ROUTINE, PERSEVERANCE, AND A LOT OF SELF LOVE HELPED KATE OVERCOME HER WEIGHT ISSUES.

For most of Kate’s adult life, she battled with her weight. From a loss of a partner to a stressful job, the reasons why she struggled were numerous. She tried many diets to lose the weight only to quickly regain the weight that she had lost. She was frustrated and felt hopeless that she would ever gain the control needed to keep the weight off. A lifestyle shift needed to take place. She made several changes in her life, from activity, medications, and explored her relationship with her food. She reached a milestone this year. She is now down over 100lbs and is still learning more and more about herself every day. This is her story.

What do you think was the largest contributor to your weight gain over the years?

Where do I begin? What do I say? There are so many factors: low self-esteem, being a workaholic, stress, no energy, bad eating habits, using food as a reward, depression, not exercising, feeling hopeless about where I was going in my life, and more. I suppose the largest contributor was my low self-esteem and lack of confidence. Perhaps if I believed in myself, I may not have gained the weight. It is too hard to know the one biggest factor for me.

There are many factors to your weight loss over the year. What do you think was the largest contributor to your weight loss?

It has taken me at least a year to hit my goal. I think there are four main factors that helped me with my weight loss:

First, I started walking every day. There were several starts as pain began to occur and I had to seek out physiotherapy. This slowed me down, but for some reason I knew that I needed to start moving and keep moving. Once my injuries healed, I was back to walking again.

Secondly, I started a routine around breakfast. I cannot tell you why (psychologically) that this ended up working as I have never been a breakfast eater once I left home. However, I retired and was perhaps more ready for the change. Somehow this stuck with me and it has been a mainstay of my eating pattern.

Thirdly, I started seeing Jason Hagen at Group23 to help coach and support my weight issues and personal issues. A person outside of my environment was crucial to my success. No matter how I felt when I went in, I left my sessions feeling more hopeful. I needed a lot of support and unlike family he has been there for me all the way and never tires of my feelings and thoughts regarding my weight.

Fourthly, I was feeling desperate to lose weight. By happenstance, my doctor said that she had some patients who were finding some success with Saxenda, a prescription weight-loss medication, and that I might want to give it a try. I decided that I needed a boost to start to see the scale move downwards. This did happen on Saxenda and helped motivate me to keep on going.

What advice would you give to anyone that is starting their lifestyle change?

My advice is to get a weight management coach. They are there to support you through the rough times and times of success. They help you to think differently and dig deep. They will be kinder to you than you will be to yourself and this support is invaluable.

Eventually, you become to understand that what you are eating and the exercising you are doing are connected to your weight. This sounds inane as we all know this. However, I believe we come to understand this at a deeper level than we have ever known.

Start walking or doing something that you like to do to move. Write it down.

Write down what you eat every day. Writing things down was a way to monitor, adjust, and feel like I was progressing whether it be my food intake, habits, and exercise

Weigh yourself and write it down.

Try not to be too hard on yourself when things do not go your way. Just keep on trying, eventually it works.

Do not diet! Try to find foods that you like, that are healthy for you and gradually add them to your eating pattern. Find out what you can eat that you can control the intake amounts. If you cannot control the intake of that food, keep it out of the house.

Do not give up cookies or any food. Just have them when you are out so you will not eat as many.

Be patient. I was never patient about my weight loss over the years. I had to realize that this was going to take a long time and I had to face that fact. It will be a slow and a sometimes-difficult journey, but persistence is key.

What do you think will always be a struggle in keeping your weight off?

My nighttime eating habits have been a struggle and continue to be a struggle.

My desire to eat sweets, especially when I feel low or need a pick me up.

Kate has since come off appetite regulating medications months ago. That takes courage. Her walking routine has become a protected, sacred time. She has moved from beating herself up to really understanding her environments and behaviours. She is gentle on herself allowing her to recognize behaviours and become a problem solver rather than a problem. Kate recognizes the behaviours that lead her to overeating and is continually working on them. Her willingness to continue to be self-aware is inspiring. Weight management is an awareness story. The goal is never a number on the scale, rather a way of living. We can’t predict everything in our life that may lead to weight gain, but we can recognize circumstances in our lives that may want our weight to go up, and respond accordingly.