Health Transformation

Good evening, everyone! Tonight, I will be writing about my everyday changes I have made for my health over the past couple years. This has been a long, slow process. However, with it being slow, it is also something I have appreciated with working hard at achieving and also knowing I am becoming the new me!

So firstly, I would like to talk about how I have accomplished to transform my health. I will say it all started when I was at the beach with my partner in crime and while I was sunbathing beside him, I kept having gentleman (if I am supposed to call them that) stare at me, which made me feel very uncomfortable. Not because this happened once but it was the same man, and he repeatedly walked back and forth and stared repeatedly and nonstop. When I asked him if I could help him or if he had a problem, he ignored me and walked away, but only to return about 15 minutes later again. So, I decided he must be staring at my bathing suit, or the obese shape of my body. I didn't feel as though he was staring because he liked what he saw, but in fact I felt as though he was rudely staring. That evening when we went home, I told my partner that I felt we needed to start eating healthier.

By healthier I didn't mean immediately become this huge health nut where I didn't allow us to have carbs or the "good" stuff (as I felt it was). But basically, I started to portion control my plate/serving size down some. I also decided that several times a week we would have just meats and veggies. While on other nights we would have a carb too. I felt that having a carb a few times a week would allow us to eat healthy on most days but also have the carbs we crave on a few days would stop us from binge eating carbs and causing ourselves to overeat.

This process was never intended to be achieved over night, or as an immediate fix to my weight problem. This became the start to my journey. At my next PCP (primary care provider) appointment I informed her that I felt I needed to lose weight. She said she agreed. She put me on the scale and took my A1C. To my surprise, my weight had topped off at 370 lbs. in 2016, and on this day in 2022 my doctor said my weight was 330 lbs. So, in 6 years I had only managed to lose 40 lbs. and was still a diabetic and had become insulin dependent. I also was having high blood pressure issues. All of these things really bothered me... but the thing that bothered me the most was when she told me that my A1C was 10.4. Wow, that was high for me, in fact the highest I had ever been for my diabetic numbers. I asked her what I needed to do. She said cut my calorie intake down, start walking around more, and eat less food. She said cut out my sugar intakes and stop drinking soda/pop. I said that she was trying to kill me. Her response was NO, if you keep eating and doing the things the way you are currently you will be killing yourself and that it could be sooner than I expected.

I went home and had the largest carb meal I could make. I was frustrated and freaked out. So again, I ate my feelings, which was only making things worse not better. The next day I woke up and had a long talk with my partner. He said he supports me in my decisions but that he wasn't ready to feel like he was starving to death. So, I started my journey. Weighing in at 330 lbs., and an A1C of 10.4, high blood pressure, 27 medications a day, balance issues, stability issues, horrible asthma, sleep apnea, insulin dependent just to name a few issues. I didn't make big changes immediately. I took baby steps. I felt baby steps would allow me to slowly adjust. And slowly it was. I cut down on my amount I ate. I tried to cut out my soda and found that I needed to have some soda. So, for a while I would have soda just not as much as I had been. When I say still have soda, I was drinking about 1.5 liters a day instead of 2 liters a day. Yes, I agree when I type that into this browser damn that was a lot. What was I thinking ... but that is just it... I wasn't really thinking. Over the next several months I continued to decrease food intake, calorie intake and soda. I started to increase my walking, my water intake and proteins. I had learned from a dietician that eating more proteins helped to keep me full longer. So, I increased my daily protein intake and my intake. I also over that period of time decreased my soda intake from 1.5 liters down to about 1 liter a day. Food wise, I decreased my intake from a huge heaping dinner plate down to about 3/4 of a dinner plate and less heaping. I continued again between my dietician appointments and PCP appointments to decrease the bad things and increase the good things. I was working on making habits. Forming habits is important. It gets you to change. Change can be good... and in my case change was good!

About 6-8 months had passed and man it seemed like it was taking forever for my changes to happen. In this time, I had been barely able to lose about 10 lbs. That was barely a little over 1 lb. a month. I felt I needed to step it up a little bit. So, my next several months I dropped myself down to about 8 ounces of food per meal for 3 meals a day. I focused on about 2 oz veggies 5 oz protein 1 oz carb. A few months after that because I noticed I was losing weight just not quite as fast as I had hoped to see, and so I dropped myself to 6oz. 3.5 protein, 1.5 veggies and 1 oz carb. Again, I was losing weight quite a bit more doing this. I saw my inches and lbs. start dropping off me. I hadn't measured my body yet, and I truly do advise you to do so the day you decide to start your weight loss journey. As when you have stalls, your body typically loses inches instead of the lbs.

Let's fast forward a couple months. I had dropped weight from 330 lbs. down to 297 lbs. and was just a couple few short months (this was in October 2022) away from when the surgery team felt I would have gastric sleeve surgery. I still needed to get down to 262lbs, so I had 35 more lbs. to lose in 6 months. I came home from my doctor appointment with surgical team deciding that I was going to attempt the 5 meals a day with about 4oz of food each meal. Focusing mostly on protein and vegetables with a sporadic random bite or two of carbs like mashed potato or rice. I decided I wasn't having carbs with every meal but would do so for maybe 1 of the 5 for the day with no more than 2 of them having carbs. Now when I decided to have carbs, I focused on 1 - 2 bites at most. Normally it was 1 bite of the carb. This was so I was giving myself a taste but not binge eating them.

I ran this plan of eating 5 meals a day, 4 oz. each meal by my dietician. I explained if I eat high carbs, I gain weight. And if I cut them completely out, I binge eat them and gain weight due to cravings. So, I broke the meals down to 1 tsp. bite of the carb, 3 oz. of the protein, and just under 1 oz. of the vegetables. I also explained to my dietician that for accountability I have to weigh myself every day or every other day. If I don't do this, I find I gain weights and can't pinpoint what caused it. So, I do in fact weigh in nearly daily. And my dietician agreed with me, he told me that when you know your body and you know how you function best than it is best to stick to that plan and schedule. My plan that I followed worked well for me. Prior to surgery day, I had lost from my highest weight of 370lbs. down to my surgery day weight of 250lbs. with the total weight loss prior to surgery at 120lbs. I was working on losing the weight for over a year. I felt good and accomplished but due to my health I felt having the surgery to finish my weight loss journey was important. My surgery weight was 250 lbs. and on January 25, 2024, I was 9 months post op for my gastric sleeve surgery. I was down an additional 80lbs. for a total of 200lbs. down. And sitting at around 170lbs. My original goal was (and it still is but I am also ok with if I don't make it that low either) 150 lbs. So, I will focus on slowly losing still and when I have my skin removal surgery it will take some of my weight off me (surgeon said i am carrying probably about 15 lbs. of excess skin weight at least). If that is in fact the truth, then I will be about 5 lbs. from goal.

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