Obsessed: America's Food Addiction--And My Own (19 page)

I also have found that letting myself eat a little more “normally” has opened me up to fears that I will revert to past behaviors. Now that I allow myself a little more of the foods I like while I am on the road, the hunger pangs sometimes seem to grow
worse. In fact, I am sometimes voracious. I am desperately afraid that will lead me to start bingeing again.

Obviously, I still have some work to do.

As I keep up my side of the bargain, Diane has managed to shave off sixty pounds with a weight-loss plan that seems solid. After signing up with D’Mario Sowah as her personal trainer, she is becoming much more physically active and following the healthy eating plan he recommends. She’s on her way!

Here is Diane’s account of what is going on with her.

The initial sessions at the gym were discouraging. I was so out of shape and so fat, I couldn’t even get up off the floor mats without help from D’Mario. Fearful of losing my balance and falling, I felt like someone a lot older than I am
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But D’Mario was a rock of support. True to his philosophy at Akua Ba, he started from the inside out, working on my attitude first. “It wasn’t the physical weight that I noticed when you started at the gym. I saw the emotional and mental weight,” D’Mario told me later. Pulling me out of the emotional depths where I had landed was as important as helping me make progress physically, he said
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“I had to find words that were true and were encouraging to let yourself go as far as forgetting about the journey to lose weight, and just letting the process apply itself. That was the first thing I was thinking: let’s get her to start. I didn’t want you to be thinking, I’ve got to lose weight! I’m fat! I’m this and that and that! I wanted you to just think, okay, I’m going to Akua Ba, I’m going to take one day at a time.”

With D’Mario’s encouragement and Mika’s cheerleading, it
started to work. I became a regular at Akua Ba, working out at least three times a week for at least an hour at a time. I was the fattest person in a room full of clients who mostly looked like finely toned athletes to me. But the workouts were so challenging I couldn’t really focus on anything else. Using my considerable body weight as the resistance was more interesting and more difficult than using the machines I had been accustomed to at other gyms. Whether I was doing modified pushups and planks or pulling myself up from a nearly seated position, I was working hard
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D’Mario treated every bit of progress as though I had won the Boston marathon. The day I got up from the mat without his help he fell to the ground shouting, “She did it!” and beat his hands on the floor. Good thing we were the only ones there, but I was grinning like a fool
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He had such empathy and really understood the damage my weight had done, not only to my body, but to my mind. “What stuck in my head,” he recalled, “was the story you told me about one of your speaking engagements where an audience member stood up and commented that you had gained a lot of weight. That always stayed with me. I’m always pushing my clients to be successful, but I feel a special dedication to you, because I never wanted you to feel like that again. Ever.”

I was on the road toward weight loss again, but this time it had to be different. It just had to stick. Not only was I wearing plus-sized clothes, but for the first time I was really seeing the health damage my weight was causing. I started Mika’s challenge in October 2011, and a month later my doctor put me on medication to lower my blood
pressure. That was discouraging, but I clung to the hope that losing as little as 10 percent of my body weight could reverse that
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But there was something else; the nagging ache in my left hip, which had been diagnosed as bursitis, was becoming more and more painful. When I wasn’t at the gym, I was nearly sedentary, nursing the hip with either heat packs or ice packs. It really hit me when my husband said, “Do you realize you haven’t gotten out of that chair all weekend, except to eat and go to the bathroom?”

Honestly, I hadn’t realized how much the pain in my hip had changed my life. I was turning down social and business invitations, because it took everything I had just to get through the day at work. I couldn’t walk the dog more than a block or two. I’d been in pain for nearly three years and had tried physical therapy and medication. They had worked initially, but the relief didn’t last. I was running out of options
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After my orthopedist took another X-ray, he asked bluntly, “Ever seen a German shepherd dragging its hind legs? That’s hip dysplasia, and that’s what you have. Eventually you will need that hip replaced.” I was ashamed and embarrassed. Had my eating brought me to this point? Had my weight worn out my hip? The doctor never said so, but I was sure it was just one more shameful way I had allowed obesity to mar my life. At first I was afraid to tell my family, my friends, my colleagues, even Mika
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I got a second opinion, and when that surgeon told me the hip had been worn down to “bone on bone,” I knew it was time. The soonest the doctor could schedule me for total hip replacement was February. I choked up when I told D’Mario about my impending surgery, sure that my plans to lose weight and meet Mika’s challenge were crushed. I should have known that he wasn’t going to let me drop out in despair. Instead he promised, “After that surgery, you’re
going to lose even more weight. You’re just going to keep going, like a tiger let out of a cage.”

D’Mario brought in a new trainer, Andy DeVito, who had experience in helping people recover from injuries and surgery. Andy spent several weeks prepping me for surgery, helping me strengthen the muscles around my hip and build strength in my upper body. It was another good match. Andy, too, was incredibly supportive and gracious. I asked him later about his impression of me, and he was very kind. “One of the first things I really noticed is your smile. Your energy was just so positive. I could see that you were working hard, and you were in a lot of pain, and I really appreciated the effort you were putting into this. I could see how hard it was for you to do the things most people take for granted, just being able to get up and down from the floor, get in and out of the car, or take a flight of stairs.”

Andy is also a trained chef who specializes in healthy cooking, and he started coaching me on my eating. His dietary approach focused on reducing refined starches, processed foods, and alcohol. In their place he substituted lean protein, fiber, fruits, and vegetables, and kept telling me to drink a lot of water
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I was getting stronger, but my weight wasn’t going down much, despite Andy’s help. I knew that keeping a food journal could help keep me honest and aware, but frankly, I was too distracted to do it. I wanted to believe D’Mario and Andy when they told me the impending surgery would be a short detour in my progress, and that I would eventually get back on the road to wellness and weight loss. But in my heart I wasn’t sure
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Just after Valentine’s Day 2012, I got a shiny new titanium hip. Two hours after I was off the operating table, the nurses had me standing using a walker, and I took a few steps down the hall. At that moment, something just clicked in my head: I had been given a second chance, and I was going to make the most of it
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The next day I learned that eleven laps around the joint replacement unit were equivalent to walking a mile—and I set my mind on doing two miles. I did, with the whole staff cheering me on as I passed the nurses’ desk again and again. I texted D’Mario and Andy with the good news
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“That brought a tear to my eye, I was so happy,” said Andy. “When we’re working with people, we take it very personally. And when a client does well, it makes me feel good about myself, too.”

At the hospital, there was a daily afternoon reception for patients and their families. I noticed that several of the patients having hips replaced were younger than me, and some of them were very lean. They had worn out their joints through tennis, skiing, martial arts, and other sports. In talking to them I felt some of my shame melting away. Maybe this would work out after all
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I was out of the gym more than eight weeks, but Tom and I walked the halls of our condo building every day. At first I used a walker, then a cane, and eventually I was on my own. My friend Joan came and walked with me, giving me some security in those early days when I wasn’t too steady on my feet. An occupational therapist showed me I could climb stairs again and so I did, several times a day. The pain was easing, and I was enjoying the walking. It still wasn’t doing much for my weight, though. I had gone from 256 pounds at the beginning of my pact with Mika to about 248 by the time I was cleared by my surgeon to go back to the gym
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As I was healing from the hip replacement, I had to follow certain precautions, but Andy found plenty of ways to challenge me during our workouts. He created an integrated program with point-specific, body-weight rehabilitation exercises, such as hip abductions, which I could do while lying on a bench. We also worked on functional body movements incorporating resistance bands and medicine balls and other exercises to correct my body alignment
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For balance and lateral movement, we incorporated Pilates-based core and leg exercises and added boxing drills. We avoided getting down on the floor (a no-no in the early weeks of recovery) and instead focused on exercises I could do standing or lying on a bench. When we added elastic resistance bands around my ankles, I felt as though I had a sandbag weighing down my surgical hip whenever I did leg lifts. Andy promised that would get better, and it did. “I’ve always enjoyed puzzles, and when I look at the human body, it’s just a puzzle to me,” Andy said. “So my whole philosophy is looking at your body and saying, ‘What can we do to take care of this? We needed to strengthen the surgical area, help you regain your balance, and work at reducing the limp.’”

Andy’s faith that we could fix this, and that I would improve, made all the difference
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A few weeks into my recovery, I decided I needed another weight-loss plan. Akua Ba’s healthy eating guidelines weren’t dramatic enough for someone with so much weight to lose. The pounds were coming off too slowly. I needed a clean break: a way to change my bad habits, reduce portion sizes, and stop looking for that glass of wine
every night. After all the diets I had tried and failed, I knew I needed more professional help and support
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