At age 31, Pamela Joyce Kimrey had to face facts.
Her father had died of a massive heart attack when he was just 35 years old. Pamela Joyce wondered if the same fate awaited her. After a lifetime of overeating and almost 2 decades of yo-yo dieting, she weighed 274 pounds. And she was scared.
Pamela Joyce, of Warrenville, South Carolina, traced her seemingly endless appetite to her childhood. “When I was born, I weighed a little more than 4 pounds,” she explains. “My parents left the hospital with instructions to feed me as often and as much as they could.” And they did. By the time she was in fourth grade, her weight hovered around 130 pounds.
Through high school, Pamela Joyce continued to gain. She graduated weighing close to 250 pounds, far too much for her 5-foot-2 frame. “I didn’t want to go through college overweight. I wanted to fit in,” she recalls. “So I put myself on what I considered a diet. I ate less, but I ate poorly—mostly deep-fried, sugary, and fatty foods.” Over the next year, she took off 70 pounds. “At 180 pounds, I still weighed too much for my height,” she says. “But I held steady for several years, right through my wedding in March 1987.”
As Pamela Joyce settled into married life, the pounds started | coming back. “Twenty-five pounds stuck around after I gave birth to our only child, Houston,” she says. “The rest of the weight resuited from’too many meals of fried food smothered in gravy plus thousands of calories worth of junk food and soda.” By October 1996, Pamela Joyce had reached her top weight of 1 274 pounds. “One night, I was lying in bed, feeling disgusted with myself. I started thinking about my dad, and I realized that I could die young if I didn’t take better care of myself. It was my wake-up call.”
The very next day, Pamela Joyce went to her local library and took out every nutrition, fitness, and weight-loss book that she could find. When she read them, she found three themes that came up over and over again: a low-fat diet with portion control, regular exercise, and plenty of water.
Based on the information that she had collected, Pamela Joyce put herself on a strict 1,200-calorie-a-day diet. She cut out junk food, whole milk, and butter and began grilling and baking food instead of frying it. She also invested in a kitchen scale to keep tabs on portion sizes.
Because she was accustomed to eating as much as she wanted, Pamela Joyce had to find a way to keep her stomach full throughout the day. One of her favorite tricks was to save a part of each meal for later in the day. “If my breakfast consisted of a cup of raisin bran, a half-cup of skim milk, and a banana, I’d save the banana for a mid-morning snack,” she explains. “Likewise, I’d keep half of my lunch sandwich for an afternoon snack. If I ate out, I’d have half of my entree wrapped to go before I’d even take a bite.”
This strategy helped Pamela Joyce stay within her 1,200-calorie limit without feeling hungry. Between her improved eating habits, her daily workouts (alternating aerobic exercise and
strength training), and her consumption of gallons of water a week, she managed to lose 137 pounds—exactly half of her body J£ weight—in a little more than 2 years. She’s been holding steady “» since November 1998.
“There is absolutely no way to compare the old me with the new me,” Pamela Joyce says. “I could never have imagined how wonderful I feel. I can keep up with my son and not worry about embarrassing him—except maybe when we’re inline skating in the park. Good health has become a way of life for me and my family.”
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