Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 31

31

How Surgery
Can Help

Angela Taylor of Charlottesville no longer
takes high blood pressure medication and
is no longer prediabetic-all because she
chose weight-loss surgery. She shares her
journey at uvahealth.com/angela.

Steph Greegor, inspired by her daughter,
Kerrigan (top left), made healthy changes
in her life, including kayaking and running,
and switched from an unsatisfying job to a
career in filmmaking (bottom).

She also addressed her mental health,
using a workbook program to deal with anxiety and depression, and problems from her
childhood. Slowly, she noticed a difference in
her mood-and on the scale. She felt more
positive, and the weight started to come off.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF STEPH GREEGOR

Eating to Lose and
Starting to Move

While she was making big changes in her life,
Greegor was making small changes to her
diet, focusing on one food or habit at a time.
One week, she would stop drinking soda.
Then, a week or two later, after adjusting to
that change, she would tackle another habit,
like eating too much candy or potato chips.
"When you're starting at a high number,
like 300, 400 or 500 pounds, you've just got
to start one thing at a time," she says. "You
have to start turning the ship."
When Greegor got down to 250 pounds, she
cut calories to about 2,500 per day-compared

with the 4,000 or so a day she estimates she
was consuming before.
As she lost more weight, she gradually reduced her caloric intake and paid
more attention to portions and nutritional information.
When Bauman heard about Greegor's
story, she applauded the approach to losing
weight in such a healthy and sustainable way.
"It can seem daunting to say, 'I've got to
lose 100 pounds,' but to say, 'I'm not going
to have soda this week' is something you can
do," Bauman says.
Greegor incorporated movement gradually, too, starting with walking and adding
weightlifting and later running. She started
running races, collecting a bunch of 5K medals before tackling two half-marathons.
"I felt like I could breathe easier," she says.
"I literally had nothing weighing me down."

Dealing with Plateaus and
Finding a New Normal

After steadily losing weight for five years,
Greegor hit a plateau at 183 pounds. No
matter how she ate or worked out, the scale
would not budge. "Weight plateaus are super
frustrating," Greegor says.
She talked to a doctor, who advised her to
be patient and give her body time to adjust to
the massive amount of weight she had lost.
She waited and kept up her healthy habits.
Finally, after about a year, she got on the scale
and saw a different number: 179. She kept
losing weight and eventually got down to
151 pounds. That weight didn't last, though.
"That was hard to maintain, because I was
not eating a lot," she says.
In the past decade, Greegor, who is 5 feet,
10 inches tall, says her weight has fluctuated
a bit, currently sticking between 180 and
200 pounds.
"I did gain some weight back, but I got control of it much faster," she says.
Along the way, as Greegor has worked to
maintain her new lifestyle, her daughter has
followed her lead. The two work out together,
and Kerrigan, now 17, says she's been inspired
by her mom to be healthy.
"She's definitely a good role model," Kerrigan
says. "I'm really proud of her." *

For a Local
Woman,
Surgery Was
the Solution

Angela Taylor had long
struggled with her weight.
She tried every diet under
the sun. "Atkins, Weight
Watchers, Jenny Craig-
you name it," says Taylor,
of Charlottesville.
In her 20s, she experienced several tragic
events, and "I just started
eating away all of my
feelings," she says. When
her weight began causing
serious consequences for
her health, Taylor's UVA
Health endocrinologist
encouraged her to consider
bariatric (weight-loss) surgery. Initially, Taylor was
hesitant. But after meeting
with UVA bariatric surgeon Peter Hallowell, MD,
she understood how her
medical history-including
high blood pressure and
prediabetes-qualified her
for gastric bypass, a minimally invasive procedure
that significantly reduces
the size of the stomach.
"I said, 'OK, I want to do
this!' and everyone in my
family thought I'd lost my
mind," Taylor says, laughing. It turned out to be a
new lease on life.

VIM & VIGOR SPRING 2020
http://www.uvahealth.com/angela
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA
