Chicken Soup for the Dieter's Soul (24 page)

“The tunnel starts from under the fridge and leads to this hole that was under his dog house. The mystery why we have a fat dog is solved.”

Reprinted by permission of Jerry King.

Beating the Genes

N
obody’s family can hang out the sign,
“Nothing the matter here.”

Chinese proverb

“Are you carbohydrate sensitive?” my gynecologist asked. I’d asked for thyroid tests because I’d been rapidly gaining weight. Carbohydrate sensitive? Was this something like being lactose intolerant? I liked carbs. Carbs liked me. So what? My tests came back fine, but the weight question remained unanswered. I felt there was something more here.

Fast-forward five years after that carb question. My carbohydrate knowledge amounted to what the media fed us: that thousands of people were jumping on the Atkins low-carb diet. Me? I hated diets.

At my next appointment, my 5’4” frame weighed in at a whopping 201 pounds. Chills ran down my spine, kindling an unfamiliar fear. Just a year before, my fifty-two-year-old mother died on my thirtieth birthday, and she hadn’t even been sick! Her death devastated our family. In hindsight, she harbored many health risks: obesity, untreated high blood pressure, an enlarged heart from childhood rheumatic fever, a maternal grandmother who suffered several strokes before age seventy and a maternal grandfather who had two heart bypass surgeries before age seventy.

It’s apparent now that our family was naive about these health risks that cut Mom’s life short. The doctor blamed her death on pulmonary embolism. The coroner said, “heart attack.” Regardless of the cause, multiple warning signs were present, but ignored.

I was horrified to see the scale read 201. If the above warning signs weren’t enough to scare me, diabetes ran on both sides of the family as well. I suddenly felt that I was up to bat in the ninth inning of the World Series and down in the count by two strikes. My situation weighed heavily on me, both figuratively and literally.

What were my chances of beating the odds stacked against me? After that appointment, I started viewing my life as things being IN or OUT of my control. Period. Genetics, obviously, were “out.” But if I didn’t get a handle on things in my control, I could repeat a sad history if I died young, like Mom.

What I ate was in my control, so I began analyzing meals. Monday: pasta, bread. Tuesday: meat, potatoes, rolls (gobs of butter!). Wednesday: take-out. Thursday: goulash. Friday: take-out—again.

My diet could’ve been a promo for “Carbs-R-Us.” At that moment, I decided my family would not endure heartbreak, as I had in losing Mom so soon. I vowed to cut back on pasta, potatoes, bread, sweets and inactivity.

I learned the difference between “good” and “bad” carbs, and that our bodies actually need good carbs to function correctly. I also learned that serotonin is a chemical in our brains responsible for making us happy. When serotonin levels are low, we feel unhappy. I’m not a scientist, but now I understand that high-carb foods feed the brain’s serotonin levels. As I ingested high-carb foods, I increased the levels in my brain that were low to begin with. My brain liked it and craved more. My body chemistry was actually partly to blame for my cravings!

I started making healthier choices at the grocery store. I cooked similar meals, but with healthier alternatives. I paid attention to portion sizes, often reducing them. Fruits and nuts became standard snacks instead of chocolate. And water—lots of water—replaced soda. My weight dropped significantly. Eventually I stopped eating starchy foods completely and reduced my sugar intake. It wasn’t that I couldn’t eat them, I simply didn’t want them. For the first time, it was working for me!

Nine months later, sixty pounds lighter, five sizes smaller, feeling good and looking great, I joined a fitness gym. My personal trainer taught me to lift weights three days a week and walk on the other days. And surprisingly, I loved it! Muscles appeared out of nowhere. Inches disappeared.

Empowered is now a common word in my vocabulary. I am thrilled with the way I now look and feel. The mirror, once foe, is now my friend. I like what I see. Most importantly, I like who I see. A strong, confident mother, wife and woman; a woman I’ve known all along, but didn’t have the courage to be. The proof is in the low-fat pudding.

Lisa Pemberton

The Bargain

D
o not wait for ideal circumstances, nor the
best opportunities; they will never come.

Janet E. Stuart

I’ve always liked a bargain, so when my doctor sent me to a nutritionist after telling me that losing just five pounds of my excess weight could take thirty pounds of pressure off my aching knees, a deal was struck. I could easily lose a measly five pounds—I was sure of it.

The nutritionist, Nicole, laughed with me when I explained the bargain as she picked up my hand and seriously informed me that it was my best nutritional measure. Using my hand to illustrate proper portion sizes, my palm became the meat portion, my thumb, the fat portion, my fist the cooked vegetables (or fruit) and two fists for raw vegetables or salad.

I was shocked to realize that one can eat too much of a good thing, and that I’d been consuming vegetables sufficient for four or more people! Testing had revealed allergies to several grains, so I eliminated them for a time, later adding grains up to the size of my palm. It was very easy now to “eyeball” the right amount of food, even when we ate out. I would immediately push aside anything over that amount and save it for the “doggie bag” and the next day’s portions. Then came the “E” word.

I love exercise—when I’m done. But starting is difficult, so in keeping with the five-pound bargain theme, motion was added to my day—five minutes at a time.

First, and most difficult, was the morning—five minutes of stretching. Rather than fight the urge to stay abed, I did several stretches IN bed! Stretching out one leg at a time, pressing each heel toward the end of the bed and holding for several seconds felt great, and I was comfortable repeating each side five times. Then raising each leg toward the ceiling, clasping my hands around the thigh, I pulled it toward me while holding a few seconds, again repeating each side five times, took half the five minutes. This wasn’t as hard as I thought!

Second was choosing to park the car in the farthest spot from the building in the lot, forcing a five-minute walk to and from my vehicle. Still energized in the morning from the stay-in-bed “exercise,” I practically crowed on the way in, and the walk out in the evening gave me a bit of time to review the upcoming evening or to plan dinner. Two of the three more times of motion were easily slipped into the workday—by climbing stairs the first five minutes of morning break and walking five minutes before lunch. The last segment of motion was saved for presleep stretching, or if I knew I had a long evening of appointments, I would increase both break and lunch segments by a few minutes and not worry about the evening.

Either way, I’d managed to painlessly add motion to every day! All this energy from five minutes here and there—what a bargain!

The last trick to the bargain was increasing water consumption. I’d playfully dubbed a friend the “water buffalo” for constantly carrying a half-gallon container of water, hiding secret thoughts of shame that I probably should, but never could, do that. My mistake, Nicole told me, was inviting failure by attempting to jump from barely finishing one to two eight-ounce glasses a day to eight full glasses. Instead, we planned for—yep, you guessed it— five smaller glasses. On arising, I chose warm water with a teaspoon of lemon juice, then another small glass of cold water before lunch and dinner, and one small glass of water or cup of tea with lunch and dinner. The juice-glass size relieved guilty feelings of defeat I got when I couldn’t consume the entire contents of a large glass of water, and if I was still thirsty, having a second small glass became another tiny victory.

My goal for the bargain had been to lose one pound a week for five weeks, but that first week I lost the entire five pounds! I paid myself, putting the money I would have paid a weight management program for the week into a jar, and I planned to continue to pay myself weekly until I’d lost the other twenty pounds and had a fair amount of cash to purchase some new (smaller!) clothes. Perhaps the thought of smaller or better-fitting clothes is what motivated me to “up the ante” in consecutive weeks, as I knew it was unrealistic to expect that initial five-pound loss to repeat every week.

Breaking boredom was easy—but it was not without risk. Slipping a few minutes of exercise in as I waited in the copy room for the prints to roll out did gather a few smirks, raised eyebrows and outright laughter on occasion when someone unexpectedly entered the room while I was doing a squat or performing inhaling and exhaling Oxycise breathing exercises, which startled coworkers thought resembled Lamaze breathing for giving birth!

Bargaining is fun no matter what area of life I apply it to. It may have been mind over matter that made the difference as I battled and bargained five pounds at a time rather than holding up the entire goal, but I love bargains, and who wouldn’t rather have five bargains for the “price” of one—no special equipment required!

Delores Christian Liesner

Stroke of Inspiration

M
ake your own recovery the first priority in
your life.

Robin Norwood

It was one of those surreal moments. I was experiencing what was happening, but I was also outside myself, watching it. One minute I was standing at my desk dialing my phone. The next, I was looking at my right arm hanging limply by my side. My brain was telling me to raise my arm and continue dialing. My arm wasn’t getting the message. In an instant, I knew I was having a stroke.

The ride to the ER seemed like a dream. My right arm wouldn’t move, but I kept trying to force it to. My brain was spinning. Two things were certain—my arm wasn’t working, and my obesity was the cause.

At age forty and weighing nearly 300 pounds, I ran a mental check of the past ten years. I had lost 127 pounds a few years before that, and I had successfully kept the weight off for almost six years. But for a number of reasons (or rather, excuses) I had managed to not only put the 127 pounds back on but an additional thirty. My mind went to all the times that I bypassed the exercise classes in favor of watching TV, all the times I had eaten pizza, fries, ice cream—anything but the healthy choices that had led to my weight-loss and maintenance success years earlier. I laid there in the ambulance and later in the hospital mourning the abilities that I had lost in a moment of time. And I laid there cursing myself for losing them due to my own poor choices.

Several grueling tests later, the cause of the stroke was found—an interaction of prescription medicines I was taking. I looked at the doctors in disbelief. My heart was healthy. My arteries were wide open. And the only thing wrong with my brain was the area damaged by the stroke. My weight and sedentary lifestyle didn’t cause the stroke this time.

No matter the cause, I was still in a bad situation: my right hand not working, my balance gone, my nerves shattered. But I had a second chance to ensure that I would not have a stroke due to my lifestyle. And I seized it.

I immediately made plans. My mind was working overtime. I had used an exchange program the last time I had lost the weight. I knew that that was how I wanted to approach my eating again this time. The fried, sugary, buttery choices were gone from my view. Instead, the food pyramid was front and center.

But changing my eating habits was only part of the equation. I had to move again. I wanted to move again. And I prayed I would be able to. I thought back to the exercise classes I had taken. I watched the aerobics videos that I used to do. Heck—I watched the exercise video I was in! I knew I couldn’t move like that right away, but I was determined to get to that point again. I laughed and cried. And I dug my heels in to fight the fight.

Exercise began as physical therapy for several months poststroke. Still, I sweat—literally and figuratively— through three supervised sessions each week. And I “exercised” at home.

I worked hard to regain my balance and to regain the use of my hand. I kept the vision of myself doing an exercise video and walking around the neighborhood firmly in my site. I would watch
Sweatin’ to the Oldies 3
and see myself moving like I used to. I thought of the time in the years before my stroke when I could have done those things and more, but I chose not to. That knowledge hurt.

I made slow changes to my eating. While I made much healthier choices, I was still eating too much. Too much of a good thing isn’t much better than eating the “bad” things I had chosen in the past. The fact that I have always been an emotional eater didn’t help in this situation.

Even though I had lost my ability to move quickly, my emotions didn’t. I was on an hourly roller coaster, going from elation at the progress I was making to anger and regret to sadness and apathy, and ultimately, to fear.

Fear that I wouldn’t recover the way I so desperately wanted to, fear that I would have another stroke, fear that I would die weighing 300 pounds. Fear that I would spend the rest of my life observing rather than participating. And as always, the emotions led me to reach for food. The difference was that instead of reaching for a candy bar, I was reaching for an apple or cereal.