“I dropped 18 pounds in 7 days!”
Mary Welti pushed her husband’s wheelchair up a long ramp from the handicapped parking lot. Halfway up, she had to stop and catch her breath.
That’s when she realized, I need to take better care of myself so I can be there for Jim for the rest of his life.
Mary, a nurse practitioner, has taken care of her husband, a quadriplegic, for their entire
27-year relationship. But when she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, she could no longer deny her risk for heart disease and stroke. She shares, “I was going to have to make life-altering changes.”
Focusing on sustainable, lifelong changes was the difference this time around, compared with years earlier when Mary lost and regained more than 100 pounds twice. This time she embraced the Ideal Protein diet and ate multiple sources of protein such as shakes, lean beef and fish. She also kept her carb intake low. It made sense to her: “Carbs stay in your body and build fat. You don’t burn them off.” When she lost 18 pounds in the first week, she says, “I just knew this was the answer!”
After six months of proteinpacked eating and working with a nutritionist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Mary was down a whopping
100 pounds.
Now Mary no longer needs her two diabetes meds. She has released her fears too.
“Jim and I have always worked as a team,” she says. “He’s the love of my life, and my weight loss will keep both of us healthy!”