Beverly Schiavoni: Finally shedding the burden of obesity

She had tried every possible diet invented or imagined by the western world except the "chocolate diet," and that's only because she really doesn't like the stuff. She had read everything that came her way about obesity and its possible solutions because, when it applies to you, you just do. She had lost more cumulative weight than she had ever weighed at one time, but never kept it off.

She had raised a family, investing her entire life in taking care of each member, but had never put herself on the list. And it didn't matter that she weighed 450 pounds. Or that she couldn't buy clothes off the rack or walk down the street. Or that she needed vascular surgery. The weight remained.

Beverly Schiavoni was not a heavy child. Until they took her tonsils out. Her weight problem began, she recalls, from then on. And she spent the next 60 years living with the burden of obesity.

"It really wasn't until years later when I was leaving Stanford after a vascular surgery," says Schiavoni, "and I saw that someone had written 'morbidly obese' on my paperwork, that it hit me and I decided it was time to lose weight. That was big for me. I realized that if I didn't do something about it, I wasn't going to be here very long. And I didn't want to die and have it be because I was 'morbidly obese.' It was time. It's a mindset you just have to reach."

The question was how.

Schiavoni was already dieting and walking and losing weight when she learned about the possibility of bariatric surgery. And she wondered.

"When I first read about it," she says, "I thought, 'Oh, this is a magic thing. I could have this surgery and  then it will all be over.' But it's not like that; and the more I read, I decided it was not for me. Because, in the end, people who have bariatric surgery are going to have to do exactly what I do: eat less and exercise. The biggest problem, I think, is that people believe it's going to change them. But it's only a tool. It isn't over when the surgery scar heals. In fact, it's just the beginning."

Schiavoni has friends, she says, who have undergone bariatric surgery, friends who were told to lose 20 to 30 pounds before they could become viable candidates. And they did, returning one month later for their surgery.

"What's wrong with this picture?" she asks. "Why can't they just keep going? They'll have to take tons of vitamins and eat a tablespoon of food at a time for the rest of their lives when they were already on the weight-loss path before the surgery."

It's taken her a couple of years, but Schiavoni has lost more than 200 pounds through exercise and portion control, limiting her intake of fats and sugars, and never missing her 6 a.m. walk along the Monterey Peninsula recreation trail, no matter what. Friends call her the "Matriarch of the Trail."

"It took me a long time to get to this walking," she says. "I could barely walk to the street. Now, I walk three miles a day, seven days a week. I'm relentless about it. I used to be lazy about exercising; that's why I do it first thing in the morning with Casey, my golden retriever. As the day goes by, I can find tons of excuses not to get out there. But when I get out there, the reward is huge. I feel better physically and psychologically. It's my therapy time. People who don't exercise don't know what they're missing."

Schiavoni returns from her walk to a bowl of hot oatmeal for breakfast. She's justifiably hungry, having not eaten since dinner at 6 p.m. the night before.

"My family has eaten well for years," she says. "I get my five fruits and vegetables every day. The biggest thing for me is quantity not quality, which means limiting portions, having only one snack a day, and eating nothing after dinner. I was a nighttime eater, which is a really bad cycle to be in."

Although Schiavoni has not yet reached her goal weight, she is confident she will and remains committed to staying the course. Particularly because she likes how she feels, how she looks, and how, for the first time since childhood, she can walk into a store and buy clothes off the rack.

"I've been ridiculed and laughed at and dismissed," she says. "Discrimination is huge. I'm half my old weight now, but I have so much empathy for people who are obese. I
have found the very nicest people in these very obese bodies. As humans, we forget that.
 
"I was actually a little skeptical at first of talking about my weight, because I'm not thin yet. I'm healthy, but not thin. Then I thought how this could be beneficial to others and to me. Telling my story could give me the same incentive and support it gives others. Weight loss is a pretty personal decision.

"To me, bariatric surgery is a pretty drastic step, and it's not a cure. If I thought it was a cure, I would have had it a long time ago. If it really was a cure, it would have been all over, and I would have been thin and gorgeous all this time."