AP Calculus question, please help!

I'm literally in tears right now because I can't understand ANY of the word problems given to me by my teacher. To me they're really hard and I can't make equations out of them.

Here's one of the questions:

"4) The fat men in a club outnumber the thin men by sixteen. Seven times the number of fat men exceed nine times the number of thin men by thirty-two. Find the number of fat and thin men in the club."

The second sentence really gets to me though. I'm thinking, 7x + 9x = 32. But that sounds wrong! So maybe it's 7x = 32 - 9x or something like that! I don't know! Where do I put the 16!? I'm really stressing out about this. I usually do well or at least decent in math and I really want to get A's but if I can't even do word problems like these then I might be in serious trouble here. Does anyone know how to read word problems and could maybe help me solve this?

This homework is due tomorrow so I know it probably won't be answered by then but I still need help for future reference. D:

Please and thank you! > o <

F = number of fat men.............T = number of thin men
First statement..............F = T + 16
Second statement........7F = 9T + 32
Substituting for F.........7(T + 16) = 9T + 32..........(7x 16) - 32 = 9T - 7T
so, T = 40.....hence F = 56