Weight Management - My Story!

" I was fortunate that most of my life, I have been fairly healthy.  As a teacher who put in long hours healthy habits like food were often laid aside.  Breakfast often started out at drive through with coffee and two sweet buns.  After a long day, it was easy to pick up a pizza or burger and fries on the way home.  Every year, I added a few more pounds. Before I knew it,  I had become the largest person in the room.  Believe me that is not fun as It comes with anxiety, low self-esteem and sore knees."  However with a stressful job and a lot of driving on busy highways, I used food as my survival tool.  Between drivethrus and restaurants I found the pounds packing on.  

"Believe me over the years, I have tried everything from groups to purchasing special food from multiples companies.They worked for a while. Then because many of these plans were expensive or time consuming. I dropped out which led to more issues with anxiety and mobility."

At the same time,  I had 20 years of honing my skills in the classroom, I knew it was time to make a significant change and pay my knowledge forward.  I made the move to the "largest board in Canada".
Again through hard work and long hours, I continued to hone my skills and over the last 7 years of the 13 years I worked at the board office, I became one of the 4 coordinators responsible for programming for over 25,000 identified gifted students in this board.

After 13 years at the board office, I took early retirement.  The stress had become with too much.  Many days of the week, I was driving 5 hours on 4 lane highways for multiple meetings at multiple schools in a very busy downtown corridor along Lake Ontario. One day my heart told me for my sake it was time to go.

I cried, I love my job but it was harming me physically and mentally.y

"Even in retirement, I thought this would change. But it didn't, "old habits die hard.""

We moved to a small city where we soon made new friends and got involved in new areas of interest.
My partner discovered that their love of art  lead to becoming involved in the local art gallery. Taking art lessons which led to participating in selling art through local community art shows.  At the same time they discovered walking around town was important physically and mentally and often takes long walks 3 to 4 times a week which has led to feeling much more healthier.

For.myself, my leadership roles in my teaching career lead to building skills in web design in several local organization;  co-chair in an organization that hired local stage artists to provide courses in theatrical makeup, wig making for the theatre and the screen, design and carpentry for the theatre and the screen.  Specific areas like costume design based on published plays and books; puppetry, photography and metal work.  Many of the instructors were award winning artists.

My interest in history and web design led to joining the local branch of a provincial architectural group. As a branch we have over 400 historical plaques on homes and buildings that introduced the community to the story of the original home owners in the 19th and early 20th. I found myself designing a website which hosted pictures and stories of these people.  

At the same time, I joined and became president of the local branch of the provincial retired woman educators group.  This group's mandate is to provide  Caring, Sharing and Fun activities for its members and support for local agencies focused on women's issues and food banks.  
I received a special award for keeping the group going through Covid through  hosting over 200 zoom gatherings. 

Making new friends and getting involved in these groups led to long hours of "work" and plenty of opportunities  for eating out.  The pounds kept piling up.

Then 2024 arrived, I found myself tired, losing interest in the groups and by the fall I received a diagnosis of cancer.  This hit me like a bolt of lightning.  Many of the significant women in my life had also received this diagnosis. My mother, my favourite aunt, my maternal grandmother, my closest teaching friend that I met on the weekend before my first teaching job and was the reason my partner and I moved to our current small city, one of my closest friend from my local church all past from cancer.  My paternal grandmother also receive a cancer diagnosis in her retirement years.  She had been a teacher in a one room classroom, in a northern province, taught during the Great Depression, lost the farm that my grandfather owned during the climate changes during the Great Depression.  They moved back to Ontario where my grandmother went  to university at the same time in the 1940's that my father went to university on the GI bill.  My grandmother went on to work for 20 years in a little building on the university campus where cancer research was being done.  It is because of this work experience that when my grandmother saw personal symptoms she sought medical support early and word a colon bag for over 30 years.  She passed in her 95th year.  Today as I sit here bald going through chemotherapy after an early successful surgery.  I am determined to live longer than my maternal grandmother.  I know I have a lot of work to do.  I need to take the skills I learned in my teaching career just as I did when I learned them and in the early years of retirement and focus on my next 20 years.I have started with gratitude.  I am grateful and thankful that I was born into a province that believes in universal heath care and universal education.  Is it perfect no, but when I go for chemotherapy, it cost me $5 for parking my car.  The medical staff is extremely competent and make sure I am getting the best care and treatment that is cutting edge. When I go to the drugstore I pay on average $4.00 for a bottle of pills that will take me to my next treatment.  I have access to a triage phone line and a local hospital if I need additional support as issues come up in during this treatment process.  Because of my  unique type of cancer there is not a formal radiation plan, therefore I am in the process of applying to be part of study to define an appropriate radiation treatment plan.  All this will cost me is parking at the hospital.  To put this is another way of thinking this is now my Why and What for the next 20 plus years of my life.This is where I will start to develop my "design your life" plan.  It is through using strategies and skill and because I am a teacher I want to design a skills based program that I can share ties others.Weight management does not just mean losing weight or building up exercise which can be part of the plan but it also means looking at mental health.  Why did I work long hours? Why did I eat so much drive through food?  There are strategies and skills that need to be looked at to make changes to habits.  In other words,choices and habits have consequences.  If one does not like the consequences then work, research and action must take place.I enjoy reading articles in credible sources and non fiction books that challenge my thinking and I enjoy sharing these ideas with others.  To me this is one definite of creating community.This journey into physical and mental health will be based on this concept of gathering skills and sharing with others so they can find new skills that they might find helpful.  Include in this website will be posts, white papers and a method to put personal plans together to develop these chosen skills. Some folks need tracking plans, others need community support and in general most folks need both a plan they own because it is personal and a community to support them.  


In 2019 with the help of my doctor, I was able to get into a bariatric clinic.  I could have had the surgery or the food plan approach.  I knew this would be a life commitment for me and that some who had the bariatric surgery had issues.Things got off to a great start, I had to go to the clinic about an hour away once a week where I purchase protein drinksI  In addition I attended a workshop  that led to better understanding food and how it works in ones body.

It was a two year commitment.  The first 6 months was using a protein drink which we picked up weekly when we attended a workshop on how food affects our body and best practices.  About 3 months in because I was faithfully sticking to the plan, I was asked to join a smaller group that was testing a daily injection product similar to what is on the market today. Things went well with the drinks, not sure the injections did much difference.  Even though the government was paying for the clinic and subsidizing the drink, I was paying for the injections through my own insurance plan.Then 2 things happened:
1. I capped out my insurance plan and realized the injections would cost me $800 every 4 weeks.  This was a no go for me.  
2. Covid hit and the program was shut down. It was only 6 months shy a week into this adventure and the good news was I had lost 60 pounds.  The sad news was I tried to purchase more protein drinks so I could follow the "proposed" plan of returning to predominately "regular" and healthier foods.
However, it came in from another country and a months' supply would have cost just as much as the injections.  After a while I gained most of my weight back. I was back to my old habits and the stress of life was piling up.