How to Save a Life

Just like JD, I often think of that song… Anyway, if you’ve been reading our story so far, you know that an aching tooth sent me to (of all places) the cardiologist’s office. He mandated a number of lifestyle changes to help me stem off a heart attack. First and foremost would be to lose weight … a lot of weight, in fact, and as fast as possible.

Without mandating anything, he suggested I see a local weight loss clinic (Princeton Weight Management Center), an office affiliated with Health Management Resources, Inc. (hereafter HMR). HMR has 25 years of experience in doctor-managed weight loss and has a track record of bringing down weight by 100 pounds or more, safely. It’s a bit pricey but it’s a full-service weight management program.

HMR is very focused on the psychology of weight loss. In fact, a lot of their literature sounds more like an addiction-intervention program than a typical diet. They sell a nutritionally-balanced program of foods and also insist that you attend a weekly class wherein you get support for the diet, meet others on the same program, and (perhaps most importantly) put your numbers up there for the world to see. This confessional aspect helps motivate people to stay “in the box” (as they say). There’s also a mandatory midweek check-in by phone. In fact everything about the program stresses that they are serious about you losing the weight; if you don’t or can’t keep to the program, they’ll boot you right out of it.

I attended my first class on 2008 December 2, making it exactly four weeks ago. In that time, my weight dropped from 368.4 lbs to 344.0 lbs… 24.4 lbs in four weeks, and that during the holiday season. Although I have never seriously dieted before and so have no baseline, I’m reasonably sure that’s better than the typical self-managed diet. As importantly, my blood pressure has dropped from a life-threatening 180/120 to a high-but-manageable 110/80. (The improvement has been enough that I have been moved virtually off meds entirely.)

The program I’m on is called a “no-decision 5-shake” diet. It’s not really no decision, but decision-making is much curtailed. Later I’ll write a post on why this suits my particular habits very well. The 5-shake bit refers to what I am supposed to eat, which is 5 HMR shakes (chocolate or vanilla) each day, plus two vitamins and 64 ounces of “non-caloric beverage” (the best of which, of course, is water). In addition I am supposed to get 2000 calories of physical activity. All together this makes up my “minimum daily prescription” and so far I have not had too much trouble meeting it.

One of the interesting things about HMR is that there is no maximum. If I’m hungry, I can have another shake. I can also eat one of five or six types of entree (lasagna, stew, etc.) that HMR produces. These don’t meet my requirements but are otherwise “in the box”. At my current weight, it is estimated that I would have to consume 27 shakes per day to actually gain weight, so the program doesn’t really worry about how many I do consume. Fewer is better, obviously, but extra is not a problem. (As a personal record, I’ve consumed 10 meal-equivalents in a day. Usually it’s 6 or 7.)

So far, it’s worked pretty well. As I mentioned, I’ve lost an average of 6 pounds a week for the last month. Although that curve is already flattening, I feel confident I can keep a 2-3 lb/wk rate. I’m way off from my goal weight (let alone my “ideal” weight by BMI) so I’ll be at this for a long while. Once you reach your goal weight, HMR transitions you to “maintenance mode”, wherein they teach you how to eat so as to keep your weight stable.

There’s a lot more involved, such as the exercise program I’ve adopted or the various recipes you can use so that you don’t go shake-mad. And I expect to keep a weekly log of what I’m doing and how it’s working — or how it’s not, if I fall down. This is new territory for me but already I feel better, so I’m hoping to keep it going.