Bill
I lost almost 100 pounds in less than a year. I lost sixteen inches in my waist and even three inches around my neck. I lowered my cholesterol 67 points; my bad LDL’s dropped 73 and my good HDL’s increased 19. Unprecedented results for someone with lifelong weight problems. I have kept the weight off and am confident it will stay off.
That brings me to intimacy. No, sorry, not that kind of intimacy. I’m talking about intimacy with food—my lifelong habit of binge eating while no one noticed. Just me and my calories. But I only binged when I was stressed . . . or when I wasn’t. When I was sad . . . or when I wasn’t. When I was feeling bad about my life . . . or when I wasn’t. Ugh.
I’m pushing fifty years old. Prior to coming to MD Weight Loss, I had gained and lost forty or more pounds four different times as an adult. A no-fat regimen in my mid-twenties. Atkins in my early thirties. South Beach in my late thirties. Smoothies twice a day in my early forties. Each time I lost the weight. And each time I gained all forty back, plus ten more. You do the math.
Every one of these efforts was the dreaded four-letter word . . . diet. (I can think of a few other four-letter words to describe them as well.) Sure, I exercised and tried to get more sleep—yadda, yadda—but it was always a significant deprivation in my intake that triggered the weight loss. I gave something up. And once I stopped giving it up, I “found” all that weight I had lost . . . quickly.
Enter MD Weight Loss. No fads. No gimmicks. No deprivation. It may be one of the biggest clichés around, but Kathleen and Bridget’s approach is not about diet, but about lifestyle. Not all clichés are bad.
Kathleen and her husband, George, who also monitored me throughout the process, each have over thirty years’ experience as a registered nurse and board-certified clinician, respectively, with emphasis on cardiovascular disease and critical care. Bridget has a kinesiology degree and integrative nutrition certificate. The team has chops.
These professionals took the time to get to know me (and my wife, who joined me on the journey—as much to support me as to drop a few pounds herself). They learned where I ate, where I shopped, and where I travelled for work and for pleasure. Rather than steering me away from the routine of my life, they embraced it—and taught me how to eat normal food, at normal places, like a normal person . . . and lose weight doing it. Whoa.
MD Weight Loss showed me how to read, measure, or accurately estimate the calories and nutrition in food. They taught me how to record what I ate and drank (the technology is super easy). It then became simple math. I starting taking in less calories than I needed to maintain my current weight, and the fat fell off. I ate three normal meals a day and snacked when I was hungry. A normal way to live.
That’s where the second “I”—integrity—comes in. Previously, I might have guessed the calories in a sandwich or how many Doritos I ate (and usually guessed low, right?). I might have said, “well, I had a couple of light beers last night.” About 200 calories. The integrity comes in to say, “Actually, I had four beers last night, one of which was a high-calorie IPA.” 600 calories. And I probably made some bad food choices before bed. Sad, but true . . . for most of my life. Confronting this intimacy with integrity broke the vicious cycle and helped me grow as a person while I shrank as a person.
Routine meetings with Kathleen and Bridget involved weigh-ins (more integrity), but also better intimacy through candid conversations about the decisions I was making and how they reflected the kind of human being I aspired to be. Kathleen knows when to wag her finger and be stern, when to console and be gentle, and when to admit she doesn’t have the answer. Bridget is the queen of food science. It continues to amaze me the vast differences among food calories at my favorite haunts, especially my own kitchen and my kitchen-away-from-kitchen, Wawa.
I started to see how food affected—and often dictated—my routine and my mood. When I started this journey, I was the proverbial “live to eat” person. Now I strive to eat to live more often. I still have my days and my nights. I still binge. But it’s now part of a broader lifestyle involving awareness, moderation, and big-picture thinking. Intimacy and integrity, working together. Who knew?
I’m proud that my wife and I have referred more than twenty (and counting) friends and relatives to MD Weight Loss. I’m proud that my family has lost almost 400 pounds (and counting), with one brother on the verge of surpassing my tonnage decrease! We are taking far fewer medications. No more sleep apnea. Significantly lower risks for Type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and joint replacement. Longer life expectancy, lower health care costs, higher quality of life, higher self-esteem . . . and more pleasant to be around. What’s that return on investment? Priceless?
We are blessed to have MD Weight Loss in our lives.
