Obsessed: America's Food Addiction--And My Own (12 page)

After surgery Bette needed none of that. She was off all her medications, worked out almost daily at a gym, started riding a motorcycle, and trained to be an emergency medical technician. She even posed nude for an art class. It was obvious the weight loss had transformed her life, and I suspect it may have even saved it
.

But like most medical procedures, bariatric surgery has its down-sides
,
and I saw some of those up close with Bette. Vomiting, nausea, nighttime acid reflux, and other postoperative complications can be enduring problems. Bette also had a significant amount of loose skin, and considered extensive plastic surgery to get rid of it
.

Still, bariatric surgery was tempting. There are a number of possible approaches, but as I did my research, I was not entirely surprised to learn that none of them are the perfect fix they appear to be. Never mind the TV stars you see showing off their sexy new bodies after bariatric surgery. It is definitely not that simple
.

The procedure does change your life, but some of the long-term implications are daunting. I wasn’t sure I could live permanently on a diet that counts a half cup of food as a full meal, requires that you chew your food to the consistency of a fine paste, and advises you not to eat food and drink liquids at the same time
.

I was also concerned about one common and often permanent side effect of “gastric bypass,” which is a type of bariatric surgery that involves disconnecting the stomach from the small intestine and connecting it to the large intestine instead. The side effect, called
dumping syndrome,
happens when the undigested contents of the stomach move too rapidly into the small bowel. When people who have had the surgery eat sweets, dairy, fats, or carbohydrates they sometimes get very ill with symptoms that can include weakness, feeling faint, nausea, sweating, cramping, and diarrhea
.

I had watched two other friends struggle with the aftermath of bariatric surgery. One woman about my age had a procedure called
vertical sleeve gastrectomy.
Her surgeon removed 85 percent of her stomach. She chose that procedure because it avoids some of the side effects and weight regain that can accompany gastric bypass. Still, a full meal for her is about three ounces of food, and she must be constantly vigilant about what she eats. The other friend is much
younger, barely out of her teenage years, and she spent weeks in a hospital and months in recovery after complications from her gastric bypass
.

Despite all that, both women considered the procedure to be a life saver. But they were also substantially heavier than I am. With a BMI of 38, I was just below the level that officially qualified for the surgery, though I’m pretty sure I could have persuaded a doctor to take me on as a patient
.

Another downside was the cost. The lap band procedure can cost between $8,000 and $30,000. My insurance company would have paid for it if I had a BMI of 40 or above, or a BMI of 35 coupled with a comorbidity, such as diabetes. Thankfully, I had no comorbid conditions
.

All the medical literature says the surgery is to be used only as a last resort. It might have been worth paying for it out of pocket if it was truly my only option, but I couldn’t convince myself of that, despite my long and checkered career as a dieter. Wouldn’t it really be better to improve my eating habits and exercise more? Reluctantly, I ruled out surgery. There had to be another way
.

At the time Mika hit me over the head about my weight, I was in deep denial about how dire my situation was. I was in my mid-fifties and weighed 250 pounds. There, I said it. 250 pounds. I can hardly breathe just writing down that number on the page. It is so shocking, even to me. I weighed more than some NFL players
.

At the time Mika hit me over the head about my weight, I was in deep denial about how dire my situation
was. I was in my mid-fifties and weighed 250 pounds
.—Diane

How did this happen? I look in the mirror and I cannot believe what I see. I was never skinny, but at size 10, I was once described by a TV critic as “comely.” Now I am pushing a
size 20?
My heart is pounding as I read and reread this line, but I’ll say it again: 250 pounds
.

“You’re fat,” Mika said. I was
.

I began to craft a program that I hope will bring long-term permanent change. I’m done with promises of a quick fix, and I know from experience that restricting what I eat is not enough. After years of yo-yo dieting, I know firsthand that people who don’t exercise lose muscle and fat while dieting, but when they rebound, they gain back the fat
.

The first thing I needed to do was to get off the couch and into the gym. But with all my pains, aches, and general loss of fitness, I was nervous about getting injured. Those stress fractures in my feet, which developed after the ambitious weight-loss program I had started several years earlier, eventually led to a raft of related orthopedic problems. For several years I had been in and out of physical therapy. I couldn’t afford to go through all of that again
.

I asked my doctor and my physical therapist how to transition from physical therapy into the gym without injury, but neither had a solid recommendation. I’d worked with trainers on and off with some success, but this time I needed someone who could also address the myriad medical issues I was developing. I looked at several
hospital-sponsored programs, but most were targeted at cardiac patients
.

The more I looked, the less I was convinced I could find a trainer and a gym that could really help me. I knew I couldn’t afford another injury, and besides, in my current condition I was less than enthusiastic about being surrounded by Skinny Minnies. Then two very caring friends came to me with a suggestion (you might even call it an intervention). They were getting great results with a trainer who had a radically new approach and a rare ability to motivate clients and inspire change
.

My friend Anna is fit and athletic, but she’d had to undergo knee surgery. She said this trainer had helped her to heal, and to take her workouts to a new level. The other friend is a TV weatherman whose weight had climbed to over three hundred pounds. Joe was a longtime colleague, and I knew he had struggled with his weight for years. He was turning fifty, and had recently lost eighty pounds and maintained the loss. He said he was in better shape than he had been in his days playing college football. The trainer, he told me, counseled him on nutrition and “gets inside your head.”

At their urging, I looked into Akua Ba Fitness, a one-on-one training center in West Hartford operated by D’Mario Sowah. I needed someone special. My fear of being injured again, coupled with my embarrassment about my size, called for someone who could go above and beyond the usual requirements. It was a tough combination to deal with, but I was lucky enough to meet someone who could. D’Mario is a master trainer who is experienced and well versed in fitness and anatomy. The small size of his studio also meant I would have some privacy—definitely a plus
.

In terms of life circumstances, D’Mario and I are polar opposites. He is a young African American born in Ghana, plucked from
an orphanage and forced into slavery as a child soldier. As we worked out together, I slowly learned his extraordinary life story, including his escape that led him to America. The way he rebuilt his life is incredibly uplifting
.

D’Mario’s regimen involves healthy eating and a training method that foregoes most exercise equipment, relying instead on using your own body weight as the resistance in your workout. At our first meeting he analyzed my fitness level (virtually nonexistent) and talked to me about my goals and my failure to lose weight over the last fifteen years. My tears flowed (again), and in spite of our differences I sensed the inner spirit of this man, his nurturing soul. About my weight and my awful physical condition, D’Mario simply said, “Lay down that burden; that burden is mine to carry now.”

About my weight and my awful physical condition, D’Mario simply said, “Lay down that burden; that burden is mine to carry now.”
—Diane

No one had ever referred to my weight like that before; as a burden I had been carrying. And yet of course it was. I had felt so much shame because I had not been able to rid myself of it. I felt like a failure after all the false starts, all the dashed hopes of recent years
.

Through my career I had been seen as a winner: popular, talented, and able to reinvent myself every time a curve ball was thrown my way. When I was downsized from my position as a news anchor, I became a morning talk show host at the biggest radio station in the state, and landed a contract to produce and host programs at the PBS network in Connecticut. I turned my TV work into six successful books
.

But at the age of fifty, after I was downsized from the radio job and had my PBS work outsourced after ten successful years, I was
shaken. And now I couldn’t even control my own body. I was fat and feeling miserable
.

It wasn’t easy for me to let go of the sunny personality I showed the world, but D’Mario let me see that I could, at least in the privacy of our training sessions. “I want you to let go of the pain and just believe,” he said. “That’s hard, but I want to help you see that this is just a stage of your life, and there is a lot more ahead for you.”

So I started Mika’s challenge with new optimism. Little did I know that a major health crisis would derail my plan, and that I would spend months getting back on track. This journey was going to be a bumpy ride
.

M
Y STORY, WITH
M
AYOR
M
ICHAEL
B
LOOMBERG
,

G
OVERNOR
C
HRIS
C
HRISTIE
, R
EBECCA
P
UHL
,

S
ENATOR
C
LAIRE
M
C
C
ASKILL
, D
R
. D
AVID
K
ATZ
,

D
AVID
K
IRCHHOFF
, F
RANK
B
RUNI
, G
AYLE
K
ING
,

D
R
. E
MILY
S
ENAY
, L
ISA
P
OWELL
, D
R
. E
ZEKIEL
E
MANUEL
,

A
SHLEY
G
EARHARDT
, M
ICHAEL
P
RAGER
, J
OE
S
CARBOROUGH
,

B
RIAN
S
TELTER
, D
R
. R
OBERT
L
USTIG
, K
IMBER
S
TANHOPE
,

L
EWIS
C
ANTLEY

N
ot long ago on
Morning Joe
, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg made a startling statement. “This year more people in the world will die of the complications of overweight than from starvation.”

Have we all really turned into gluttons? Are we all poorly disciplined and lacking character? It just can’t be that our nation’s collective weight problem is entirely our fault as individuals. With so many Americans overweight, something else must be going on. Each of us may have our own challenges, but it is the nation that has an obesity crisis. As New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said, it is ignorant “to believe that being overweight is merely a function of willpower.”

And yet that is just what we tend to think, says Yale researcher Rebecca Puhl. “The prevailing perception in our culture is that obesity is an issue of lack of willpower, lack of discipline,
or personal responsibility.” Each one of us tends to think we are struggling alone.