A second chance, I did it!

After a health scare, a supportive team helped Lisa Schieri, type 2, step outside her comfort zone and find the confidence to make lasting changes

Lisa Schieri first went on a diet when she was 10 years old. “I had always been heavy as a kid,” she remembers. After her mother passed away from kidney failure, a complication of diabetes, her worried family decided that she needed to lose weight and enlisted the help of a local diet centre.

At first, Lisa was only allotted two apples and two oranges a day. Then, only rations of lettuce and other leafy vegetables. “It was a scary program,” she recalls.

This stark introduction to diet culture, combined with the loss of her mother and, five years later, her father, led to a lifelong struggle with depression and emotional eating. Her experience at the diet centre was short-lived, but she spent her early years chasing every fad diet that came along. Each ultimately failed. “I always had success at first,” she says, “but then I didn’t have the willpower to keep going.”

The diagnosis

At the age of 28, Lisa was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. She met with dietitians and diabetes educators, but it was hard to make the lifestyle changes she needed to implement. “Dieting for as long as I had, I thought I knew what to do,” she recalls. But food was her comfort: “I didn’t have the easiest life and so every time something went wrong, food was there.”

Over 13 years, Lisa needed increasingly more medication to

manage her BGLs.

She went from pills to 10 units of insulin a day, to 100 units of insulin twice daily.

After she was laid off from her job, her spirits dimmed and her eating habits got worse. As her self-esteem fell, so did her desire to be around people. “Someone always insulted me about my weight,” recalls Lisa. Her anxiety, incapacitating at times, led her to stay in her home for nearly 10 years.

One step at a time

In January 2017, she suffered major respiratory failure and had to go to hospital. But her weight, which she learnt was 276kg, prevented her from leaving the house. “My worst nightmare came true: the fire department had to come and get me out,” she says. She spent two weeks in hospital and a month in a rehab facility. For the first time, she initiated lasting change: “I could have given up, but I wasn’t going to let this be my end.” She asked the hospital to stop giving her treats with meals and picked healthier items off the menu.

She started working with a dietitian who helped her make small, sustainable changes, such as smaller portions and filling part of her plate with vegies.

When Lisa returned home, she needed oxygen 24/7 and couldn’t make it 1.5 metres from the couch to the front door without losing her breath. But she persisted. With the support of her physical therapist, she took it one step at a time. They practised walking back and forth in her hallway. Five months later, they ventured out the door, down the front steps and back.

A brighter future

A year and a half later, Lisa walks around her 400m block twice a day and no longer needs oxygen or insulin. Her HbA1c, which was over 86mmol/L, is down to 38. “The progress was slow, but

I was willing to have patience – and it’s paying off,” she says.