Steve Shares His Weight Loss Success
Seymour resident Steve loves his job as vice principal at Harborside Middle School in Milford, Connecticut, where, as at any middle school, there are always challenges. But one challenge he didn’t anticipate arose during a team meeting when — sizable guy that he was at the time — he sat down and snapped off the back of the chair.
Steve’s Story
“You really never know how big you are,” 37-year-old Steve says 15 months after his Lap Band surgery and a whopping 110 lbs ‘smaller.’ “For me, that was the moment that did it.”
In high school and college he’d been an athlete, playing and coaching football and running track and field. Back in the day, even at 280 lbs, all that weight had an altogether different aspect. “You’re seen as big and strong, not fat,” Steve remembers. “But years later, at 315 lbs, it’s a different story.”
He’s very aware how he got to that point. “I was always busy with no time to eat right during the day. Then I’d come home and eat whatever wasn’t nailed down. I’d get into that yo-yo diet thing. Lose weight, but go right back to old habits and gain it all back.”
His wife, Denise, and family were quietly concerned about his weight, but didn’t know how to address it. In addition, Steve was having anxiety as well as severe sleep apnea and had to use a machine at night. Lately he was having trouble with the machine. Between that and the chair incident at school, he could no longer avoid facing a situation that was going from bad to worse.
“I contacted a friend who’d had the surgery and was so happy he did it. He told me about Dr. Ehrlich, and I got in touch with him. Everything just came together. My insurance would cover it, and because I was very busy at the time and couldn’t make the seminar in person, I was able to take it online.”
Surgery was scheduled in December of 2008. “But you’ll be on a liquid diet for Christmas!” family members pointed out. “Won’t that be terribly hard?” Turns out, the answer was — no. “I can be a very disciplined person, and I knew that about myself,” Steve explains.
With Dr. Ehrlich’s program further motivating him, he went forward with determination. “I knew if I could do it during that time of the year, I could make it all the way through.” And he did do it. In fact, at Christmas he volunteered to help in the kitchen. “I kept putting delicious foods in the oven and taking them out, but I never even sampled any. And my family was great. Not once did anybody say, ‘Oh, come on — can’t you have just one bite?”
The payoff for that discipline of his has been huge. At 205 lbs, Steve reports feeling so much healthier now, it’s amazing. And his sleep apnea? “It’s gone,” he says happily, “along with that machine and all that anxiety that used to keep me awake.”
References:
The Skinny