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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

How Some Participants Lost Weight

With the weight loss as the goal, the Diabetes Prevention Program knew when they started this lifestyle changing program, that they will deal with a myriad type of people. Their starting weights were different and so were their lifestyles. In other words there were as many backgrounds as there were participants.

They had something in common though. The one motivating factor that spurred them on to volunteer to participate in the program was to prevent diabetes. They all wanted to lose weight. Another thing they had in common was they tried to incorporate the program in their daily lives.

Let's follow the story of one of them for whom we will use a fictitious name to protect her identity. Let's call her Marie who is around the early 60 years old. She had a track record of a long history of being overweight with 240 pounds as her starting weight. She had tried all kinds of diets and not one of them worked.

When she started this program, her Body Mass Index according to a table is 44 which makes her obese. Anyone between 25 and 30 BMI is overweight and anybody within the range of 30 and above is considered obese. I wish I could show you the table that gives the estimated the BMI. It is so easy to use.

For now, suffice is to say that the calculation to get the BMI is weight in kilogram divided by height in meters squared which results in a measure of kg/m squared. But it will be so much easier just to use the table. I am hoping to have it in my regular website at Free Diabetes Alert.

Anyway, let's go back to Marie. Her motivation to join the program to lose weight is not to look good but to prevent diabetes and the complications that may come with it. She had prediabetes so she had a strong motivation to prevent it from becoming full blown.

Next week, let's she how she did. What do you think was her weight loss goal? Knowing that she weighed 240 pounds at the start of the program, can you guess her weight loss goal? How many fat grams a day would she limit her intake? Did she record the food she ate? Stay tuned; there will be more on Marie next week.

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