Saphrym was fat.  For a long time, that was alright.  But now he was fat and diabetic.  Fat, diabetic, and scared.  There were other fat diabetics in the family, so he knew what he was scared about.  Needles, insulin, heart attacks, strokes, blindness, kidney failure, dialysis, amputations, and worst of all, impotence!  So the fat man made a plan.

He consulted several sources of wisdom, starting with the internet.  He was good at internet sleuthing, having spent many sedentary hours honing his skills.  Fortunately, the man with a plan also had a brain.  He skipped the testimonials, the “lose weight fast while watching TV” advertisements, and limited his searches to reputable sources.  He uncovered the “great secret.”  You can lose weight and gain better control of diabetes with a healthy diet and regular exercise!

Putting his money where his mouth is, he wasted a few hundred dollars on a health club membership.  Despite good intentions, family and work schedules always got in the way of the “regular” part of his exercising.  The healthy diet part also proved to be more difficult than expected.  Freakin’ habits die freakin’ hard.

The fat, scared, brainy man didn’t give up, though.  He sought the advice of his doctor, a dietician, and a psychologist.  He learned some deep stuff about teeth grinding and nail biting and stuff.  Lotsa stuff.  He was taught exactly what a healthy diet was.  He and his wife took cooking lessons.  His doctor sent him to a diabetic education clinic where he learned how to monitor his own sugars, and set specific exercise goals that worked with his schedule.  And that’s when he reached his all time high of 355 pounds.  All time meaning past, present, and future.  He started to lose weight for real.

He was eating 5 meals a day, but these included a specific mix of carbos, protein and fat, and the total daily calories were a fraction of what he used to consume.  Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard to do.  And he was walking 5 to 10 minutes a day, after some warm up calisthenics.  That doesn’t sound like much, and it isn’t, but it was a hell of a lot more than what he was used to.  He dropped 10 pounds in 2 weeks!

And so it went.  Losing the first few pounds turned him on to losing more.  His wife, who was pleasingly plump, started to lose weight herself.

He saw his doctor some time after crossing the mental 300 pound barrier.  He weighed in at 290!  But the big surprise was that his blood sugar had normalized!  He was able to stop his medication!

Good ole Saphrym is the occasional success story that all fat people could be.  He went on to 275, then 250, then 225.  By then he was walking, with brief little jogs, for one hour each day.  He loved the feeling.  He felt bad on the days he didn’t walk.  At 200 pounds he bought a road bike.  Over the next summer, he increased his distance from 5 miles to 50 miles in a day!  The following winter he had surgery to remove an ugly overhanging fatty apron.  With that he lost another 15 pounds and looked much better in his pants.  Women started to look at him!!!!  That was a good kind of scary.  Smartly, he stuck to the woman who had loved him at 355.

He still spent a few sedentary hours on the computer, but life had taken on a new rhythm.  Priorities and paradigms had shifted.  He had discovered rollerblading and 5K’s.  He especially liked the ones for charities.  His kids grew up with a different idea of eating and exercising than he had grown up with.  He hung out with an entirely different crowd of people, healthy people.  Life was good.

Much, much later in life, Saphrym would still become diabetic.  But his illness would be very mild, and easily controlled with low doses of good medicines.  He would never have any of the diabetic episodes he had feared long ago.  And he never became impotent, which is a very fine thing, a very fine thing indeed.

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Notes:

Great liberties were taken with this story, which was inspired by the real Saphrym, specifically by his post:

saphrym.com: A New Milestone for my Health

I wrote this because I admire his efforts, and because he is giving away some good stuff to a contest winner.  Here is the contest link:

saphrym.com: Win $250 and 1,000 Entrecard credits

Please support him with all manner of good lovin’.

saphrym.com:blog:category:dieter