds as an adolescent (she lost much of it through a combination of late 70s disco dancing and early 80s group therapy).  The weekly walking-and-talking program is a supplement to conventional one-on-one therapy sessions with Porcello in her Garden City office.

Still, these Saturday get-togethers are important for her patients.  "Here, they meet other people and feel a connection . . . they see they're not the only ones with the problem."

Motivation works two ways
Before the walk, Porcello - who also participates - breaks the group into pairs and asks them to discuss motivation: What motivates them to get healthier . . . or to retreat from doing things they know they need to?

After a 15-minute walk, the women repair to a shady spot by the parking field.  There, they discuss their responses, which speak volumes about the complex emotional issues that often underlie weight loss.  The words "calories," "portion sizes," and "exercise" are never mentioned here.  Not because they aren't important in weight control.  But these women already know they need to eat less and exercise more.  The issue for them is why they continue to overeat.

The reasons are often deep seated: Primm talks about growing up in a family of nine, and about a nun in her Catholic elementary school who was cruel to her.

"It was like I had no identity," she recalls.  She eventually found her independence through eating. "It's something you can't tell me o do or not to do."

The women around here nod vigorously in agreement.  Primm immediately realizes the irony of those words.  But, she adds, ruefully, "I have a hard time saying no to food."

Porcello breaks in, pointing out the recent progress Primm has made in her walking.  "But this is Mary, who can now walk two miles!"  Porcello exclaims.  "So there is something you do have control over."

Mary smiles, shyly; the others nod, approvingly.

This is progress.  These women are working hard to break the hold eating has had over them - and thanks in part to the Walking Soles program, they are succeeding.

Building stamina
"I'm doing better," says Deirdre Neville of Woodside, who started working with Porcello six months ago and now does regular two-mile walks.  "When I went to gym, I wasn't comfortable.  This is a safe place to come and meet people who have similar issues."

When she started with the Walking Soles program two years ago, Joanne Halton of Glen Oaks recalled, "I couldn't make it to the end of the parking lot."  Since then, she has lost 100 pounds.  "It's like a new life," Halton says - one made a little more bearable and healthier by a walk with friends on a Saturday in the park.