Update: Article now hidden behind their subscription service. See the extended entry for the full article below.
Hey Chris! How about some inspiration on such a dreadfully grey day. OK, how'd you like to read about the lady who lost over 200 lbs in 4 years?
Before embarking on one last campaign -- and she swears this was the last -- Huxley was unable to fly because she was too big to fit in the airplane seats.
Brenda lost 2 people and found herself
In a 4-year battle with obesity Weight Watcher lost 214 pounds; Body Work
By Mary K. Nolan
Additional Articles by this Columnist
The Hamilton Spectator
Ron Pozzer, the Hamilton Spectator
Brenda Huxley lost 214 pounds over four years. She holds a vest full of pink ribbons, each representing a 10-pound loss.
Losing weight did more than put Brenda Huxley into a different dress size. It may have saved her life.
Although doctors haven't told her as much, Huxley suspects she would never have found the malignant lump in her breast last January if she'd been her former obese self. And even if she had detected it, she wonders whether the subsequent surgeries and radiation treatments would have been successful on such an enormous woman.
Her optimistic prognosis would be reason enough to celebrate a loss of weight that's equivalent to two petite people, but it's not the only one. She feels better, looks better and knows that she has finally vanquished a lifelong enemy.
"I can't be that person any more," she says with determination.
Before embarking on one last campaign -- and she swears this was the last -- Huxley was unable to fly because she was too big to fit in the airplane seats. She bought a new Honda and had to have a special seat belt installed to stretch over her girth. She took her own lawn chair to barbecues so she wouldn't destroy the host's garden furniture. At her office, she kept everything within a three- or four-foot reach so she wouldn't have to move far to get what she needed. And she lived in an unflattering uniform of track pants and sweatshirts.
Huxley doesn't blame her family, her bone structure, her childhood, her heritage or any other external factor for the condition in which she found herself.
"I like food," says Huxley, who mercifully was spared the health problems that usually accompany obesity. "I just ate too much."
Huxley was always "the fat kid" -- both at home, where other family members had their struggles but none like hers, and at school, where she had lots of friends, but remembers cruel teasing about her size.
At 12, she joined Weight Watchers for the first time. That was back in the days when the food plan was restrictive and unrealistic, and today's proliferation of low-fat, calorie-reduced food products did not exist. She lost weight, but didn't really change her eating or exercise habits, and as soon as she finished high school, "that was it for the exercise". All the weight returned.
Huxley never experienced the self-loathing that can afflict people with a poor body image and laughs, when she admits that even at her biggest, she could still touch her toes.
"I've always been a basically happy type of person, but I hated not being able to do things," says Huxley, who went through extremes. One stage would find her accepting herself as she was -- "I'm happy and I'm staying this way" -- and the next would see her embarking on whatever diet was in vogue.
"It was always something. Dr. Atkins, low-carb, Scarsdale. In fact, I think I started that one the day (Scarsdale Diet author Herman Tarnower) was murdered. I thought that was a bad omen."
In January of 1986, the week before her 30th birthday, Huxley and her best friend joined Weight Watchers. The weight came off easily and by late summer, the loss of 100 pounds motivated her to go on a major shopping spree for a new wardrobe. She kept her weight down for well over a year, but gradually stopped going to regular meetings, abandoned Weight Watchers' success strategies, and allowed old bad habits to creep back into her life. It wasn't long until she had ballooned to well beyond her previous maximum weight.
By the fall of 1997, Huxley had reached a point where she "couldn't stand being like this anymore." The desire to get rid of the excess was "always there," and she knew that the program worked if she followed it. So, following the example of her mother and sister, she signed on with Weight Watchers ... again.
She bought herself a treadmill the following spring and by the one-year anniversary, she had lost 100 pounds. This time, though, she kept going, enduring the inevitable plateaus and even some gains, and triumphing in her losses. Every 10 pounds lost earned her a pink ribbon, which she attached to a corkboard in her bedroom. At Christmas of 2000, she asked her mother to sew all the ribbons on to a vest -- "one of those dumb things I thought of on the treadmill" -- and wore it to various holiday parties. By January of 2001, she had lost 200 pounds, a milestone she found almost more exciting than finally reaching her goal that December.
The next many months were a whirlwind of emotional and physical challenges. As well as discovering the lump in her breast, Huxley fell in love, lost three pets, helped nurse her mother through a broken leg, underwent surgery and radiation ... "it was the strangest year of my life." But she plowed through all of it, good or bad, without reverting to her old, comforting ways.
"I figure if I didn't gain 100 pounds last year, it's never going to happen," says Huxley, whose weight is reported to Weight Watchers head office once a month, now that she is a part-time meeting receptionist for the organization.
"I had fun eating at Christmas, but when it was over, I knew I had to go back to normal. Now if I overeat, I literally have a food hangover.
"I can't see myself being that person again.
mnolan@thespec.com or 905-526-4689
Brenda Huxley
Age: 47
Occupation: Self-employed
Height: 5-foot-7
Total Weight Loss: 214 pounds