While visiting my parents in New Jersey, my sister Debbie and I decided to go for a walk. Debbie was also visiting New Jersey from Florida, and I had driven up from Maryland. The walk we were planning was approximately two miles from my sister Gwen’s apartment in Vauxhall where we were staying to a small park in Milburn and back. As Debbie and I were putting on our sneakers and t-shirts, laughing and chatting, we noticed that Gwen wasn’t getting dressed. ” Aren’t you coming?” I asked. She replied with a frown, “No, I’m too fat. I don’t want people staring at me.” I did not understand, “Who’s going to be staring at you?” Gwen lived in vicious cycle of weight loss and weight gain. She was in one of her weight gain cycles. At 5 feet tall, she weighed over 250 pounds. “People”, she said as she walked away. She never explained who these people were. She simply refused to walk with us that day despite our best efforts to try convincing her that no one was going to be watching her. I had witnessed my sister, a registered nurse, who is nine years older than me battle weight all her life. From the Dick Gregory Bahamian Diet to Slim Fast, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, she would gain and lose and gain again, most times she gained back more pounds than she lost. She finally lost weight permanently when it seriously began impacting her health. She became diabetic, could not walk up a flight of stairs without feeling winded, and she was exhausted all the time. Since her weight loss surgery 15 years ago, she has lost eighty pounds and kept it off through diet and exercise. At age 72, the exercise she rejected years earlier, walking, is her passion. She tells everyone who will listen that you are never too fat to exercise and it’s the small steps that count.
