MY STORY
When people look at me today - they would never guess that I have experienced severe health complications related to being obese. I’m now slim, very physically active and fit, and I’m healthy.
In fact, besides working full-time as a medical doctor, I teach a high-intensity group fitness class 5 times a week! People constantly comment on my high levels of energy. I take no medicine or supplements and generally I feel great.
But, this was not always the case.
In childhood and during adolescence I was morbidly obese. I was diagnosed at one point with critically high blood pressure. I was pre-diabetic and was on chronic daily medication for an underactive thyroid and to control hypertension. I was also on prescribed supplements including vitamin injections.
Although I was a pretty decent swimmer, moving around on land was tough because of my weight, so I spent a lot of time lying on the couch. I was a mess!
After an admission to hospital for complications of high blood pressure, something ‘clicked’ and I realised I had to make some drastic and rapid changes to my life. I went from guzzling two KFC Rounder meals with Fanta three times a week, to pecking on steamed butternut squash, brussels sprouts and cauliflower.
I lost 40kg in 3 months. It was a dramatic transformation. And with all the positive reinforcement I received from friends and relatives, my obsession with restrictive eating became more and more firmly entrenched. At one point, I became underweight: eating little but apples and microwaved mixed vegetables and exercising 2-3 hours per day. Again, I was a mess.
It was only really when I started at medical school, learning about the physiology of digestion, the value of nutrients and the potentially devastating effects of malnutrition (both over-nutrition and under-nutrition) that I realised I had been abusing my body for years.
It was time to start showing my body some love and respect. Slowly, I started eating more moderately and exercise became more of a pleasure and a celebration of what my body could achieve rather than a punishment for eating too many carrots.
I would read healthy recipe books, study nutritional values of foods, memorise food labels. Food was now a fascination.
Years passed and I was lucky to get a post working night shift in a busy emergency department. Great excitement, very stressful and quite sad a lot of the time. I noticed how many health complications could be prevented if people lived healthier lives.
I saw young people suffering strokes. Children losing their parents to heart attacks. A lot of pain from migraines, inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis, cancers. Amputations and dialysis as a result of diabetes.
It was shocking that the sicker my patients got, the more medicines their specialists would prescribe for them. Instead of addressing the root cause of the problem.
This inspired me to pursue my postgraduate training in Lifestyle Medicine: A more holistic but still evidence-based mainstream field of medicine that considers the way we live as the key factor responsible for illness.
Out of my own life experience, but also through hundreds of hours of research, and now following thousands of consultations with my patients in private medical practice. I have seen the power of sustained healthy lifestyle change.
I am a living example of how lifestyle has the ability to reverse disease.
