AZ Doctor Loses 60 POUNDS

[drjeff]

Arizona Doctor Loses Sixty Pounds - Discovers Triathlons as the Ultimate Weight Loss Program.

I never intended to get fat! Like many other people, I was a high school and college athlete, and never even thought about being overweight. But somehow, I guess, over the years I just got busy with work and my family and year after year gradually put on a few extra pounds.

Well, those few extra pounds over the years ended up creating a 6’2” thirty-four year old pushing close to 270 pounds. My cholesterol was high, my triclecrides were high, my blood pressure was also high, all this at age thirty-four. I was on a direct course for developing diabetes, increased risk of heart disease, increased risk of cancer, and a ton of other diseases related to obesity.

It gets worse. Did I mention I am a doctor, a sports chiropractor to be exact? I know this stuff; I know the health risks associated with obesity. Everyday I talked with my patients about living a healthy lifestyle, and yet I myself was not managing my own weight and health. Wait, it gets better.

Did I mention that my office is located inside a health club? Day after day, year after year, pound after pound, my bouncing belly walked into the health club and into my office. Unfortunately, like many other doctors out there, I was not practicing what I preaching.

Don’t get me wrong; I was not a complete slacker. I did some a little running, lifted a few weights, I fooled myself in to thinking that counted as exercise. Wearing lose fitting clothes, I walked around the gym like a has-been football player. I’m not fat, I’m big, I told myself.

Well, I live in sunny Arizona, land of the endless summer. Sooner or later you have to go to the lake, the water park, or you are invited to a cookout and pool party. That is when all my excuses caught up to me. My kids wanted me to play with them at the pool party, they wanted me to go down the waterslide with them, and I made up excuses because I did not want to be seen in a swimsuit. They did not understand. They did not see that I was embarrassed, they just wanted to play with their dad, they did not care that I was fat. So, despite knowing the health risks associated with being overweight, it was the feeling of low self-esteem and embarrassment that finally drove me to action.

So there I was, a doctor, ready to get the weight off. Obviously the little running I was doing, the little weight lifting I was doing, was not cutting it. Even though I knew there were no quick fixes, I hate to admit it, I tried some of those quick fix gimmick supplements. That was just a waste of money. Then I tried a bunch of the fad diets out there. I bought a bunch of books from all the “weight loss experts”. I would lose a little weight. However, I could never stick with the diet for any length of time, and when I went off the diet I would gain the weight right back

So then tried working my butt off in the gym. I ran almost every day. That got real boring, and I found out that running everyday is not the best thing to do when you weigh close to 270 pounds. As a result of my workouts, I spent many hours in my office with electric muscle stimulation on my knees to help reduce the pain and inflammation from all the pounding on my joints.

It was looking like I needed some help, so I hired a personal trainer. When I showed up for my sessions he would ask me what I wanted to do for a workout today. I remember thinking, shouldn’t you have a detailed plan for me? It was obvious that he was making up my program on the fly with no planning, no direction.

There I was again, still no direction, no focus, no drive, nothing to guide me. Frustrated about not getting any results and what to do, I thought I was just have to accept that I was overweight and deal with it. I gave it a real effort and it did not work.

Then I began talking with someone in my health club who did triathlons.


It sounded pretty cool, so I began researching the sport in the Internet. The more I read about triathlons and triathlon training, the more sense it made to me as a way to help me lose weight. If you are going to do an event that involves swimming, cycling, and running you obviously are going to have to train that way.

I also began reading about using heart rate monitors and affect of exercising at different heart rates.

The more I searched the triathlon Internet sites the more and more I became interested in the sport. The people who competed in triathlons looked really fit, it was inspiring. That is when I decided to take my commitment to losing weight to the next level. Weighing close to 270 pounds, I signed up for my first triathlon. Five months away, I was going to do a sprint race, which was a 500m swim, a 15-mile bike, then and a 3-mile run.

So there I was, I had five months before the race. I was not going to back out of it so I was ready to start training.

Using a combination of what I learned about heart zone training and from the triathlon Internet sites, I started my program. I started out nice and easy, a 10 min run then a 10 min bike, and I was suppose to keep my exercising heart rated better 65 and 75% of my maximum heart rate.

The use of the heart rate monitor became a very useful tool. It kept me from working too hard or too easy. Before I began using the heart rate monitor I counted walking the dog as exercise. However, it was able to show me that I was not getting my heart rate high enough to result in any real weight loss benefit. So basically, I was just walking the dog. The heart rate monitor I was using, the Polar 610, also came with software. I was able to download all of my exercise sessions into a computer. Then I was able to objectively document my exercise sessions. The software was able to track my calories burned during exercise, my average heart rate, hours spent exercising per week, and much more. After every exercise session actually looked forward to downloading my session to see how I did.

Since I was working towards a triathlon, my exercise sessions alternated between swimming, cycling, and running. I also did about an hour of weight training a week. This really added a variety to the exercise program, and it never got boring. One day I would just bike, then next maybe run 10 minutes, do a weight session, then bike for 25 minutes. Then the next day I would just swim. The next day I would swim then follow it up with a run. My knees were holding up very well with little, if any pain. It was looking like I was not going to be able to use the “knee pain” excuse to stop exercising. At the same time I started eating better, no real diet, just common sense stuff, avoiding the sugars and white breads.


There I was, ready for my first triathlon. It had been five months since signing up for the race; I was forty pounds lighter, and scared to death. I thought about backing out, but my wife and kids were there to give me support.

The swim came first, I did the sidestroke, the backstroke, I even floated on my back to try and catch my breath. Somehow I made it. As I walked from the water to my bike, I staggered around as if I had been swimming in a lake of liquor. I had swolled a lot of water and I was so dizzy I could barely walk.

When I got on my bike I honestly thought I was going to do pretty well in this event. I found out that there is a big difference between riding a road bike and riding a mountain bike, I did not pass a single person. My full supension mountain bike just did not cut it. It took me awhile, but I finished the bike. Lastly came the run. You really cannot call what I was doing a run, more like a wobble. My legs felt like rubber and I could barley lift them off the ground, but I made it the three miles without stopping, I did it, I finished my first triathlon, and as crazy as it sounds I really enjoyed myself.

Feeling good about my accomplishment, but still having some serious weight to lose, I again started reading more and more about triathlons. I found another race six months later that was about twice as long as my first race, 1000m swim, 15min bike, and a five-mile run. I signed up for it.

I continued with the Triathlon training. exercising in different heart rate zones, mixing and matching between swimming, biking and running, downloading my exercise information into my computer for me to review. The weight just kept coming off and coming off.

At the time of my second race, eleven months after learning about triathlons, I was sixty pounds lighter.

It seemed like every week one of my patients who I had not seen for months would come in for a treatment. The reactions were always the same, doc what the heck happened to you, you look like a totally different person!


I remember on of the gym members walking up to my desk and looking at my before and after pictures. He pointed to my fat picture and said, “that is me” then he pointed to my fit picture and said, “That is the way I want to look”. Wow, what a great felling, I could not believe it. Then realized I was in better shape than almost all of the people in the gym.

As I am sitting here writing this article, it has been a year since my first triathlon. Just two weeks ago, I raced in my third race and I actually managed to finished second in my age group. I

But more importantly, with triathlons and this type of training, I have helped a number of people lose weight, and I have seen my patients totally change their lives right in front of my eyes.

As a result of getting into triathlons, not only do I have a new body, I have a new life.

Dr. Jeffrey Banas is a Chiropractic Sports Physician practicing in Mesa, AZ. Dr. Banas now runs weight loss programs at his office and over the internet.