Holiday Strategies

Do you secretly dread the holidays? That season beginning with mega-bags of Halloween candy, and extending through a plentiful Thanksgiving meal, holiday banquets, and ending with New Year's appetizers and cocktails? The days when we:

• Eat too much
• Drink too much
• Overload our already-crowded schedules
• Exercise too little
• Spend high-pressure time with people we'd otherwise not even see?

This Wednesday's Group session: 5:15 - 6:15 on Wednesday, November 3rd will be devoted to examining this "festive" time of year. How can we strategize to continue and maintain our weight management?

Join our Wednesday Group this week as we plan to take control of our holidays and make them joyful and productive for us all.

We're all in this together.
Linda Gromko, MD

Queen Anne Medical Weight Loss Graduates its First Group

Congratulations to our very first group of winners who began our program in June 2010!

We've seen remarkable weight loss achievements. We've embraced physical activity - with nearly everyone tackling exercise with a new zeal.

I've learned that you can go through a personal crisis without scones, muffins, or those giant hospital cookies! Who knew?

Our group participants have been very conscious: working hard at understanding their own patterns of weight challenge. Most of us have gained and lost before.

We raise the slightly scary and ever-present question: why should we be able to maintain our weight loss more effectively now?

In my opinion, it's because we truly are different: with new tools and a better understanding of our own underlying truths.

Plus, we have the opportunity to continue to meet as a group for that exceptional group support. 

So, congratulations to our Winners. Keep it up.

We're all in this together.
Linda Gromko, MD

Join Linda in Rowing Through the Winter - even Vicariously!

Here's to announce a new, and very personal blog, www.RowingThroughTheWinter.blogspot.com.  It celebrates a great love of mine: rowing. Rowing is a great form of exercise, and a wonderful way to make and connect with friends.

Of course, any form of exercise will work in a weight management and fitness program.

The best exercise, after all, is the one a person will do!

Take time to find what you like to do...even if exercise was never a high point in your life before. Try something new as you accomplish your weight transformation.

Think of exercise as "recess" for adults!

Join me as I row through the winter, physically and metaphorically. Glad to have you along.
We're all in this together.
Linda Gromko, MD

Thank you, Tim!

It is with sadness that we announce the resignation of our Director, Tim Franklin.

Brian Grev, Dr. Gromko's Medical Assistant who has been with the practice for years, has agreed to step up and take over Tim's responsibilities, at least on an interim basis. Brian has special interests in nutrition and in physical fitness. He will do an excellent job!

We welcome Brain in this new capacity, and thank Tim for his excellent service.

Linda Gromko, MD

"Why am I hungry?"

One of our members suggested a useful tool for getting in touch with emotional eating. When feeling hunger, she will stop, take a breath, and ask:

"Why am I hungry?"

Pretty basic? Not at all. For those of us with weight challenges, "Why am I hungry?" can be a critical question!

So often, the answer might be:

• "because I'm procrastinating..."
• "because I'm bored..."
• "because I'm tired..."
• "because I'm angry at my husband..."
• "because I'm frustrated at work..."
• "because I'm worried..."
• "because I'm facing a big decision..."

You name it....but so often, we notice our hunger cues come from something other than physical hunger!

Now if it's time to eat a meal/meal replacement, it may be actual physical hunger. But take the second to ask if there's something else going on!

Get in touch with the reasons for your own non-nutritional eating.
We're all in this together.
Linda Gromko, MD

Long Term Weight Management: It's Not a Sprint to the Finish!

 I overheard Tim Franklin, our Program Director, talking with a client,

"Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint!" he said.

So true! But how human it is for us to want to lose our weight at lightening speed. It's sometimes hard to remember that it's taken a lifetime of habits and patterns to develop our weight problems in the first place.

Like Tim, I want to remind us all to remember the following:

1.  Stay on the Program.
2.  Don't freelance.
3.  Just get through today. Trust the Program.
4.  Easy to say, but try to ignore weight fluctuations; Weigh at the Office only - for consistency.
5.  Know that many people share similar struggles, and we're finding solutions together.

Many of us are moving towards Transition! This is where we are reminded that we are learning how to manage food for the rest of our lives.

We're not in this just for a prom dress anymore; we're in this for long-term, sustained results.
And remember, we're all in this together.
Linda Gromko, MD

Thin Feels Better...

Now that we are completing the 10th week of OPTIFAST, I've lost over 20 pounds and almost down to my "thinner weight." Clothing fits better, and my energy level has improved. What a relief it is to be doing this diet and seeing such good results. Most of all, I am beginning to feel like myself again.

I started on my weight loss quest about 11 years ago. At the time I weighed 213. My wake up call came when I nearly fell on my mom, then in her mid eighties - a tiny woman with osteoporosis.

The horror of almost falling on top of my tiny mother jolted me: what if I had broken her little body?

After 8-9 months on Weight Watchers, I lost just under 50 pounds. The diet was sound, and I have referred many patients to Weight Watchers over the years. The best part of my weight loss was embracing physical fitness. For the first time in my life, I really started exercising: spinning, weight training, and even rowing on Lake Union! It was great fun for me, and a tremendous stress relief.

I was able to maintain my weight loss for almost 10 years. Then, my husband was diagnosed with kidney failure, and the need to do Home Dialysis cut into my exercise time. Many hospitalizations later - for Steve, I found that I was gaining - not exercising as much. Furthermore, I entered into an addictive relationship with Starbucks scones and those enormous nutritionally empty hospital cookies.

I remembered that slogun: "nothing tastes as good as being thin feels!"

It was clearly time to get back on track, and it's been surprisingly easy to do so. OPTIFAST is easy to follow. You just "give it up" to OPTIFAST, i.e. follow the program, and it works!

I have no delusions: the scones and cookies can't come back - at least not with any regularity.. Fortunately, I've brought the exercise back - and it's wonderful. More and more, I realize that excess weight is a chronic condition which requires careful management. I understand that I'll be monitoring weight forever.

The benefits? I get to walk the talk when dealing with Metabolic Syndrome, high cholesterol, Adult Onset Diabetes, etc. I don't have to feel "asynchronous" when helping my patients manage these conditions. If I can exercise and lose weight, they can too.

The last time I lost weight, I found it surprising - and sad - to find that people seemed to think I was more intelligent when thinner. It was as though the IQ went up as the pounds came off! I could only imagine the discrimination, the loss of opportunity for people with many more pounds to lose!

I noticed that I felt more "human:" more included in the human race. Nobody watched when I was eating - of course, I was no longer eating the enchilada salad with real sour cream and the fried dessert.

It was just easier to be thinner. And it's easier already.

We're all in this together. Take care.
Linda Gromko, MD