As Published in Today

By Stephanie Thurrott

As Debbie Ramos approached her 50th birthday in 2018, she was facing some hard truths. “My doctor asked me if I wanted to have a heart attack or a stroke, because that’s where I was heading. My blood pressure was high, my cholesterol was high and my A1C was off the charts,” she tells TODAY.com.

She weighed 286 pounds, and she knew she needed to make a change. Around the same time, her dad passed away, and she was going to have to improve her health to help care for her mom.

She started to go to the gym, and she saw some improvements in her fitness, but after seeing photos of herself from a family cruise, she realized she wasn’t making much progress.

“When I looked at myself in the mirror, I didn’t look huge. You see something that isn’t always reality. But when I saw the cruise pictures, I was shocked. I realized I wasn’t going to be there for my mom,” she says.

Around the same time, she got an email from her health plan, Blue Shield of California. It explained that if she answered some questions, their Wellvolution platform would help her find ways to lose weight and improve her health. “I figured I had nothing to lose,” she says.

They matched her with WeightWatchers and paid for it for a year, and gave her a FitBit tracker and a scale. In the first three weeks, she lost 10 pounds. “The weight started coming off and I thought, ‘I can do this,’” she says.

Over time, she lost 116 pounds: “I tell people I lost weight an ounce at a time. It isn’t fast, but it’s not meant to be fast. I didn’t gain all that weight in a year. It took 25 years for that to happen. Two or three pounds a year adds up,” she says. Today, her life is centered around health and fitness. “Eight years ago, my husband and I would wake up and watch football on Saturdays. We wouldn’t really get going until noon. Now I’m out the door at 6:30 a.m. for my WeightWatchers meeting. I’m home before 8 and we’re Frisbee golfing, riding our bikes, going for a walk or doing something,” she says.
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Her weight loss led to non-scale victories for her physical and mental health

“There has been such a shift in the way I think and the way I live my life now. I feel like if I have a challenge, I can do it, because look at what I’ve done. I feel so strong, confident and powerful,” Ramos says.

She weighs herself every day, but she recognizes that the scale doesn’t tell the full story. “Different things started to happen for me that I had no idea would be a benefit,” she says.

She’s noticed these non-scale victories:

• Her blood pressure, cholesterol and A1c levels are now normal.
• Cardio strengthened her lungs, and she hasn’t had bronchitis since 2018 or refilled the prescription for her inhaler in two years.
• She can sit in booths in restaurants now.
• She uses a bath towel instead of a bath sheet: “I always used bath sheets because I was so big. One day I grabbed a bath towel, and when I wrapped it around myself I started crying. I couldn’t believe it fit.”
• When she applied for Global Entry, the agent examined her passport and license and said, “This doesn’t look anything like you.” She had to explain that she had lost 100 pounds.
• She can run.
• She can cross her legs.
• She’s a size 10, down from size 24.
• She can buy a necklace off the rack instead of needing to have one custom made.
• Her glasses fell off because her face was smaller.
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She built an exercise habit with morning workouts and daily walks

Ramos started out going to the gym right after work, and she kept an extra bag of gym clothes at work. That way, forgetting her workout gear couldn’t be an excuse for skipping the gym. That schedule worked for a while, but as her workouts got longer she started getting home late.

Now she wakes up at 4:30 a.m. every weekday so she can get to the gym when it opens at 5. “I do my workout, come home, take a shower, stop by to get my mom set up for her day and go to work. It works out great. After work I can go straight home,” she says. “I try not to ever compromise that, but if I can’t get to the gym in the morning I go for a walk in the evening.”

In 2019, a potential setback turned into a confidence booster. She needed hernia surgery and couldn’t exercise for six weeks. “It was very hard. I was really careful with what I ate, and I was able to maintain my weight. That made me feel stronger. I thought, ‘I got this,’” she says.

She faced another setback when the pandemic closed her gym. She got out of the exercise habit and needed to find an alternative. “I had to find ways to come back from not exercising. I started to ride my bike. The first time, I rode a mile, and I threw up. I needed my inhaler again,” she says.

She and her husband started walking, and she rebuilt her fitness level. Now, they can bike from their home in Glendora, Calif. to Seal Beach, 40 miles away.
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‍WeightWatchers taught her how to eat what she wants while being mindful of her diet

WeightWatchers uses a points-based system, and Ramos started out trying to keep her points as low as possible. “I was really strict for the first 50 pounds, trying to live on zero-point foods. But I realized I wasn’t going to be able to do that forever,” she says.

Now, she plans around bigger meals and snacks. If she knows she’s going to have a big dinner, she adjusts her breakfast and lunch around that. She eats donuts and candy sometimes. “I don’t ‘cheat’ on my diet because I’m not on a diet. I indulge, enjoy and treat myself,” she says. “There’s nothing I can’t eat, and that’s why I’ve stuck with it.”

She gave up alcohol. “I wasn’t a big drinker, but we would have wine coolers, wine with dinner or a cocktail here or there. I’d rather use my points on a muffin than a margarita,” she says.

She buys smaller packages of certain foods to help with portion sizes and self-control: “If I feel like having Ritz crackers and I buy a box, I’m going to go through the whole box. If I buy one sleeve, it might cost more, but I’m only going through one sleeve. I know I don’t have the control to stop myself from eating the other three sleeves, so it’s worth it.”

She also learned how to pay attention to signals that her body is full. “We’re in such a rush to scarf everything down. There are things you can do to help eat more slowly, like putting your fork down between bites, sitting instead of standing when you eat and enjoying your food with a fork and napkin,” she says.

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She made her mental health a priority with meditation and therapy

Ramos uses the Headspace app to meditate. When her day or week feels chaotic and she notices a food craving, she takes 15 minutes to meditate instead. She also meditates to regroup at the end of the day.

“We all have these times where we’ve been great all day, then at night we eat a bag of pretzels or potato chips. Meditation helps me see what I could have done to keep that from happening. It helps me see where I struggled and where I can make changes,” she says.

Ramos started to see a therapist soon after the pandemic began, when her anxiety and stress were climbing. Therapy taught her to eat to nourish her body. “Therapy helped me resolve my need for food as comfort. I found different ways to take care of myself,” she says.

It also helped her learn to be compassionate with herself. “I have compassion for others, but I’m brutal to myself sometimes,” she says.

“I used to be athletic and outgoing, and when I started gaining weight everything changed. I became shy and introverted because I was embarrassed to be so big compared to how I had been all my life,” she says. “Nobody says, ‘I hope I weigh 300 pounds. We get there because of different situations in our lives. My therapist is helping me have a kinder dialog with myself about my weight-loss journey.”

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Source: https://www.today.com/health/diet-fitness/woman-loses-116-lbs-weightwatchers-fitbit-counting-steps-headspace-rcna182640