Ode to too much snow

 

The beautiful flakes are so innocent. One by one, they gracefully glide to earth, each one unique and wonderful. But enough already! I have had enough of the white stuff and it is only January. I am tired of shoveling. There is no place to put the white stuff at the end of my driveway. January here in Cleveland has produced enough of the white stuff to get into the record books.

 

I know that shoveling can burn nearly 400 calories an hour but I am tired of it and there is still two more months to go. I look at ads for sunny places and I can only wish I was there. Winter is winter and the white stuff comes with the territory when you live in the snowbelt. It is days like today that I wonder why I left South Florida. Oh yea, I hate hurricanes but they seem like a warm breeze compared to digging out of yet another artic blast of the white stuff.

 

Spring will come someday and I just have to wait until then to see the grass in my yard.

Stay warm.

It’s never too late

Dr. Lorilee Schoenbeck, co-author of “Menopause: Bridging the Gap Between Natural and Conventional Medicine.” believes that menopausal women will lose their hourglass appearance.  “It will save them a lot of grief if they will just accept that.”  

This is another piece of rubbish that needs to be dispelled; though I will admit, preventing the loss of your hourglass figure is easier than obtaining it again. 

Patricia Pearson in the June 9, 2004, edition of USA Today was concerned about the media’s attention to “ordinary American women submitting to a months-long regimen of dieting, fitness and plastic surgery, to be not strong and fit, but pretty.”    I agree with Pearson in that “pretty” is not the target; good health is. 

BUT! Nearly everyone with a trim, fit body appears attractive to others. We have forgotten what normal is.  Since two out of three Americans are overweight or obese, when we see a normal weight person we think they are thin or slender.  Sorry, folks but they are usually normal.  Average doesn’t cut it any more since average is over weight or worse.  It is my job to point out reality and then you will have a great chance of fixing your problem.  This process will be life-long and rewarding.  It will be life changing and amazing.  It will be the new you.  This is a Call to Action.

The solution to achieving or maintaining normal weight and good health begins as early as breastfeeding and ends at our last breath.  You are in a position, not to alter the past but to make changes for your children and yourselves that will correct for our past mistakes.  You may becoming a bit late to the table, though it is never too late to make life altering, healthy choices that will provide for the freedom of living life to the fullest.

You can and will make a difference.

The most important thing in life is to show up.  At the end of the day, you will want to be able to say to others:  “I was on the field.” — Quint Studer, National Health Care Consultant 

Dr Philip

His blogs are his own opinions and do not reflect those of his current and past employers. 

Get inspired and volunteer

Like most people my intentions are always better than my actual action plan. In recent years, I have put myself to the task of doing more volunteer work and the rewards of giving my time have been so inspiring to me.

Three years ago I went down to New Orleans to spend a week building new homes outside of New Orleans for displaced victims of Hurricane Katrina.  The homeowners were grateful, the citizens of the town were grateful for our efforts but it was I that was grateful for the new friends I made on the Habitat for Humanity site. I gave my time but I got so much in return that it was worth every minute I hang from a ladder pounding nails.

With that experience in mind, I volunteered again to help launch a new healthy living organization called Live Well Lakewood that I told you about last week. Our first event is over with and it was a wonderful success. Joy Bauer and Dr. Roizen came to help us kick off our campaign. We had around 1,000 people go through our health fair and we got so much positive feedback that we can’t wait to start planning our next event.

 

 

I invited several other Joy Fit Club members to hear Joy’s talk. Shelley Napier had lost 206 pounds and Kathy Stewart had lost 146 pounds. We sat there listening to Joy inspire others to eat healthy and respect food. At the end of her talk, I asked them what they thought and we all agreed that Joy’s inspired us to keep on track. We all agreed that we would never go back to your former way of eating and we totally embrace our new lives and will keep those thoughts front and center as we begin another year on this side of being thin.

 

 

 

Her words not mine

As part of the publicity for the Live Well Lakewood Health fair my friend and neighbor Paula Reed wrote an article for the Lakewood Observer about me. The idea was to make me the poster child for losing weight which was fine with me as long as I wasn’t on the poster. Her article was honest and made me think about how far I have come.

Lakewood’s Own Biggest Loser by Paula Reed

by Paula Reed 

I met Lisa Griffis in 2001 when she enlisted my help in buying a house.  We talked a couple of times on the phone before we met in person, so I had formed a mental picture of her from her voice.  I was hoping my surprise didn’t show when she walked in to the office.  My first thought was, “She has such a pretty face.”  My second thought was, “Oh no—there are arms on the chairs in the conference room.  How embarrassing will it be if she doesn’t fit?!”  Then I realized she had to deal with situations like that on a daily basis and somehow she must have managed to adapt.

During the time we worked together I gained admiration for Lisa’s dry, self-deprecating wit, her sharp intelligence and her kind heart.  The house she bought happened to be directly behind my house, making us back-door neighbors.  However, between our busy schedules and the 6’ wooden fence separating our yards we didn’t see much of each other, though we talked on the phone periodically, mostly when Lisa had a house-related question. 

In 2005 Lisa called to invite me to a craft show at her house and mentioned that she had lost 75 pounds.  I went to the event, looking forward to seeing the change in Lisa with that huge weight loss.  To my surprise, although she looked a little different, she was remained very overweight—she probably still carried about 265 lbs. on her 5’2” frame.

The next time I saw Lisa was more than a year later in my front yard as she walked by with her dog.  She called a cheery hello and headed up the driveway, and I returned her greeting while thinking frantically, “She looks vaguely familiar—who the heck is she?”  What a shock to realize it was Lisa—then strikingly different at about 175 lbs.

It wasn’t until October 2008 when Lisa and I started working together on Live Well Lakewood, a new initiative that promotes healthy living in Lakewood, that I had the nerve to ask her how she got to 340 lbs., and what life is like when you’re “morbidly obese.”  But I needn’t have worried about offending her with my questions—Lisa happily shares her story in the hopes it will help someone else who is struggling to get control over their body:

Lisa was born at 9 lbs. 4 oz., so she was never small!  She grew up in a family of hearty eaters whose gatherings centered on food and ignored exercise. Dinner table discussions seldom reflected the harsh criticism she endured for being the largest girl in her class. In high school she took up photography and journalism as a way to show that the fat girl had talent under the excess pounds.  At Ohio University, where she majored in photojournalism, Lisa was able to shed a few pounds by walking to classes and swimming.

Lisa lived the next 20 years as a nomadic journalist, chasing better jobs across the country, and began binge eating to compensate for the pressure and loneliness that comes with moving to a new job and city. By age forty the combination of getting older and carrying around twice a normal person’s weight was beginning to slow Lisa’s pace in life. She stopped traveling due to the embarrassment of having flight attendants chase her down the aisle brandishing a seatbelt extender.  She tried and failed many times to lose weight, and had given up doing anything about her weight problem except for overeating to mask the pain of not being able to control her weight.  She had let food become too important–a comfort for bad days and lonely nights, situations that were created partly because of her weight.  Her weight was defining her lot in life.

A trip to the doctor for any reason triggered a lecture about her weight, and the label morbidly (Webster’s definition:  diseased; gruesome; horrible) obese. When the scales at the doctor’s office hit 340 pounds she heard a chorus of medical professionals telling her that she needed to seriously consider gastric bypass surgery.  She just continued to ignore their pleas to do something before it was too late.

What Lisa calls her “aha moment” came after a trip to Washington where she connected with old friends. After dinner one night they snapped a photo that forever changed her life. When the picture arrived at her home she was delighted to see her old friends hamming it up for the camera but was awestruck that she seemed to be the stranger in the picture. It was finally time to do something.

So, she grabbed the Suzanne Somers book, “Eat, Cheat and Melt the Fat Away” off the bookshelf containing the myriad of diet books she had accumulated over the years and actually read it. It was the first of many books she read and took to heart as she tried to break her lifelong habits of excessive eating and virtually no exercise.  Lisa didn’t tell her friends that she was embarking on a life-changing mission.  She feared they wouldn’t believe her–she had failed too many times before.  As her own trainer and nutritionist, she became more aware of what she was putting in her mouth, portion sizes, and how much she would need to move to work off the extra pounds. With in a year she was down 70 pounds and for the first time in her life believed that she could make her dream of becoming a normal-sized person come true.  To date, Lisa has lost 190 pounds and burned more than 660,000 calories to accomplish that feat, proving that healthy eating and exercise do work.

Her friends and colleagues began to cheer her on, like fans at a marathon race. She was encouraged by their support, even when a consistent “compliment” was that they didn’t recognize her from behind, leading her to assume her former backside was quite memorable.

Lisa became totally committed to her new routine.  With fewer pounds on her petite frame she was able to increase her workouts and began to enjoy walking the lovely streets of Lakewood.  She bought exercise equipment for her basement; added strength training, biking, pilates, and swimming at Foster Pool. She started cooking for the entire week on weekends to make sure she ate balanced meals every day. She took her favorite recipes and began to retool them to include more vegetables, lean meat and less fat.

Within two-and-a-half years of starting her lofty goal of losing 200 pounds, Lisa has lost more than half of her former self.  On Octover 8th, I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see Lisa appear on the Today Show.  She looked fantastic in hot pink as she was inducted into the Joy Fit Club, led by Today Show nutritionist Joy Bauer, for people who have lost 100+ pounds.  Because of Lisa, Joy Bauer will be a featured speaker at the Live Well Lakewood free health fair at Garfield School on January 24th.  Lisa plans to achieve her ultimate 200 pound weight-loss goal by that date.

Lisa’s triumph last week was buying a pair of size-8 jeans at Ann Taylor Loft.  Shopping for clothes is now a treat, not a chore.  She has begun traveling again and dating, and now knows that anything is possible.  She is writing a book about her experiences; has a website (lisagriffis.com) and hopes to coach other people to help them achieve their weight-loss goals and live healthier lives.

If you ask Lisa how she did it, she’ll tell you:  “It’s simple:  Put down your fork and move your butt.”

New Friends

As part of the Live Well Lakewood Health fair I contacted several of the Cleveland’s Joy Fit Club members to come and help me introduce Joy Bauer. I thought it would be a good idea to have several of us that have lost over  100 pounds show that people that losing a great deal of weight can be done.

Shelley Napier and Kathy Stewart are coming and I have really enjoyed our conversations. The one thing that surprised me is that they both say that losing the weight was the easy part and that keeping it off is a daily struggle.

Sing it sisters. I know that losing weight is hard but keeping it off is a battle for myself and for many others as well. Have you seen Kristie Alley lately, case in point. I worked too hard to get the weight off and now it is time for me to really set a plan of action for me to keep it off for the rest of my life.

My doctors told me at 165 pounds that I was just fine but I knew that I needed to take more weight off. I am not trying to be Twiggy but I do know that for every pound on your body, you put 4 pounds of pressure on your joints. Arthritis runs in my family and that extra weight was putting unnessary pressure on my knees.

Getting to 140 pounds has been hard and I know it will be even harder to maintain it but I am going to do it. It was my dream to make it to my goal and I am going to do it soon. No more excuses just positive actions. The time for change is here and I want to be part of it for myself.

Time to hold myself accountable for my actions

Joy is coming to town this week for the health fair that I and my wonderful friends are hosting. I have been talking to her since I left the Today Show and have been using her new book, LIFE Diet which has made it’s way quickly on the New York Times best seller list.

I am afraid I haven’t reached my goal yet, I am still shy of losing 200 pounds total by a few pounds. I am sure when I pick her up at airport that she won’t notice but I will know and that is a dissappointment to myself. I wanted to reach my goal by now but I let my problem with stress eating got in the way. You know that habit of using food to comfort yourself for what is really eating at you.

Work is work these days and I don’t like that feeling. Yesterday, the nation maked the beginning of a new era and it is time for me to do the same. No more stress eating for me. I told my friend Barb, the woman with the office candy dish, to slap my hand if she saw me reaching for it. I know that she is up for the task.

Like the assignments that I am giving to my friend Debbie, I am giving myself work to do as well. I just watched Oprah Best Life series and was so impressed with her honesty about falling off the wagon.

I am so happy that she is bringing attention to her struggle and letting the world know that it is one thing to lose weight but the real battle begins when you try to maintain your weight. 95% of people that go on diets fail and often weigh more in the end. No news there to me.

My assignment for this week is to stay clear of sweets, all of them. If I find myself reaching for one I am going to stop cold in my tracks and ask myself why I am doing it and then take a minute to think about how that one piece of chocolate is going to hinder my goal. Nothing tastes as good as being thin and I have to remember that and then take positive actions to make it a reality.

Wish me luck.

Trusted friend and wise man, Dr. Philip

Dr. Philip Caravella

As often as his busy schedule will allow Dr. Philip who is now serving as a doctor in the army will be giving his words of wisdom about preventive medicine on my site.

Here is Dr. Philip:

The most difficult challenges you face are personal struggles rather than those directly affecting others.  You correctly believe that you have influenced others.  The real issue is what kind of influence did you exert?  Was it what you had intended or was it something else?

Your trials and skeletons are the greatest barriers to success in your life.  But lifetime struggles are more easily addressed, than what is apparent at first glance. 

Step one is to fully understand your needs and to prioritize them.  The next is to establish a goal related to addressing your greatest need.  Then you must develop a plan.  Most importantly, you must place that plan into motion.  Emotion and motion is what it is all about.  First you deal with your emotions.  Later, you place your plan into motion. 

Success cannot be achieved without a beginning.  Once you have established what you must do to achieve a desired goal, then begin to emotionally and mentally start the process at once: on that day; not tomorrow.  Good intentions are only that.  Success has its roots in the process and the follow through more than in the planning.  The best plans that lay idle have contributed nothing.  The Chinese have a maxim:  A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.  The first step must begin at once.  There is no time like the present.  Your life is too short to drag your feet. 

As you will see, complacency, procrastination, and bad health practices have led to many difficulties.  I will show you the way to a healthy life style that is achievable by everyone willing to begin the process of renewal.  Re-inventing yourself is achievable and will begin once you allow it to happen.  Open the door today, to the new you.

I will guide you in the area of many preventive medicine concepts and healthy practices that will allow you to feel good about yourself, that will allow you to conquer your inner demons, and most importantly will aid in advancing your life, and the lives of those you cherish.  Success is around the corner, as you practice the principles that I will lay out in this column.  You will help others to succeed by setting the example for them.  Setting a good example will have the greatest positive affect on those around you and will change how they view you and how they view themselves.  Do not suggest to your significant others what they must do to change. You cannot change anyone but yourself unless you do so by setting the proper example.  I will show you what the proper example entails when it comes to good health. 

Take care of yourself.  The rest will follow.  Change is influenced by what you do and not by what you say. 

Next I will look at life style changes that will lead to improving your view of yourself and how others will see you. 

Answering questions that are pertinent to good life style changes will be part of this column.  I look forward to contributing to the New You.  You are the most important person in your life.  If you do not understand that, you will ultimately become a burden to others.  As the flight attendants say when describing the use of oxygen masks, while in flight, should an emergency occur; place the mask over your face first before you assist your children.  You are less effective to others when you have not cared for yourself.

 

Old friends, new challenges

Funny how those pictures in your scrapbooks can bring back memories of times gone by. You stick photos in the pages and close the book and time just goes by so quickly. Debbie and I were friends in college and then we were room mates when we moved to Washington D.C. after graduation.

We have many things in common like our midwest roots but it is our ability to make each other laugh that has kept us friends for nearly 30 years. We both have struggled with our weight for years. My problem was far greater than hers but a struggle is a struggle no matter how large the problem is.

Debbie has had health issues that has made her weight go up over the last few years and I am lending a friendly hand to teach her what I have learned as I overcame my own weight problem.

Every journey begins with a single step so I asked Debbie to start holding herself accountable for her actions. I want my friend to be happy with herself and to be around for years to come so that I can torture with my antics forever.

Debbie’s first assignment was to write down her goals for herself for 2009. I also asked her to start holding herself accountable for her actions. She is wife and working mother of two. She is taking care of her job, her family and her freelance business on the side. The last one on her priority list is herself. I told her that the first thing that has to change is that she needed to start making time for herself. She has to be healthy for herself and her family and that will take her making time for it to happen. Not a great deal of time but yet a commitment none the less.

Over the next year we will be working together to teach her new habits that will allow her to feel better about her health and ulitimately about herself.

Her first assignment was to write down her goals for 2009. Then I asked her to look at several of the diet plan books that worked for me. So off to the library she went and she liked the Suzanne Somers — “Eat, Cheat, and Melt the Fat Away”.

In order to help her time manage her day I asked her to write down her daily routine so that I could get a picture of what her busy day is like.

Here is her first homework assignment.

6:15 arise and make sure kids are up and getting ready for school.

6:30 pack kid’s lunches

6:45 walk the dog (usually 15-20 minute walk). Then shower, pack my own lunch and do small housework.

8:15 leave for work

8:30 - 5:00 work

5:15 home to feed the dog and start dinner.

6:30 dinner, dishes and clean up

7:30-9:30 freelance work (if any), banking, housework, laundry, ironing. There’s always something that needs done!

9:30-11:00 read, watch TV. I am a night owl. I often stay up too late (midnight and beyond). Trying to stop that habit!!

An email from her:

Hey Lisa,

I’ve been trying Suzanne Somers’ combo eating for the last two days. I have cheated twice, but with small things and have dropped three pounds. I realize those pounds might not be “real”…. sometimes over the holidays I “blimp” up, then when go back to regular eating I drop it. Who knows?

I’ve been thinking about the goals and think I was trying to formulate a much larger list. You are right, take it in small steps. One month at a time.

So here are my goals for January:

Begin a food and exercise journal.

Learn and follow the combination eating method from Suzanne Somers’ book.

Add 5 extra minutes of exercise 6 days per week. (so an extra 30 minutes per week).

Weekly check in: Debbie lost another pound and was holding herself more accountable for her actions. She walked the dog for 10 more minutes a day and realized that cookie dough is her enemy in the kitchen. Great start pal! By the way that is why I don’t bake cookies.

New Year and a new look for my website

 

 

 

I have been busy creating a new look and content for my website. I am a publication designer and I just had to put my own flair to my own website. It is my first time doing web design and I learned a great deal in the process. I had a fabulous wizard behind the curtain to whom I owe a great deal of gratitude to Mike Duff that helped me make my design and ideas a reality. Thanks Mike. You are wonderful and if any of you want help with your site just let me know I will put you in touch with Wizard Mike.

Along with the new look there are many new features the site. I invited several friends to join me in helping people to become healthier. My friend from college, Debbie has agreed to let me coach her with her own weight loss journey. Check out Old pals, new challenges.

My blog is easy to find and I will be writing 5 days a week. Remember I am an artist and not a copy editor. A few friends have pointed out my copy editing errors but after all, I am a dyslexic blogger and spell check doesn’t always work.

I am really excited about the trusted friends that I have asked to join the site. Oprah has her Dr. Phil and now I have Dr. Philip on my site. His ideas on preventive medicine are very interesting and well worth checking out. My other friends, Emily, Susan and Beth, are women that have come through their own weight loss journeys and I thought you would like to meet them.

Live Well Lakewood is a pet project that started right after my appearance on the Today Show. A friend of a friend contacted me with the idea and then two other women joined in to help people live a healthier life in our city of Lakewood. We have our first project coming up, a health fair that will include health screenings, workout demos, a healthy eating café and Dr. Michael Roizen and Joy Bauer will be coming to talk and sign books. It is the first time that I have gotten so involved in a civic project and it won’t be my last time.

This week I am beginning classes to become a wellness coach to help people live a healthier life. I never thought that putting down my fork and moving my butt would lead to such wonderful things.

Let me know what you think of the new look and content.

Lisa

Hey toots, I miss you

I have been putting off writing about my friend, Willa, for the last few months. It has been just too hard to gather my thoughts about a woman whose heart was a big as her smile. She died on Labor Day last year.  Her passing brought me to tears then and now as I think about how she wanted to get healthier for herself but time just ran out for her.

Willa worked at the newspaper’s cafeteria during the day and at night she cleaned an office building in an effort to cobble together enough money for her simple existance. The world saw how she struggled to get through her days as a woman that weighed 440 pounds. The small task of walking around the office eatery took her longer than most, but she always did it with a smile on her face.

Two years ago, I noticed that her white food service jacket was getting big on her and I asked her if she was losing weight. She came from behind the counter and put her finger on my nose and told me that I had inspired her to lose weight. 75 pounds were gone from her starting weight and she was proud that I had taken notice.

She was morbidly obese like two million other people in this country.  She knew the risks but didn’t want to have gastric bypass to solve her problem. Her sister, Kim, almost died from the surgery and she wanted to do it her way, just like I was doing it.

When her finger touched my nose and my heart that day, I vowed to help her lose more  weight.  I asked her to keep a food journal. I gave her my old scale, VCR and some tapes. I made her more accountable for her food habits and it was working. Some weeks went better than others, but she was trying.

One day, I went into the caferteria to get some ice and her friend asked me if I had seen Willa that day. She told me to wait right where I was and ran to get her. Willa came charging out of the kitchen with a grin from ear to ear and hugged the air right out of me. She was beside herself with joy that she was finally down below 300 pounds. It was only a pound below, but that single digit meant the world to her and to me.

Some months later, Willa wasn’t feeling her best, her stomach was bothering her. Then the phone call came on the holiday weekend. A friend thought I should know that Willa had passed away at age 46. I remember holding the phone in my hand for what seemed like hours in disbelief.

I went to see her for the last time at the funeral home. She was in the same red dress as the photo above. I cried for my friend then and still now. I wanted for her the life that I have found by losing my excess pounds and shedding the prejudice that the world has against the morbidly obese. I wanted the world to see what I saw, a woman with a pure heart.

She was my friend and my inspiration to help others overcome obesity.
Thank you, Willa.

 

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