Written by admin on 2009-04-23T03:45:17+0000">April 23, 2009 – 3:45 am
Make no mistake: Debbee Sereduck loves her husband and her three children. But for 3 years, she refused to eat dinner with them. Sacrificing a little family togetherness was tough, but it helped Debbee take off an astounding 234 pounds.
Debbee, a 38-year-old resident of Spokane, Washington, doesn’t remember a time when she was thin. At 5 foot 11, she carried her weight well—for a while. But the scale never seemed to stop climbing upward. By age 33, she had reached 414 pounds.
Self-conscious about her appearance and concerned about the effects that her weight might have on her health, Debbee felt that she had to slim down. She just couldn’t get herself motivated to do it. That changed one day in 1994, when she turned on her television and saw rescue workers extricating a large woman from her home and placing her in a special van to take her to the hospital. “The reporter mentioned that the woman weighed 560 pounds, and I was mortified,” Debbee says. “That wasn’t much more than I weighed.”
With the image of the woman fresh in her mind, Debbee launched a self-styled weight-loss program that consisted primarily of eating low-fat foods in more sensible portions and riding a stationary bike’. “I knew what I had to do,” she says. “I just needed the motivation to do it.”
Exercising was tough at first because Debbee was so overweight and out of shape. “I’d just tell myself, I’m going to pedal that bike for as long as I can,’” she says. “I made myself sit on it for an hour every day, whether or not I was actually riding.”
Debbee had an easier time adjusting her eating habits, but dinnertime remained a struggle. How could she eat a carefully portioned meal while watching her family help themselves to seconds? How could she just throw away perfectly good food that her kids didn’t finish?
Rather than wrestle with these temptations, Debbee decided to walk away from them. Every evening, she prepared dinner and served it to her family. Then she took her meal into the living room and ate by herself. She didn’t return to the kitchen or dining room until everything was cleaned up and put away. “This kept me from dipping into the serving bowls for extra helpings and from finishing off the kids’ uneaten food,” she says. “It also gave me a few minutes of peace and quiet.”
Her strategy worked like a charm. Over the next 3 years, Debbee took off 234 pounds, reaching her goal weight of 180. She has held steady ever since.
Were all of those dinners alone worth the effort? Debbee thinks so. Now that she’s fit, she has even more opportunities to enjoy life with her family. “I used to be a very active person, but I hadn’t been on a bicycle since I was 11 or 12.1 really wanted to go riding with my kids, which we now do all the time,” she says. “I’m able to do the kinds of things that I couldn’t do before.”
WINNING ACTION
Go solo. If being around your family at dinner tempts
you to overeat, do what Debbee did and eat your meal away from temptation. You’ll feel satisfied with what’s on S your plate and avoid the urge for seconds. As a bonus you can even enjoy having quiet time for yourself.
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