Sept. 15--Jon Hisaw's doctor called him, in so many words, "a walking dead man."
"He said if I don't do something about my weight, don't bother to come back," Hisaw said.
But what haunted him more than the doctor's comments, was that the doctor was right. He recalls the visit, "I saw it, 406 pounds. I wondered, 'When did that happen?'
"To this day, I thank him for what he said. It's what I needed; I owe him my life."
Recently, sitting at an outdoor cafe, he was wearing clothes from his third wardrobe makeover after dropping 200 pounds since the doctor's visit in April 2009.
Hisaw's physician declined an interview and credited Hisaw with the weight loss success.
"My waist went from 52 to 34," inches, Hisaw said. "I shrunk my stomach -- the same thing that surgery does. It just took me two years."
His only thought about surgery has been about what to do with excess skin. "That's expensive (for surgery). It's tightening up; we'll have to see.
"The truth is, I still eat what I want. I'm just not ridiculous about it," he said. "And I run. I'm not much about lifting weights, but I run (several miles) a week."
Hisaw has never been small. He grew up in southern Missouri, surrounded by Southern comfort food for every celebration. He weighed more than 250 pounds when he graduated from high school in 1998.
'I DIDN'T HAVE A SCALE'
Over the years, he picked up a few pounds a year, hardly noticeable for a big person.
"I think that's the way with most overweight people; they know they're overweight, but they just don't want to see themselves as overweight," he said. "I didn't have a scale in my house; I went to the doctor once a year.
"I didn't get that tired on stairs. Walking around the building (at work) was the only exercise I got."
But when he weighed in at the doctor's office he realized his health was could be in danger.
"That tough love told me I had to drop the pounds or get my affairs in order," he said.
First, he had to change his personal food groups: fried, fast, fun and a lot.
"I was working (long) hours and I just didn't have time to plan meals," he said. "So I went to the closest fast-food place. The sodas, five, six sodas a day," more sometimes after work.
Dieting always failed. "I'd lose a few pounds and as soon as I stopped the dieting, it came back," he said. "I needed something I could keep doing, not something I knew I'd give up one day."
VEGGIES, DIET SODA
So he started eating more vegetables than meat and cut out the sugary sodas.
"I turned to diet sodas and never looked back," he said. He went cold turkey from fried foods, although he says he slips now and then. "But now, you can still have fun, but you watch what you eat and make up for it later."
Snacks became sliced celery, carrots or fruit. "I was never into sweets," he said. "I just liked big meals. I still do. I'm just not stupid about it."
He added the MyFitnessPal.com app to his smartphone. He entered a weight loss goal and the app uses calorie intake and exercise to calculate his rate of weight loss.
He dropped about 80 pounds by his next doctor's visit about a year later. "He (the doctor) was glad, but (the doctor) said, I'm not done yet," Hisaw said.
The weight loss slowed about that time.
"I knew I'd probably gone as far as I could go without exercise," he said. Other than softball or picnic sports, he'd never been an avid athlete, he said. He walked some.
He was lucky on two fronts. A friend who was into fitness coached him about eating right.
RUNNING AND ROMANCE
Then, he became friends with Elizabeth Schmoeller, a fellow staff member at Biomedical Systems in west St. Louis County.
They started talking, discussing their lives and goals, as friends do. She was a runner. She invited him to join her during the week. "I'd been running for several years before I met Jon; I ran with my sister," she said. "He was at about 60 pounds lost.
"Still, I told him I am an active person and he kept reassuring me that he was going to lose the weight," she said. "I liked him and he was such a great friend and we got along so well; I stuck it out with him."
Hisaw recalls, "My first time, I ran for a minute and that was it." The paces built over time -- walk a minute, run a minute; walk five minutes, run five minutes.
Today, he runs for miles, 5, 7, even 10 miles during an outing. He's training for a half-marathon in October, "maybe a marathon next year."
This year he competed in two 5-mile events, one in March and one in May.
On the track, he keeps up with Elizabeth, "and sometimes he's way out ahead," she says.
They were married in July.
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