These New Yorkers are proud to call themselves losers. Some used surgery, others used sheer will power. But the results were the same: flab to fab.
The city has grappled with an increasing obesity rate — 22 percent of residents are obese, according to a study conducted by the American Journal of Epidemiology — since 2006, when Mayor Bloomberg first instituted a trans-fat ban. Mandatory calorie counts followed in 2008, and a possible salt reduction backed by Bloomberg is currently in the works.
But these six success stories didn’t need the government’s help. Here are their stories.
PHOTOS: NYC WEIGHT-LOSS SUCCESS STORIES
Pedro Gomez, 38, Brooklyn
WEIGHING IN: Started at 418.8 pounds, now weighs 198 pounds.
HOW HE DID IT: Weight Watchers.
EATING HABITS: Stopped his habit of skipping meals and then overindulging in huge multicourse dinners. Gave up fried and fast foods.
He now eats small meals every several hours and only indulges in a turkey sandwich or wheat pasta for dinner. He often uses a slow-cooker and mixes fat-free chicken broth with brown rice and beans for a healthy lunch or dinner, and plans out his weekday meals during the weekend.
BIGGEST WEAKNESS: Sweets, like ice cream and chocolate. His biggest temptation to overindulge is at movie theaters, but now he brings portion-controlled fat-free popcorn and granola bars as healthy snacks.
Gomez describes himself as an “emotional eater,” who often eats to cope with the depression he felt since he was as an overweight child.
Now, instead of bingeing, he calls friends or relatives to talk about his feelings and attends a weekly Weight Watchers meeting.
ADVICE: “The hardest part is getting started,” Gomez says. “Do not expect to make too many changes too quickly. Making mini goals along the way will help you achieve your ultimate weight loss goal.”
Kara Koss, 26, Manhattan
WEIGHING IN: Started at 250 pounds, now weighs 170 pounds.
HOW SHE DID IT: Running.
EATING HABITS: Koss also eliminated processed foods and began eating organic. She roasts vegetables, like squash, potatoes, zucchini and asparagus, by tossing them in a tablespoon of olive oil, a pinch of sea salt and pepper and baking them at 375 degrees. She also recommends green monster smoothies, where you mix frozen fruit or fresh fruit with spinach. “The green flavoring looks unappetizing, but it’s a great way to sneak in veggie servings.”
BIGGEST WEAKNESS: Chocolate and peanut butter. She substitutes her processed sugar cravings for fresh fruits. She also tends to overeat when she’s bored, especially when sitting at home alone in her apartment watching TV.
Koss only noticed how heavy she became in 2006 when she had to shop for black clothes for her mother’s wake. “It was a wake-up call,” she says. Shortly after, she was inspired to join the NY Road Runners. She began by walking a minute and then running a minute for a total of 20 minutes. A year later she did her first half- marathon. She completed four more half-marathons in the past two years and plans on running the NYC Marathon in November.
ADVICE: “You can’t be afraid to finish last. You need to get over all the mental stuff,” she says. “And don’t run for distance, run for time.”
Omar Roy, 42, Brooklyn
WEIGHING IN: Started at 387 pounds, now weighs 184 pounds.
HOW HE DID IT: Roy got a laparoscopic duodenal switch, a combination of removing part of the upper stomach and performing a gastric bypass on the lower stomach. People with a BMI of over 50 will lose 85 percent of their excess fat and have a lower relapse rate than those who have bypass alone, says a surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital who did Roy’s surgery.
EATING HABITS: He used to eat fast food three times a week, now he eats it once a month. He sticks to yogurt and fruit for breakfast and eats three moderate sized meals a day.
BIGGEST WEAKNESS: Cheese. When he met with a nutritionist before surgery, he realized that almost every meal of the day included cheese. Now he eats it three times a week, at most. “I just don’t crave it like I used to.”
Roy had his “aha” moment when he was hospitalized for cellulitis, a skin infection caused in part by his obesity. Nurses tried to weigh him on a traditional scale, but it wasn’t big enough. “They brought in a chair. It wasn’t big enough. They had to bring in an even bigger chair. I was done. That was it for me. I decided to do the surgery,” he says.
ADVICE: “I don’t suffer from sleep apnea. It changed my life.”
Kevin Bain, 56, Manhattan
WEIGHING IN: Started at 465, now weighs 215 pounds.
HOW HE DID IT: Lap-band surgery conducted at NYU Langone Medical Center, where the stomach is cinched like a belt, and saline solution is inserted to allow only one cup of food to be digested at a time.
EATING HABITS: Bain used to buy four bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches in the morning. Now he’s generally not hungry during the day, but forces himself to eat yogurt or cold cuts.
BIGGEST WEAKNESS: Cheese and sweets. At one point, he could go through a pound of sliced cheese in a day. Now he still eats full-fat cheese, but in moderation. And sweets are still a part of his life, though now he has an inch-wide slice of cake after dinner, instead of an 8-inch wide piece. If he overindulges, the band forces him to throw up the excess food, teaching him the hard way how to control portions.
Bain had two concurrent wake-up calls: He collapsed at work because of low oxygen levels, and then his mother, who was also obese, died due to complications from her weight. “I either do the surgery or die,” says Bain, who wasn’t able to walk the 10 blocks to work. Since his surgery in 2007, he dropped his waist from 68 to 36 inches and started walking 7 miles a day. “It was like being reborn,” he says.
Kelly Jordan, 49, Bronx
WEIGHING IN: Started at 184, now weighs 120 pounds
HOW SHE DID IT: She got breast reduction surgery in 2006, which enabled her to start an exercise program. She then started to control her portion sizes — all on her own.
EATING HABITS: Instead of the egg sandwiches she used to eat, Jordan drinks a fruit shake every morning, consisting of bananas, blueberries, strawberries, a quarter cup of orange juice, 4 ounces of fat-free yogurt and ice.
BIGGEST WEAKNESS: Sugar, specifically a big bowl of ice cream. Jordan used to munch on candy bars at work, but the morning fruit shakes have reduced her sugar cravings and her calorie intake.
Jordan, who put on extra pounds when she had her three children within three years of each other, was inspired to lose the weight after her father died of pancreatic cancer, which doctors said was linked to his diet. She decided to start working out, the key to her weight loss success, she says. Every day, she briskly walks 5 miles around her neighborhood with one-pound weights.
ADVICE: “You have to fight tooth and nail. Every day.”
Kim Kaiman, 46, Manhattan
WEIGHING IN: Started at 256 pounds, now weighs 155.
HOW SHE DID IT: Started a medically supervised diet and exercise regimen, designed by Dr. Jamie Kane of Park Avenue Medical Weight and Wellness.
EATING HABITS: Before she went to Dr. Kane, she was eating 7,000 calories a day, including a bagel in the morning with a side of cheese, a hamburger for lunch and pizza and Tasti D-Lite for dinner. Now she’s reduced her calorie intake to 1,500, substituting VITA muffin tops for breakfast (100 calories), a peanut butter sandwich for lunch (110 calories) and a large salad and turkey burger for dinner (600 calories). Any leftover calories she devotes to her favorite snacks, Reese’s Pieces and Jujyfruits.
BIGGEST WEAKNESS: Peanut butter and sugar. She used to pour raisins into a jar of peanut butter and eat it from the jar. Now she submits to her craving with a tablespoon of peanut butter on a sandwich for lunch. She also eats low-fat ice cream and no-fat whipped cream.
To appease her sweet cravings, she eats raw vegan organic chocolate, which is also a natural appetite suppressant. She fills up on fiber, sautéing vegetables like broccoli and zucchini with Pam olive oil spread.
ADVICE: Her favorite tip? Yonkers-baked Sugar Free Xpress bread, made of soy and almond flours, which is only five calories a slice. She brings the bread everywhere with her, even on business lunches. “When it stops tasting special, don’t eat it anymore,” she says. “If it tastes really good, enjoy it — it’s important to indulge and enjoy yourself. But when you’re no longer truly enjoying it, then you have to stop.”