MY STORY AND HOW I LOST OVER 50 POUNDS
By Karen Brittan

Most of us want to lose some weight, and many of us NEED to lose weight, and sometimes a substantial amount. For years I have said that I wish someone would feed me the way I feed my dogs. And even though I “tried” to lose weight, it just wouldn't come off until circumstances in my life all seemed to come together in a bizarre and, in what I believe to be, a miraculous way. Here is my lengthy story as to what happened on my trip to Hell and back…. And yes, I will tell you how I lost over 50 pounds, going from 180 to under 130 pounds in one year.


A few years ago my lower back began to hurt, and over time, the pain increased to the point that I was only comfortable if I was sitting. And so I sat (and the weight started packing on). My pain would shift back and forth from my right hip to left, and I began to have trouble getting out of bed in the morning and putting on my pants as I could only lift my leg about a foot off the floor at best. When the pain was at its worst, I would pop four ibuprofen at a crack just to get some relief… often at bedtime. I felt like I wanted someone to just put me on a rack and stretch me. One winter day after exercising the dogs on the treadmill, I felt compelled to lie down on the treadmill with my head at the lowest point and my feet up on the “console”, and I fell asleep for 15 minutes before I woke up feeling so much better… at least for a brief time.

Eventually the pain and spasms drove me to a chiropractor who discovered that I had a badly curved spine in my lower back, the worst she had ever seen, and she felt it was from a traumatic injury like a car accident. Well, my mom reminded me of when our car was rear-ended when I was a baby and I hit the dashboard of our car, so I most likely had been living with this for well over 50 years before the pain started kicking in! (Uh, ya, my mom was dead at the time, but I heard her voice as loudly in my head as if she had been sitting in the passenger seat next to me on that ride home from the chiropractor… believe it or not, but please bear with me through the rest of this.)

The chiropractor gave me a couple exercises to do to stretch my back, and when she told me to raise my knees to my chest, my response was that I already did that every single morning just to be able to get out of bed! That was the incentive that started me exercising on the treadmill (as I had fallen asleep that one winter day) and I was constantly thinking of new ways to stretch my back muscles, primarily doing various leg lifts for my back and modified sit-ups to tighten my abdomen muscles as I lay on that treadmill with my head toward its low end. The chiropractor couldn't believe how much more flexible I was becoming, but eventually she realized that it was because of what *I* was doing and not due to anything she was doing. Eventually she told me that there was nothing further she could do for me, and so I was on my own. I bought an inversion table and would hang upside-down by my ankles (I finally had my RACK), and within two months my crooked shoulders had leveled out to about 98% of normal (my left shoulder had been quite a bit higher than my right, which I always thought was from carrying my babies on my right hip). A later X-ray showed that my upper (previously twisted) spine was rotating back into more normal alignment, although the curvature was still the same.

Eventually my pain increased yet again, to the point that I could only tolerate anything (sitting, standing, lying down) for about one hour at a time. Most of the intense pain was now only in my right hip for some reason and then it would reverberate outward across my lower back and down into my right leg (the curvature is on the left side). I quit using the inversion table, thinking that it was probably trying to straighten my entire spine, and that just wasn't going to happen.

The pain continued for several months more, worsening to the point that I was living on ibuprofen, and to say that I was absolutely miserable doesn't even come close. I had reached the lowest point in my life and I began to pray through my tears as I had finally reached the end of my tolerance and knew I couldn't go on much longer. Shortly afterwards, in mid-February, 2005, I slipped on a small patch of ice and fell hard, ending up sitting like a small child with my feet extended out to the sides behind me. Whoever falls that way? Yes, forward, sideways, backwards…. but in a bizarre sitting position? As I struggled to get up, my right knee said, “yes, it's been a few years, but I can still do this,” and my left knee said, “sorry, but you're SCREWED, lady…”

I spent the next two months sitting in a chair with my feet elevated, getting up only long enough to see to my needs and those of the dogs; I had to drag myself hand-over-hand up the stairs. My fall happened a few days after Peter's injury and a few days before my father's sudden decline which eventually resulted in his death ten months later. 2005 was without a doubt the WORST year of my life, except for the fact that when I finally got up off of that chair two months later, the pain in my back had somehow lessened!

During this same time, Katie stopped working at the bakery, so those wonderful baked goods were no longer coming into the house, and Terra was SUCH a spazz at the agility trials when I was there (always looking for me, even during her agility runs), that I stopped going altogether. I was no longer stuffing my face with junk food on trial days because of the stress and boredom between runs. And our treadmill was periodically acting up making it difficult for me to walk on it, something I had started doing when my pain lessened.

In the spring I finally started doing some gardening again, and eventually got the urge to start training a dog again, which I started doing early that September. A few weeks later I got on my older daughter's scale while at her house and discovered that I had actually lost a small bit of weight (about 6 pounds), and about the same time a friend told me that she had lost 30 pounds with a life-style (eating) change. My first thought on the drive home that day was that if SHE can do it, **SO CAN I**!!!!!!! Everything was finally coming together in my life, but I just needed a plan of attack for the next phase that was coming.

The dying treadmill was replaced with a real HONEY… a ProForm Crosswalk 400e. This treadmill can be set to the number of CALORIES one wants to burn, and I started out with 100 calories, gradually building up to 450 calories/day (2.28 miles), which is 42-44 minutes, depending on how fast I walk, usually 3.2 mph (walking ten minutes burns about 100 calories). The day after celebrating grandson's second birthday with a pig-out eating party, I did penance by walking 600 calories' worth on the treadmill.

Treadmill Tips: Walking on a treadmill can be pretty boring, so if one chooses to get his exercise this way, one needs a bit of distraction while walking, such as a TV at eye level or great music to walk by (I do both). Strangely, and much to the great distress of my family, I have become very fond of hip-hop..... what great beats for exercising! (What can I say? It makes me want to MOVE!) There is a 9" fan blowing toward the treadmill to keep its user more comfortable (yes, the dogs, too). We have post-it notes covering all the digital display windows (except for the speed) because on days when I have to force myself to walk the full time (usually toward the end of each session), I find my eyes constantly drifting down to look at the calorie count, the minutes walked, the distance covered, and find myself figuring how many minutes I have left (each 10 calories equals about one minute..... LOL!). We have a note posted on the treadmill that says, "LOSING WEIGHT WITH EVERY STEP"..... and when the going gets tough, my mantra becomes "every step..... every step..... every step...."

Always, and I mean **ALWAYS** wear the safety clip that shuts down the treadmill. I used to think.... well, I'm not going to faint or have a heart attack.... until the day I somehow lost my concentration and fell down trying to do the splits while that tread just kept rolling, trying to remove my hide. I could have hurt myself very badly that day. ALWAYS WEAR THE SAFETY SHUTOFF CLIP!

My diet is very simple, and is loosely based on counting calories. I start with a small breakfast (which I never used to eat), a small lunch, the treadmill, and a “normal” supper. I take a *good* vitamin/mineral supplement every evening (WalMart's OneSource Advanced, with CoQ10, Ester-C, lycopene, and lutein…) and my chewable calcium tablets.

First of all, I ONLY drink water… NO calories in water, and it is always ice water as it burns more calories for the body to heat up that cold water. NO soda pop, not even diet, as aspartame is NOT healthy and causes its own health issues. No diet anything here…. and, in fact, I often cook with butter. I do try to drink those magic eight classes of water every day, and I have often downed 3-4 by lunchtime. No more dry winter skin!

I did a bit of research to find a healthy breakfast that I can eat every single day and not tire of, and that is Quaker Oats Maple and Brown Sugar Oatmeal. 160 calories for one package. Dairy and protein also help to burn fat (I cannot drink milk), so for lunch I have one piece of Crystal Farm's Cheezoid's Low-Moisture Part Skim String Cheese that is 70 calories. (Ya, I know…. bizarre, but Mia got me hooked on that stuff in 2005 when I showed her briefly and that was the only thing she would respond to…) That piece of cheese is enough to tide me over until suppertime. Sometimes I will do cottage cheese instead of the cheese or simply have a boiled egg. Yes, I do get hungry by late afternoon, but no worse than I did before when I ate a larger lunch. If I get too hungry, I might have a dill pickle or a piece of fruit (or sometimes *that* is my lunch), but that is rare. It's all in counting those calories, even if only in a subconscious manner. That one big meal is always balanced with those two smaller ones.

So count with me…. and this is the BIGGEST part of my success…. breakfast and lunch together are usually 230 calories and I walk on the treadmill for 450 calories. I GO INTO SUPPERTIME WITH A 220 CALORIE CREDIT!!!!!

So for supper, I can have whatever I want, within reason. I try to take smaller portions (ya, sometimes I fudge<G>) and I try to avoid going back for seconds. Occasionally I will have a can of Progress Chicken Noodle Soup for dinner, and that makes for practically a no-calorie day if I did the treadmill, but I don't do that too often. The other thing I do is to avoid all bread and bread products as much as possible (that is what I use to put weight on my dogs!). I make exceptions when we eat lasagna or my wonderful spaghetti, as both require great garlic bread! I am also trying to push the protein in my diet as much as possible as protein is not only good for helping to burn fat, but it is supposed to be good for pain and building cell walls. Eating foods with extra fiber, such as a baked potato, also help to keep those hunger pangs away. I do not believe in "no fat/no carb diets" or low ones either, as our bodies NEED that fat and those carbohydrates!

Once or occasionally twice a week I might treat myself to something “naughty”, but for the most part, I avoid ice cream and popcorn (which MUST have butter), two things which I can eat anytime, anywhere, all day, every day. When I have those, they are very special, rare treats…. and ice cream is dairy, right? LOL! Generally I do reward myself when my weight has dropped 2-3 pounds. After all, if I avoided everything naughty, I would only want it more and that would be the end of my dieting altogether.

The other day I went out for an unplanned lunch with a good friend whom I hadn't seen for awhile. I had a cheeseburger with all the fixin's (lettuce, tomato, onions, pickles), NO BUN, and hashbrown potatoes. When I finally got home around dinnertime, I wasn't even hungry, so I didn't eat. Around 9 PM I finally started feeling a bit hungry, and debated about waiting until morning, but decided to have that piece of string cheese to tide me over until breakfast.

Two light meals and one normal one, plus exercise, is definitely the ticket for weight loss… at least for THIS gal. It took me one year to lose over 50 pounds, and I averaged about one pound a week. Sometimes I would plateau for a couple weeks, and then I would suddenly drop 2-3 pounds. I never got on the scale more than once a week, usually more like every couple weeks, as it was very depressing to find that I had not lost any weight or had gone back up a pound (and one's weight DOES go up and down, even during a single day).

My metabolism has now changed, I feel TERRIFIC (look that way, too, I am told), and can now run up and down the stairs, and once again talk in my run-on sentences without stopping to gasp for breath. My back is still there, of course, and always will be, but now it only bothers me if I abuse it by being on my feet, particularly on cement, for too long a time… and I am talking HOURS here. I try to appease it when it starts getting crabby, and I try to avoid picking up anything over 20 pounds as that really seems to aggravate it quickly. Much of the time I am, to all intents and purposes, pain-free, and I haven't taken anything for the pain for MONTHS. When my back does bother me, I found a WONDERFUL gizmo called a “Reflex Roller” that is like having the greatest massage ever, and it really does ease any pain I might have. I am now living with pain that is more like a nuisance hangnail than pain that was once nearly pushing me into a bottomless abyss. Life is wonderful once again, and I thank God, who truly does work in mysterious ways, for those changes. *WHOEVER falls that way???!!!!*

On November 21, 2006, I got on the scale again after several weeks and discovered that I had finally reached my goal weight.... 124.6#!!!!!! I have lost 55 pounds.... Just in time for Thanksgiving, and I DO plan on eating! LOL!

And I say to each and every one of you who wants to lose weight: If I can do it, SO CAN YOU! Just consider what I am doing, and think about how you can modify my methods to suit yourself.... or even copy mine; I don't care about anyone stealing THIS idea! LOL! The important thing is to get rid of that excess weight and get yourself healthy! Your family and friends want you around for a long, long time yet. No, be selfish and DO THIS FOR YOURSELF! And one last thing to remember... The battle is getting the weight off; the war is in KEEPING it off!

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Copyright © 1996-2008 Karen J. Brittan and Britmor Schnauzers. All images and written material on this site are my property and may not be used without my express written permission.