Man Loses 150 Pounds with Discipline, Exercise, Small Goals

Man achieves weight loss 2 pounds per month

LORI CAIN / Statesman Journal

Ron Wilson “slogs” — a slow jog — on June 30 at Minto-Brown Island Park in Salem.

Ron Wilson has lost 150 pounds in three years with a self-tailored plan of discipline, exercise and small goals

POLYANA DA COSTA
Statesman Journal
July 12, 2004

For more than two years Phyllis McCall watched an obese man slowly walk on the trails at Minto-Brown Island Park.

“I could tell it was very difficult for him to walk,” she said. “He was a very heavy man, walking very slowly.”

A few months ago, after noticing he had become visibly slimmer, she struck up a conversation with Ron Wilson

Wilson told her how he had lost more than 150 pounds in three years by taking small, simple steps that resulted in lifestyle changes.

While some try different kinds of diets and others opt for plastic surgery to lose weight, he chose to do it the old-fashioned way — eating healthy and exercising — with a single goal of losing 2 pounds per month.

McCall, a marathon runner, was impressed by his efforts and the results.

She continued to chat with Wilson in the park periodically, and recently she realized that Wilson had started jogging.

“That almost brought tears to my eyes,” she said.

Wilson, who once weighed nearly 500 pounds and had a hard time bending over to tie his shoes, now can jog three miles in an hour. Sometimes he even jogs twice a day.

A do-or-die situation

For Wilson, 55, who has lost many relatives to illnesses related to being overweight, becoming slimmer was a matter of survival.

“It was killing me,” he said. “I became diabetic and was on lots of medications, even insulin injections.”

As he kept gaining weight, his diabetes problems became worse. He had been on the Atkins diet several times throughout the years but always gained back the weight he lost while on the diet. He had tried fat-blocker medications and had even considered surgery to solve his problem.

He was about to “give up” when his doctor finally asked him, “How about losing 2 pounds a month?”

Wilson laughed when he heard that. When he considered what he had to lose to be at a healthy weight, 2 pounds was an insignificant figure, he said. It was so small that he wanted to prove to his doctor he could do it easily.

The reasonable goal, combined with self-control, exercise and new lifestyle choices were the key elements of his success.

He started cutting out what he considered to be excesses in his diet. Trying not to obsess over counting calories, he learned how to adjust his diet by controlling what he eats.

He began with the small things.

“I love peanut butter and jam,” Wilson said. “I couldn’t just give it up, but since I only had to lose 2 pounds I said, ‘Hey let’s just cut off a little bit of that.’”

For someone who ate 12 doughnuts in less than 20 minutes, that seemed easy.

Later his typical lunch became two eggs and two pieces of toast, rather than the old hamburger and fries.

He lost 14 pounds the first month but gained it back within months, which is typical for many people who lose weight.

Then he realized that without exercising, his efforts to control his eating almost were in vain, he said.

He started walking 15 minutes a day at 1 mph.

“If I have the choice of eating, sleeping or exercising, the choice is always exercise,” said Wilson, who no longer is diabetic.

A 16-hour work day does not stop Wilson from getting up at 4:30 a.m. to go to the gym before he drives to his work at the Oregon School Boards Association, where he is the human resource development director. Wilson runs every day. So when he is out of town for conferences, he always chooses a hotel that has a trail nearby.

Gaining the discipline

It was hard for him to get used to the time-consuming routine of exercise, but as time passed “discipline became a routine,” he said.

Wilson keeps that in mind even when he makes simple daily decisions. He avoids circumstances in which he is “vulnerable to food,” he said.

Most of his family celebrations used to involve food, but even that has changed.

On Father’s Day, Wilson, who has a 28-year-old daughter, celebrated the day with some shopping — walking around Portland’s downtown. In “old times” a party with lots of food would be his perfect way of celebrating it, he said. Wilson created rules for himself. He established that he would need three meals a day and that he never would eat dinner after 9 p.m. He ate less red meat and avoided buffet restaurants.

Whenever he feels hungry, he goes to the garage and builds wood furniture. His main hobby went from reading to wood-working, said Violet Wilson, his wife of 33 years.

“One of the good changes is that we have lots of nice new furniture now,” said Violet Wilson, who is waiting for the new magazine rack he is working on.

Although the couple have busy schedules and eat out most of the time, Wilson makes decisions on whether he should join his wife for dinner based on what she is cooking, he said.

“I try not to buy things that he can’t have, but he decides if he wants to have it or not,” Violet Wilson said referring to their meals.

“I am able to experience the fact that I do have the ability to control,” Wilson said about his eating habits. “An obese person fails to experience that in every meal,” he said.

It’s a daily struggle

Wilson almost has achieved his 2-pound goal this month but he still goes “through food craving just like everybody else does,” he said. “I have craving for ice cream, but if I have it, it’s portion-controlled — the pre-packaged ones, with reasonable portions.”

He tries not to weigh himself more than once a month.

“If at the beginning of the month I hit my goal, then I will start slacking,” said Wilson, as he checked his monthly weight record on his Palm Pilot.

Wilson’s efforts have changed his life.

“I feel much more confident, less depressed and capable of doing more. A larger world is now available to me,” he said, recalling not having to use an airplane seat-belt extender three months ago.

Although he does not have any long-term goals beyond continuing to lose 2 pounds per month, Wilson hopes to be able to play tennis — his favorite sport — again one day. And he may run a marathon with McCall in the future.

“It makes me very sad that there are so many overweight people in this country, and when I see someone like Ron, I’m really happy,” McCall said.

Wilson’s advice to people who are going through weight-related issues is that they set reasonable goals and never forget the key elements to lose weight — self-control and exercise.

“It’s a question of technique, finding the right formula that is successful for the individual,” Wilson said. “Have patience. Set a goal you can achieve and show that you can do it, because it can be done.”

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