205 pounds lighter, Dario Wolfish is a most remarkable guy
I want to share the story of my friend, Dario Wolfish. When I first met Dario, he was an applicant for a job opening that I had. He told me the odyssey of his 205 pound weight loss and the reversal of the obesity-related complications he had been diagnosed with—diabetes and high blood pressure. I was awed. 205 pounds in 13 months. But even more awesome, several years later he has kept it off. He has weathered stress, relocation, and all manner of things that could drive one to eat. But he has kept it off. Meet Dario Wolfish, a most remarkable guy, in his own words:
“Up to 2001, I had been severely overweight all of my life. I lost 205 pounds in 13 months, hence I have a personal understanding of the difficulty we all face to lose weight and keeping the weight off.
There is no question that proper diet and exercise are necessary to lose weight, but there needs to be a process. This was how I did it:
1) I went to the doctor and received a comprehensive checkup. This checkup diagnosed serious health problems as well as identified exercise limitations and specific diet factors that needed to be considered. For example, I was diagnosed with diabetes; thus, I needed to focus on reducing carbs in my diet.
2) I went to a nutritionist (and diabetes educator) who educated me on food, required nutrition, and disease specific diets. Three invaluable things that my nutritionist said to me in the first 5 minutes of our meeting were
a) This is not about dieting, it is about life style change
b) If it is in your home, you will eat it
c) Do not beat yourself up when you fall off your diet. Dust yourself off and get back on the horse.
3) I started to exercise slowly. My first exercise was parking my car 100 yards further away from the office door. It is important though to increase your exercise as you get in better shape but start slowly. I now ride my bicycle 200 miles a week up and down steep hills. The starting point though was walking 100 yards. Once I started losing weight, I joined a gym and worked with a personal trainer.
4) The HARDEST part of this process was dealing with the emotional elements. Getting started was most difficult since I believed (as many of us do) that profound weight loss was not a possibility. To emotionally believe that “change was POSSIBLE” was the toughest part of the process. Also, I went through therapy to understand my relationship to food with my emotions. I also tried overeaters anonymous but I responded better to one on one therapy.
My bottom line is that I want to encourage all of you who are struggling to lose weight. Feel free to email me at dariow@comcast.net if you would like to chat about this topic.”
If you want to read more about Dario, click on this link to the Oakland Tribune online. He is the cover guy of a great article on diabetes and diet.