Our midway weight loss challenge update is being told closer to the three-quarter mark to allow one of our challengers to share her personal story.
Here is the quick summary of what we are doing. In January, 16 St. Louis American employees (four teams of four) agreed to a 24-week weight loss challenge, complete with nifty weekly prizes along the way and a delectable choice from a prize menu worth $1,000 for the top winner courtesy of our publisher—the fit, lean and ever health-conscious Dr. Donald Suggs.
In January, we weighed 3,715 pounds with a goal of losing 653 pounds by the end of June. Eight weeks after our first update in late February, we lost another 65 pounds, for a total weight loss of 270.4 pounds over 16 weeks.
We are literally seeing a lot less of our top performers – Kenya Vaughn, Earl Austin Jr., Kevin Jones and “Mr. Red Hot Riplet” himself – David Buckner.
The “Transformers” continue to lead the weekly team wins, adding up the Wal-Mart gift cards eight out 16 weeks. The group includes Kenya Vaughn, Robin Britt, Mike Terhaar and me (Sandra Jordan). I will be the first one to tell you that Kenya’s personal success skewed the percentages enough to pull out the team win for a number of weeks. Although she is well ahead of the pack, Kenya is reverting to her original exercise regime for the home stretch.
“I’m going to have to bump it up to two times a day to meet my goal,” Vaughn said.
Tied for second place in weekly team wins are “Girth, Wind and Tired” – Earl Austin, Jr., Kevin Jones, Kate Daniel and Courtney Armstead and “The Fat Attackers” – David Buckner, Mary Winbush, Sonya Dulaney and Vida Medina. Each team earned wins four weeks each.
About eights weeks into the challenge, Executive Assistant Kate Daniel became the first challenger to reach her personal weight goal.
“I was on a 1,200 calorie diet, now I allow myself more calories as I maintain,” Daniel said.
Chief Operating Officer Kevin Jones is just a pound or two away from his weight goal—just in time to look good during summer vacation.
Somehow, we have managed to be in-sync with one another in that “losing and gaining weight” sort of way. If one person has a fat week, most everyone else has as well. If someone has a fantastic week, most everyone else has lost a pound or two as well. And if we are purposely going to be bad and cheat, it is on the weekend – particularly on Friday evenings after our morning weigh-ins.
“If I make this weight, then I’ll treat myself,” one challenger said. “If I don’t make it, then I won’t. Some people do ‘go hard’ and eat like escaped zoo animals.”
Others express their culinary liberation with a more civilized herd – cracking the crumpets at a tea party.
“People were like, ‘nope,’” Senior Account Executive Barb Sills said, motioning with her hands as if she was shoving away something. “I won’t say who, but someone else said, ‘I don’t weigh in until Friday.’”
Needless to say, “Someone else” went pinky up on the crumpets.
However nice our overall progress, believe me when I say that a lot has happened since the first weight loss update.
One of our challengers left the job to take additional college courses.
Another challenge member has a bun in the oven – and I’m not talking about the oven in the kitchen. We joyfully give her a “free pass” for the duration of our challenge.
And despite making necessary dietary changes, little did we know that our real inspiration and organizer of the weight loss challenge, Classified Sales Manager Vida Medina, was just a few beats away from a heart attack.
“It was (chest) pressure and was getting heavier and heavier. In the beginning, when I would sit up it would go away. But every time I got up, it got heavier,” Medina recalled after staying home from work after feeling ill. She thought she had a bad case of indigestion.
Coworker and longtime friend, Sales Assistant Charmane Brown made one of two phone calls to check on her that day. The second call was the one that probably saved her life, when she talked Medina into going to the hospital.
“My husband took me to the emergency room,” she said. She was whisked away immediately for an EKG, and the situation escalated from there.
“I was getting a procedure called a cardiac catheterization. That’s when they enter your groin area and they administer the dye so they can see where your blockages are. When they got to a particular artery, my main artery, the dye did not go anywhere,” Medina said. “I just happened to look up at the screen and it was flashing red and my heart rate was 215. That’s the last thing I remember consciously.”
She got to the hospital just in time.
“I remember seeing images, just images in fast forward,” Medina described. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh man, I went to sleep,’ and I thought I was dreaming. Then I felt this kind of bump. It was the defibrillator shocking me.”
The medical team successfully used a defibrillator to reset her heart rate back into rhythm. She woke up to the sound of people screaming her name.
“My response was, ‘What?’ It startled me. I thought they woke me up out of a deep sleep. The way they were doing it, I knew something was up. There was urgency to it—they were trying to get me to open my eyes,” Medina said. “My heart was racing out of control. They told me I was ‘out for a while.’”
Medina was in the intensive care unit for five days of her nine-day stay at a Belleville hospital. She talked to her doctors about her weight loss efforts and that she had already become label-conscious and switched to low-sodium foods.
“Dr. Omar Almousalli, my cardiologist, said that’s a good thing and to keep doing that,” Medina said. “The dietician said I was doing now what she would have told me to do—cut the portion size and watch the fat. And to exercise more, which I hadn’t even started yet because I didn’t have the energy.”
With the blockage cleared, the exercise began – one hour per day, three days per week—the treadmill, a seated stepping machine and an arm bike. It was slow going at first, but now Medina is getting results.
“I feel totally different—I have energy now,” Medina said. “Before I was weak, completely weak. Now I feel like I can endure a lot longer and I feel stronger.”
She said her doctor has given her a clean bill of health.
“He told me my heart is basically back to normal. There’s a small amount of change where they can tell I had a heart attack,” she said.
After returning home, she had new healthy-living rules, like taking new medicines, avoiding caffeine-laden drinks, certain foods and cardio rehab.
Medina’s heart attack also caused a paradigm shift among family and friends.
Her husband and children are now eating healthier and losing weight alongside of her. Medina’s health scare also affected some of her buddies.
“They said, ‘you’ve got people joining gyms and buying treadmills.’ I said, ‘Whatever it takes!’”
Our group of 16 is now 14 and moving forward we are revising our group weight loss goal accordingly to aim at losing another 309 pounds.
Thank you for rooting for us. We also receive tremendous support from each another, colleagues, family and friends. We are drinking a lot more water from the water cooler and are paying close attention to what we eat – at least five or six days a week!
The next St. Louis American Weight Loss Challenge article will occur in the summer, when we reveal the grand prize challenge winners.