Medifast
July Newsletter

Summer greetings to you from the MakeMeThinner Cottage.

The days are lazy and warm here in the northwest as we enjoy a delicious pause between summer and fall. Ripe fruit hangs like sapphires from the vines. Remnants of Independence Day sparklers and fireworks linger along the curb as I write this. July is an especially meaningful month for me. My husband and I celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary on July 3rd and then we celebrated our country’s birthday the next day with family and friends.

Independence Day is a big deal here in The Couve. We live a short distance from Fort Vancouver where the biggest fireworks display west of the Mighty Mississip lights up the sky as more than 1200 pyrotechnic explosives are launched from a barge in the Columbia River. Some people refer to it as “The Fourth,” kids call it “Sparkler Day” but I prefer the term, Independence Day. In my lifetime, I have truly experienced a different kind of Independence Day – I am now free. I am free at last from flab and free from its bondage!

Recently a friend was over and he said that the average person quits smoking 8 times before they are successful. He quit smoking 16 times. The sixteenth time was the very last time he quit smoking. He is now a non-smoker and healthier for it. Maybe foodies need to quit certain foods more than one time!

People who knew me BM and AM (Before Medifast and After Medifast) often ask me if I ever eat REAL food.

They’ll say, “Do you eat THAT stuff (Medifast) all the time?”

Yes, I DO eat THAT stuff ALL the time – every day – because I like how I feel when I eat it, I like what it does for me nutritionally, I like how I look and I like the convenience of Medifast. I also like the fact that it is low in calories – it allows me to eat whatever else I want to eat! Like pie. (As far as I’m concerned, the only way to celebrate the 4th of July is by having a slab of chocolate truffle pie or a blueberry tart!)

For the first time in my life, I have maintained my weight for longer than fifteen minutes.

It’s hard to believe that just two years ago I was a major foody. Shortly after Independence Day 2002, I quit consuming barges of food and started on my very last weight loss journey.

In 2002 I weighed 265 pounds and today I weigh 130 pounds. A friend – a dear, dear friend told me about Take Shape For Life and its featured products. Medifast changed my life. It has made a radical difference in my self-esteem, in our marriage, in my relationships with others, in every aspect of my life.

I lost 135 pounds and regained my zest for living. I am determined to LIVE it up until I die! I am the happiest that I have ever been.

Was losing that much weight a piece of pie, er… a piece of cake?

No! Not all roads to success are paved.

Medifast does, however, make weight loss easier and faster than traditional weight loss programs, it makes becoming a big loser totally “do-able.”

Yes, July 2004 is a festive month for me. It’s filled with adventure and promises of good things to come – picnics and sparklers. July is a time to celebrate as I embark on a new adventure – Whee! I am leaving my job at the college to make myself fully available to you, my MakeMeThinner followers. Next Friday Terry and I are leaving town to attend the upcoming Take Shape For Life Summer Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

We recently celebrated our wedding anniversary with a toast of Medifast cappuccino but not too long ago our life was not so wonderful…

There was something coming between my husband and me.

Oh, I noticed her immediately and I thought perhaps she would go away but you know, she never really did.

I ignored her after a while but her presence progressively crept into our lives. She was gradually taking away the time Terry and I used to spend together enjoying swimming, hiking, riding the bumper cars at the beach and other fun things.

Eventually she seemed to invade all aspects of our life – our social life, my self-esteem, our intimacy. She may have been subtle initially but she was a destroyer, nevertheless.

She appeared to be charming, carefree and jolly but she was none of those things. She was insidious, she was dangerous.

My husband Terry and I met in 1965 while I was still in high school and we have been together all these years and SHE was about to destroy not only our marriage, but our health and our very lives.

She’s gone now – I lost her – thanks to Medifast, all 135 pounds of her is gone, gone, gone! That’s right; I lost a whole other person. I am truly half the woman I used to be and lemme tell ya, it is great to be set free from the chains of obesity!

I had totally given up hope of ever losing the other woman. I had not been overweight as a child, experienced some weight gains in high school and was able to diet and exercise it away during the summer break.

In college I belonged to that great sorority, “I Ate-a Pie” and gained some weight while living on campus but it never got truly out of control for me. I got diet pills from the campus infirmary and dropped 20 pounds, just like that! Speed will do it – it amps up your brain, you can stay up late at night and study and never hunger for anything but an occasional Snicker Bar and a bottle of Coke and be just fine for days.

I began to have food issues during an extremely traumatic time in my life and then I got totally out of control. I spent years and $ going on every diet plan and weight loss program known to woman. My weight fluctuated like an elevator moving between stories. Up and down I’d go, constantly dieting, gaining, losing, and dieting. Dying really.

By the time I was 53. I was stuck. I had been asking my health care provider for help with my weight for years. I asked for help, attended workshops, classes, read the latest books and then reached my lowest point of being referred to a bariatric surgeon to see if gastric by-pass surgery was an option for me.

People who weigh one hundred pounds over their ideal weight are considered clinically or morbidly obese. It is generally considered a life-threatening condition. My life was curtailed. I had no life. I was depressed and had given up. I thought if I could go to sleep, have a surgeon carve away half of my stomach and keep me knocked out for twelve months, I could awaken flab-free like Sleeping Beauty to the kiss of my Prince Charming.

Now that was a fairy tale all right. I hardly ever slept because my husband snored and had gastric reflux to the point that it was like hot molten lava erupting every night. Between his gurgling and my joint pain, my life was a nightmare. During daylight hours. I longed for a Rip Van Winkle spell to be cast upon me, to go to sleep for a very long time and to be able to forget about my obesity, my cellulite encrusted life and my self-imposed limitations but all I did was awaken with an empty ice cream carton at my side, a thicker moustache and longer hair on my arms…

Sadly stomach surgery was not my bag – I like to bake and cook and eat and I absolutely do not want to have to avoid pie for the rest of my days! Throwing up makes me sick to my stomach. Besides, gastric surgery is costly and people who have it must take handfuls of vitamins and other supplements and often end up with excess skin. I did not have enough money for the bariatric surgery unless I sold my car, let alone having to come up with the money for a body lift! We may live in a Nip ‘n Tuck Nation but that is not the way I wanted to go.

Obesity is now considered to be the leading cause of PREVENTABLE death in America, killing over 300,000 people – that’s 300,000 Moms, Daddies, daughters, and sons, every year.

To me ‘the other woman’ was not only life-threatening but she was life-limiting, too.

I had trouble breathing and sounded like a freight train when I slept. The circulation in my feet and legs was lousy, my blood pressure was climbing, and my joints were being ground away. Arthur had moved in – don’tcha just hate that old Arthur-itis? Obesity and osteoarthritis are best buddies – arthritis caused pain in my weight bearing joints – my hips, knees, ankles and feet. It was a merely a matter of time before I would be faced with diabetes, stroke and heart disease due to my family history.

Besides the physical problems that obese people face, there are many social and psychological effects as well.

When I weighed 265 pounds, I had to shop in the Women’s Department of major department stores – what’s with that anyway? I had to buy Queen-size stockings and they never quite really came up high enough to fit my body.

Don’tcha hate it when ya finally get a pair of fannyhose pulled up and the crotch is half-way between your thigh and your bod? Worse than that – Queen-size stockings never come in awesome leopardy prints, they don’t come in an iridescent purple color and I never could find fishnets in my size… guess I couldda had them custom designed and made from the netting used on a Russian fishing trawler!

I could never drop in to browse at trendy little boutiques in sleepy little towns because they rarely carried custom-sized clothing and the aisles were so close together that my bulky buns knocked clothes off the rack onto the floor and I was too fat to stoop over and pick them up. Trying on clothing in one of those dinky booths was a near impossibility. I usually grabbed something ordinary off of the rack, took it home and tried it on in the privacy of our bedroom. I’d look in the mirror with one eye closed, I was afraid of seeing my own robust reflection. I imagined that our antique mirrors gave a distorted reflection of my true size.

My flabbage was preventing me from dressing in unique ways - I hated wearing what all the other fat ladies were wearing. Obese people have a limited choice of clothing sizes and styles. Scarves and fancy pins really do not draw the eye upward and away from fifty-three inch hips.

It was not comfy to sit in a theater seat so we rarely went out. Terry was relieved to be saved from attending the opera or a ballet. I had to remove the center arm rest and confiscate half of Terry’s space to travel by airplane and it definitely was not comfy to sit in a booth at a restaurant. I longed to go to a theme park but was terrified that my girth wouldn’t permit me to go on some of the rides.

Although I was never treated with disrespect by my physician, I felt that at times the medical staff at the clinic spoke to me insensitively – I vividly recall having to be weighed numerous times when there were others in the area that could see my weight on the scale and hear the nurse announcing my weight as she recorded it in my health chart. One time my hip was hurting me to the max and I could barely make it down the hall to the exam room. Nurse Sternfinger slowed down, turned and narrowed her eyes at me and announced in a too loud voice that if I lost some weight my hip wouldn’t hurt so much. I was humiliated.

While lying on the exam table, my physician had difficulty locating my ovaries and other organs because of my obesity. I was mortified when the nurse had to go and get a larger cuff to measure my blood pressure. My breasts did not fit on the ‘normal size’ plate when I had mammograms and I had to wait with them dangling as the technician searched for a queen-size plate on which to compress them. My breasts were so flabby and dense that every year for four years in a row I had to have ultrasounds to be sure the lumps I felt and the dark areas on the X-ray were lipid lumps and not cancerous tumors. My bra size went from a 44 DD with elastic extenders to my current size, 36 C. My husband couldn’t shop for me at Victoria’s Secret before Medifast! They don’t carry Queen Size teddies…not a pretty picture, is it?

Independence from flabbage is a good thing.

We were invited to a barbecue last week and I wore shorts to our friends’ house. During daylight hours. Because I can.

For the first time in my life I jumped on a trampoline and I had so much fun. Because I can. My friend Ky-el held my hands and jumped with me. I wasn’t ashamed or embarrassed about my body and I giggled, roared and snorted. I jumped with sweet abandon. Because I can.

Terry had a beautiful wispy skirt and body-hugging fitted knit blouse hand-designed and sewn for me to wear to the TSFL Summer Conference next week. Because he can.

Independence Day started for Terry and me on July 16th, 2002, the first day we took control and slurped our first shake. One day at a time, one shake at a time, we moved closer to Independence Day. The gastric reflux Terry suffered for years is now part of history – with his first day on Medifast, he shook his volcanic gastric eruptions away and he no longer takes Prylosec™. For the most part, the buzz saw snoring disappeared along with his bulging belly. Terry lost 60 nasty pounds and as ever, he is adorable!

Independence Day does not have to be July 4th. My Independence Day was February 14th, the day I reached my goal weight, seven months from the best decision I’ve ever made. It was D-Day for me – Decision Day - the day I decided to take back control of my life and live it to the fullest!.

Independence from obesity is possible with Medifast.

What’s coming between you and success?