Mother and daughter lose weight as a team
Alison Helmer looked on the top shelf of her bedroom closet at the letter she'd stored; the unsealed envelope that told her in so many words that she had to make a choice.
Her doctor had written the letter, a referral: She was a good candidate for gastric bypass surgery. Her weight, more than 250 pounds, much more than her 5-foot-6 frame could handle much longer, could become life-threatening.
That meant going under the knife: Letting a surgeon staple her stomach so that it wouldn't hold the volumes of food that would make her gain more.
"I felt like, 'If you don't do this, you're going to die,'" Alison said.
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She also read about complications that can arise from the surgery.
She went to a long-time friend who had struggled with the same challenge for as long as Alison had known her - her mother, Barbara Helmer. After a tense telephone call, Alison learned that her mother was considering bypass surgery, also.
Mother and daughter had struggled with weight since Alison was born.
"After having me, that's when problems began" for Barbara, said Alison. "We got to a point where we kind of hit that wall - there was nowhere to go; feeling terrible about yourself - and decided we wanted to do something and do it together so we'd have the support."
They made a pact that they'd make that change and push and pull each other along until they succeeded.
And what the heck, they decided that if eating habits could make a gastric bypass succeed, then changing eating habits was the way to succeed - without the surgery.
Today
Together, Alison and Barbara have lost 125 pounds - Allison 75, Barbara 50 - since November 2004.
They've both fought off insulin resistance and reversed their diagnoses of borderline diabetes. Alison is about 30 pounds from her goal weight; Barbara's goals are to be healthy and to lose 20 more pounds. They're confident, because the weight loss has been gradual and resulted from changes in bad habits, not radical fad diets.
The story of their changes differs only in the challenges dictated by their generations.
Alison
As a girl, Alison had always been large, even though she was healthy, athletic and active in school. Still, the tortures of childhood cruelties took a toll.
In middle school, a girl Alison thought was a close friend held a sign behind her that said, "whale," and had another person snap a photo. The friend passed the photo around the school.
But she remembers that life was pleasant around the house, other than the eating habits that are terrifying by modern standards.
Dad would take her and her brother to school and each day stop at McDonald's for an Egg McMuffin, potatoes and a Dr Pepper. She'd eat lunch from the high-carb line in the form of pizza, pasta and fries.
But she knew she had a problem. From the age of 10, she was in either Weight Watchers or other diet programs. Sometimes the diets worked, but not for long.
Her size often perplexed her. At high school graduation, she was healthy and 200 pounds. In 2000, she walked a marathon in Alaska while weighing 203 pounds.
Alison went to college, earned a master's degree in counseling and became a teacher. But in this successful, pleasant life was her Achilles' heel. "I'm a boredom eater," she said. "And that can be a problem."
Her "aha" moment came two years ago, when she and her fiance (now her husband) went on vacation in Alaska. At 250 pounds, she had trouble fitting in the airplane seat and suffered during the entire flight.
That let her know that of all the things she had under control, food wasn't one of them.
That's when she sought the answer from her doctor, and that's how she found herself staring at the letter in her closet.
Barbara
Barbara grew up in the day when food was the medicine cabinet. The more you ate, the more prosperous you were. "Healthy" was a euphemism for being overweight.
When she became a mother at age 32, she weighed 130 pounds. In those days, it was common and expected that the family kept good food in front of an expectant mother - one meal for mom, another for the baby.
She gained 70 pounds with the pregnancy. "I didn't think anything of it; I loved being pregnant," Barbara said. "And we had those A-line dresses. So I just thought that once (the pregnancy) was over, I'd take care of it."
Although she lost 50 pounds after the pregnancy, she had her son, Matthew, 17 months later. Her weight never looked back.
The weight was due also to job stress. Her job as a registered nurse and nursing supervisor at St. John's Mercy Medical Center was intense. For her 28-year career there, she often turned to the hospital cafeteria for the calming effect of the pasta and meatballs, pizza or hamburgers.
She tried diets. Atkins helped her lose 80 pounds, which she gained back in less than a year. "I have a record for joining Weight Watchers," she said.
Her yo-yo dieting eventually left her at more than 270 pounds and inching up.
"People think it's not a struggle," Barbara said. "But it is. You don't just decide to lose and then it goes away. I've lost entire crowds in my life.
"Any diet like Atkins works for the moment. But you don't learn the behavioral changes you need to make. You need a concept that works in the right amount of portion control, right amounts of carbohydrates, protein and fats, keeping your blood sugar up so you don't get cravings - a change in lifestyle, not just diet."
That's why she was glad to get that call from Alison.
How they did it
The plan was simple: Eat less, but do so in a way that would evict their pounds for good, not send them away for a short vacation.
Some searching on the Web turned up Bon Sante, a weight management and meal replacement program based in St. Louis. The program uses prepared meals, classes and support groups to help clients lose weight. The teachers include a dietitian and a behaviorist.
Alison and Barbara agreed that before they'd opt for surgery, they'd give this program one last shot. The clincher was they decided to do it in the first week of November. And on Nov. 11, 2004, two weeks before Thanksgiving, they attended their first session.
"We decided there were always going to be those important days and events," said Barbara.
They liked that the program was based on calorie reduction. That pleased Alison, who, even while practicing for a marathon walk, still gained weight. They could follow an eating plan where they purchased foods prepared for them, but purchasing the food is not required.
The pounds began to melt away. Also, their diabetes risks have disappeared and their other health issues are under control.
Life goes on
Their success, they say, appears to have come more from the human element of the program rather than the rigors of following rules, they said. It also helps that their husbands were supportive of them.
In July, Barbara participated in a Miss Senior Missouri Pageant held at the Florissant Civic Center. "It would be kind of cool to represent senior women in Missouri," she said. "But more cool, I'd have an opportunity to represent that segment of all women who don't fit the mold - they're larger, full-sized women, to show that you don't have to be a size 6. You're a winner just by doing it."
Alison says if she reaches her goal - no, when she reaches it - she'll weigh less than at any other time in her adult life. "Talk to me at the end of the year," she said.
==================
HOW WE DID IT
Names: Alison Helmer and Barbara Helmer
Ages: Alison, 36; Barbara, 68
Home: South St. Louis County
Occupations: Alison, teacher; Barbara, retired nursing administrator, and currently, singer.
What they did: Worked together to lose 125 pounds total.
Quotable: Barbara: "The most important thing to do is just stick with it."
Alison: "The triumph is replacing old bad habits with new good ones."
A typical day's meals
Before:
Breakfast: None.
Lunch: High-carb comfort food, often pasta and meat sauce or meatballs. After Alison became a vegetarian in 1994, she replaced meat with pasta, bread and snacks.
Dinner: Barbara often ate ham or bologna sandwiches for dinner. When she worked, often she'd get home after 7 p.m. and the family would already have been out for fast food. Alison's favorite as a child was anything from McDonald's. As an adult, dinner was much like lunch.
Snacks: Barbara would snack on doughnuts or other sugary snacks at work meetings. Alison visited the snack bar and machines in high school and did the same as an adult.
Now:
Breakfast: They have a protein drink made of a scoop of protein powder mixed with water. They add fruit such as strawberries or blueberries and ice and run it through a blender for a 20-ounce drink.
Morning snack: String cheese, half an apple or other fruit.
Lunch: They have the same sorts of lunches; for example, two Boca Burgers (protein vegetable burgers) with no bread, steamed broccoli and cauliflower and a sliced apple, all in one bowl warmed in the microwave.
Afternoon snack: Same as in the morning.
Dinner: Boca Burgers or Boca chili, or prepared food from the Bon Sante program, such as a chicken breast or one of several other meals that include fruit bowls, stew and chicken and rice. Both women drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day.
hjaxson@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8234
posted by Lose Weight at 12:03 PM Weight Loss Program
Her doctor had written the letter, a referral: She was a good candidate for gastric bypass surgery. Her weight, more than 250 pounds, much more than her 5-foot-6 frame could handle much longer, could become life-threatening.
That meant going under the knife: Letting a surgeon staple her stomach so that it wouldn't hold the volumes of food that would make her gain more.
"I felt like, 'If you don't do this, you're going to die,'" Alison said.
Advertisement
'); <a href="http://not-a-real-namespace/http://oascentral.stltoday.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/www.stltoday.com/lifestyle/health/957199443/Frame1/Postnet/SLUCareHealth300x250-080106/slucare264861.html/31383735343836393434363231653230?http://www.slu.edu/"><img src="http://not-a-real-namespace/http://a248.e.akamai.net/6/800/1129/1154964067/oascentral-s.realmedia.com/RealMedia/ads/Creatives/Postnet/SLUCareHealth300x250-080106/nogif.gif" width="300" height="250" border="0" /></a>
She also read about complications that can arise from the surgery.
She went to a long-time friend who had struggled with the same challenge for as long as Alison had known her - her mother, Barbara Helmer. After a tense telephone call, Alison learned that her mother was considering bypass surgery, also.
Mother and daughter had struggled with weight since Alison was born.
"After having me, that's when problems began" for Barbara, said Alison. "We got to a point where we kind of hit that wall - there was nowhere to go; feeling terrible about yourself - and decided we wanted to do something and do it together so we'd have the support."
They made a pact that they'd make that change and push and pull each other along until they succeeded.
And what the heck, they decided that if eating habits could make a gastric bypass succeed, then changing eating habits was the way to succeed - without the surgery.
Today
Together, Alison and Barbara have lost 125 pounds - Allison 75, Barbara 50 - since November 2004.
They've both fought off insulin resistance and reversed their diagnoses of borderline diabetes. Alison is about 30 pounds from her goal weight; Barbara's goals are to be healthy and to lose 20 more pounds. They're confident, because the weight loss has been gradual and resulted from changes in bad habits, not radical fad diets.
The story of their changes differs only in the challenges dictated by their generations.
Alison
As a girl, Alison had always been large, even though she was healthy, athletic and active in school. Still, the tortures of childhood cruelties took a toll.
In middle school, a girl Alison thought was a close friend held a sign behind her that said, "whale," and had another person snap a photo. The friend passed the photo around the school.
But she remembers that life was pleasant around the house, other than the eating habits that are terrifying by modern standards.
Dad would take her and her brother to school and each day stop at McDonald's for an Egg McMuffin, potatoes and a Dr Pepper. She'd eat lunch from the high-carb line in the form of pizza, pasta and fries.
But she knew she had a problem. From the age of 10, she was in either Weight Watchers or other diet programs. Sometimes the diets worked, but not for long.
Her size often perplexed her. At high school graduation, she was healthy and 200 pounds. In 2000, she walked a marathon in Alaska while weighing 203 pounds.
Alison went to college, earned a master's degree in counseling and became a teacher. But in this successful, pleasant life was her Achilles' heel. "I'm a boredom eater," she said. "And that can be a problem."
Her "aha" moment came two years ago, when she and her fiance (now her husband) went on vacation in Alaska. At 250 pounds, she had trouble fitting in the airplane seat and suffered during the entire flight.
That let her know that of all the things she had under control, food wasn't one of them.
That's when she sought the answer from her doctor, and that's how she found herself staring at the letter in her closet.
Barbara
Barbara grew up in the day when food was the medicine cabinet. The more you ate, the more prosperous you were. "Healthy" was a euphemism for being overweight.
When she became a mother at age 32, she weighed 130 pounds. In those days, it was common and expected that the family kept good food in front of an expectant mother - one meal for mom, another for the baby.
She gained 70 pounds with the pregnancy. "I didn't think anything of it; I loved being pregnant," Barbara said. "And we had those A-line dresses. So I just thought that once (the pregnancy) was over, I'd take care of it."
Although she lost 50 pounds after the pregnancy, she had her son, Matthew, 17 months later. Her weight never looked back.
The weight was due also to job stress. Her job as a registered nurse and nursing supervisor at St. John's Mercy Medical Center was intense. For her 28-year career there, she often turned to the hospital cafeteria for the calming effect of the pasta and meatballs, pizza or hamburgers.
She tried diets. Atkins helped her lose 80 pounds, which she gained back in less than a year. "I have a record for joining Weight Watchers," she said.
Her yo-yo dieting eventually left her at more than 270 pounds and inching up.
"People think it's not a struggle," Barbara said. "But it is. You don't just decide to lose and then it goes away. I've lost entire crowds in my life.
"Any diet like Atkins works for the moment. But you don't learn the behavioral changes you need to make. You need a concept that works in the right amount of portion control, right amounts of carbohydrates, protein and fats, keeping your blood sugar up so you don't get cravings - a change in lifestyle, not just diet."
That's why she was glad to get that call from Alison.
How they did it
The plan was simple: Eat less, but do so in a way that would evict their pounds for good, not send them away for a short vacation.
Some searching on the Web turned up Bon Sante, a weight management and meal replacement program based in St. Louis. The program uses prepared meals, classes and support groups to help clients lose weight. The teachers include a dietitian and a behaviorist.
Alison and Barbara agreed that before they'd opt for surgery, they'd give this program one last shot. The clincher was they decided to do it in the first week of November. And on Nov. 11, 2004, two weeks before Thanksgiving, they attended their first session.
"We decided there were always going to be those important days and events," said Barbara.
They liked that the program was based on calorie reduction. That pleased Alison, who, even while practicing for a marathon walk, still gained weight. They could follow an eating plan where they purchased foods prepared for them, but purchasing the food is not required.
The pounds began to melt away. Also, their diabetes risks have disappeared and their other health issues are under control.
Life goes on
Their success, they say, appears to have come more from the human element of the program rather than the rigors of following rules, they said. It also helps that their husbands were supportive of them.
In July, Barbara participated in a Miss Senior Missouri Pageant held at the Florissant Civic Center. "It would be kind of cool to represent senior women in Missouri," she said. "But more cool, I'd have an opportunity to represent that segment of all women who don't fit the mold - they're larger, full-sized women, to show that you don't have to be a size 6. You're a winner just by doing it."
Alison says if she reaches her goal - no, when she reaches it - she'll weigh less than at any other time in her adult life. "Talk to me at the end of the year," she said.
==================
HOW WE DID IT
Names: Alison Helmer and Barbara Helmer
Ages: Alison, 36; Barbara, 68
Home: South St. Louis County
Occupations: Alison, teacher; Barbara, retired nursing administrator, and currently, singer.
What they did: Worked together to lose 125 pounds total.
Quotable: Barbara: "The most important thing to do is just stick with it."
Alison: "The triumph is replacing old bad habits with new good ones."
A typical day's meals
Before:
Breakfast: None.
Lunch: High-carb comfort food, often pasta and meat sauce or meatballs. After Alison became a vegetarian in 1994, she replaced meat with pasta, bread and snacks.
Dinner: Barbara often ate ham or bologna sandwiches for dinner. When she worked, often she'd get home after 7 p.m. and the family would already have been out for fast food. Alison's favorite as a child was anything from McDonald's. As an adult, dinner was much like lunch.
Snacks: Barbara would snack on doughnuts or other sugary snacks at work meetings. Alison visited the snack bar and machines in high school and did the same as an adult.
Now:
Breakfast: They have a protein drink made of a scoop of protein powder mixed with water. They add fruit such as strawberries or blueberries and ice and run it through a blender for a 20-ounce drink.
Morning snack: String cheese, half an apple or other fruit.
Lunch: They have the same sorts of lunches; for example, two Boca Burgers (protein vegetable burgers) with no bread, steamed broccoli and cauliflower and a sliced apple, all in one bowl warmed in the microwave.
Afternoon snack: Same as in the morning.
Dinner: Boca Burgers or Boca chili, or prepared food from the Bon Sante program, such as a chicken breast or one of several other meals that include fruit bowls, stew and chicken and rice. Both women drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day.
hjaxson@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8234
posted by Lose Weight at 12:03 PM Weight Loss Program
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