July 20--One of the keys to these nurses' weight loss is that the process has taken them a year or more. It all starts with simply cutting 500 calories a day from their daily food intake.
Asking them to decrease any more could set them up for failure, Shaw said.
"There is biochemistry behind it. The body fights to gain the weight back," she said. She points to studies of cows, which have very low levels of leptin, a protein hormone that regulates energy intake and energy expenditure, appetite and metabolism.
The cows graze all day long, and that's why they don't get hungry, she said.
"When leptin is high, you've got to go and eat," she said. But if you change just a little bit -- just 500 calories a day, eating healthful food throughout the day, cutting out high-fat snacks and switching to fruits and vegetables -- those levels get lower and lower.
None of the women lost the weight overnight. The key to their success was deliberate, gradual change.
Tanya Deavers of Dothan was a nurse for 24 years. She had struggled with her weight all her life but as her 50th birthday approached, she told herself, "If I don't do something now, I'm never going to do anything."
This is a nurse's life, Deavers said: "We don't get lunch. When we do, we eat fast and don't take much time. We eat too much, too fast, or don't get anything to eat, so we just buy junk food."
Deavers was trying to lose weight for health, not for vanity. Shaw's seminars set the stage. Like a lot of nurses, she was telling herself, "I'm a nurse. I already know this stuff."
But Shaw took that nutritional stuff that every nurse knows and incorporated it into real-life scenarios.
"You have to have it reinforced," Deavers said of the lessons she learned long ago about nutrition. "You learn through repetition."
Deavers also began following the guidelines of the American Diabetic Association. She wanted accountability for her weight loss, so she went weekly to be weighed at her doctor's office.
She lost 35 pounds and has kept it off for six months. She had high cholesterol; now she no longer has to take medication to control that. And she knows she's jumped the hurdle of that 50th birthday ultimatum. Healthy habits are in place for the rest of her life.
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