Lynn, Joe and Diabesity

© Jacquelyn Johnston, M. Ed.

Read this, then do the homework at the bottom of the blog. (Just kidding)

Lynn and I were in a Toronto restaurant where you could have your food cooked right in front of you. It was a colourful place, set up to look like a farmer’s market. Instead of point and click it was point and cook-- and they really went to town on size. Their waffles were the size of dinner plates, and by the time you added the strawberries, whipped cream and chocolate sauce you had a pancreas screaming for mercy.

I watched in amazement as Lynn inhaled the first one, and before the rest of us could finish our asparagus, she was going back for a second, this time topped with blueberry goo, whipped cream and raspberry sauce. Oh my diabetic stars and stripes! (No protein in its right mind would have intervened).

On the way out, and before we got back to the convention, Lynn said “excuse me for a bit”, and went to a corner behind a lollipop tree for a smoke.

She then waddled back to the convention, where she could barely keep her 200-pound frame awake for the afternoon session. Lynn was in pre-diabetes.

Joe weighed 245 pounds. He put on his vertical-striped suit and looked in the mirror. Good. That made him look almost acceptable. Ten pounds lighter than he really was. He attended a lot of meetings those days, events where everyone was in jacket and tie.

No, he finally said, no, this won’t do. He’d been a 48-piece sushi guy till then, but he decided enough was enough. He had diabetes and he was obese. 245 pounds. D + O = Diabesity.
His doctor had just told him of his diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes. He had a muffin-top. Seen people like that? His waist overflowed his belt.

When he got home from the doctor’s office he went straight to his kitchen cupboards and cleared out everything white, everything processed.

He stocked his two freezers with frozen vegetables, bought a week’s worth of fruit, decided to have breakfast every day, and had six small but balanced portions a day of good, tasty food with not a hint of fat. No white bread, no white pasta, no white rice, no granulated white sugar and no pop.
He attended the Diabetes course at the local hospital. He did everything they asked him to, and never let up.

It took him about a year and a half, but he whittled it down to his current handsome
174 pounds, and he’s working on his resistance training.

That’s the two of them in a nutshell. Lynn has full-blown diabetes today, and is still obese. Joe’s diabetes is totally under control. He is his doctor’s poster-child for diabetes management.

If you have a comment or any questions on my two friends and how they their lifestyle contributed to diabesity, just leave a comment on this blog. You can hear more about people like them in the free report you can download on the right of this page. I’d be most interested in your take.

Restaurant, waffles whipped cream, chocolate, pre-diabetes, vegetables, sushi, muffin top, poster-child, diabetes management.