Robyn Transforms Herself

Losing 100 Pounds – Waking Up to Weight Gain

In this post, I describe how I finally realized what gaining all that extra weight had really done to me. I finally understood the potential consequences to my health and how serious they were.

This is the third post in my Losing 100 Pounds series, and it discusses the second of the five phases I went through. As a quick recap, here are the 5 phases I’ve identified:

1. Gain the weight.
2. Understand the impacts.
3. Get on the path to weight loss.
4. Learn what works in losing weight.
5. Find a new way of living.

As I said in my earlier post about gaining the weight, I ended up at over 240 pounds and wearing size 20 clothes. Of course, I knew that, and I wasn’t really happy about it. But it was always something I thought I could worry about tomorrow. It was too much trouble today.

I would get out of breath and have to stop while climbing up a one-block-long hill across from my office. I had a hard time walking around the block. My knees hurt in the morning when I went downstairs.

I knew this wasn’t good, but I didn’t really know what to do about it or where to start. The whole idea of “dieting” just didn’t sound very possible to me. So I didn’t really do anything.

Who’s Obese? I’m Just a Bit Chubby

By this time, I was well beyond overweight; I was really obese. I plan to tell you more about a measure called the Body-Mass Index (BMI) in a future article, but for now I’ll say this. It’s a measure that considers your weight and your height together. Even though it has its drawbacks, it’s more useful than looking at weight alone. In very general terms, the theory is that taller people are expected to be heavier than shorter people. Scientists use BMI to classify people as underweight, healthy weight, overweight, and obese.

In my case, I was well into the zone of obesity. I had to lose at least 50 pounds just to be considered overweight. It would take another 30 more to get down to the top of my healthy weight range.

The very sound of the word obese makes me cringe. Maybe because it rhymes with grease. It’s a bit like fingernails on a chalkboard. The meaning and its implications are even worse. It means a higher risk of severe illness and death. In more practical, immediate terms, it meant I felt lousy and couldn’t do a lot of the things I wanted to do.

The Last Straw

I have always been pretty good about getting annual physical exams. Doctors had said I should lose weight and get in better shape. I would agree, but it never had that much impact on me. They never really gave me much practical advice, or at least not anything I thought was useful to me.

In early 2004, I saw a nurse practitioner for my annual exam, who I hadn’t seen before. Unlike many of the doctors I had seen before, Mylene was willing to spend some time with me. She finally got through to me and helped me see the error of my ways. Frankly, she scared the absolute heck out of me.

We ran the usual blood tests. She said my bad cholesterol was a bit high, and my good cholesterol was low. But the thing that really did the trick for me was how high my blood glucose (also called blood sugar) was getting. It had been steadily creeping up, and I was now in the “pre-diabetic” stage. That meant I was clearly on the way to getting type 2 diabetes. I was also at increased risk for stroke, heart attack, and other nasty things.

Right then and there, I decided I was not going any farther down that path. I refused poke needles in myself to inject insulin several times a day. I knew several people who had to do it, and it definitely wasn’t something I wanted to do.

The American Diabetes Association provides a lot of good information about pre-diabetes on their website. According to them, if you have pre-diabetes, you can and should do something about it. Studies have shown that people with pre-diabetes can prevent or delay the development of type 2 diabetes by up to 58 percent through changes to their lifestyle that include modest weight loss and regular exercise. The expert panel recommends that people with pre-diabetes reduce their weight by 5-10 percent and participate in some type of modest physical activity for 30 minutes daily. For some people with pre-diabetes, intervening early can actually turn back the clock and return elevated blood glucose levels to the normal range.

The Next Steps

Now that I knew how bad things could really get for me, I had to figure out what to do. As I said before, I knew I should do something, but I didn’t really know how. Mylene, my new nurse practitioner (and savior) gave me three bits of advice and told me to come back in 6 weeks. She said:

• Start walking, even if it’s just for a few minutes to start. Keep trying to walk a little more each time.
• Start a food and exercise log. Write down everything I eat and everything I do for exercise.
• Follow a diet plan. She gave me sample plans for 1200, 1400, and 1600 calories per day.

I started walking that day. It wasn’t far, but it was a start. I had tried this before, but now I had extra incentive.

I also started logging all my food in a journal. I had never tried this before, and it ended up being some of her best advice for me. I still do this. It really helps me keep on track, and it made me much more aware of what I was doing.

I couldn’t really handle following a strict diet regimen at that point. So I put that off, but I did start trying to adjust my diet somewhat. The very fact that I had to write it all down helped make me more aware of what I was eating.

As they say, two out of three ain’t bad. I actually started feeling better within a few days. I was finally on my way to feeling better. In my next post in this series, I’ll describe more about the first few weeks of this new project to get on the path to regaining my health.

Have you reached the tipping point yet? If so, what was your last straw? If not, what do you think it might be? What would it take to wake you up to your situation? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Robyn

Articles in the Series:
Losing 100 Pounds – The 5 Phases
Losing 100 Pounds – Gain It First
Losing 100 Pounds – Waking Up to Weight Gain
Losing 100 Pounds – On the Path to Weight Loss
Losing 100 Pounds – Learning What Works
Losing 100 Pounds – Finding a New Way of Living