Paige Walvoord knew how to lose weight.
“I’ve dieted on and off my entire life,” she says.
Walvoord had tried everything from Weight Watchers to a keto diet and found success — but the weight always found her again.
“Weight has been an issue since I was 10 years old,” the Bonney Lake woman says. “My parents were fighting all the time and I would just come home from school and eat.”
Her mom started sending her to weight loss clinics when she was 14, but with no one else in the family joining in, she never felt supported.
“I’m 14 being told, ‘Don’t eat this,’” Walvoord recalls. “But ‘We’re going to have ice cream in the hot tub’ every night.”
She learned to hate salad, but that’s about it.
Then about year ago, Walvoord asked her doctor for a referral to the Center for Weight Loss and Wellness at MultiCare.
“I was 41 and I just needed to really get a handle on my weight because it was getting up there,” she says.
At her first appointment in October, Walvoord weighed 314 pounds. But at about the same time, she went in for a mammogram and a lump was discovered.
“I went into the mindset that I had to deal with one thing at a time,” she says. “I just couldn’t get my mind around it.”
A lumpectomy took care of that worry and allowed Walvoord to face the new year ready to focus on her weight. At her first appointment with dietitian Anne Corley in January, she was still over 300 pounds. But things were going to change.
“I immediately enjoyed our conversation,” Walvoord says.
She opted for medical weight loss because her insurance will pay to remove pannus — the excess abdominal skin that results from dramatic weight loss — but not bariatric surgery. Losing enough weight to qualify for pannus removal quickly became her goal.
“The biggest thing for me was giving up sugar,” Walvoord says. “I wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around for a couple of weeks. I’ve never been on drugs but it was like I was going through withdrawal. I hadn’t realized how much sugar ruled my life.”
That first month, “It was like, boom, I lost 10 pounds. Then the next month, another 10 pounds,” she says.
Walvoord got sick and her weight bounced up a bit, but then she quickly resumed her regular weight loss. She focuses on eating fresh, unprocessed foods and doing some moderate exercise.
Monthly appointments with Corley give her the accountability she needs to stay on track.
“It’s big for me because I know I’ve got that appointment coming up,” she says.
But Walvoord also says an appetite suppressant prescribed by her bariatric specialist helps.
Although she works 50-60 hours a week, she’s learned from Corley how to efficiently prepare healthy meals and make adjustments when she goes out to eat.
Instead of buying processed foods, “I go to the butcher and the produce stand now,” she says.
A family trip to Disneyland to celebrate her son’s high school graduation was a big test.
“I was able by that point to adopt a really good strategy for when I ate out,” Walvoord says.
She asks for sandwiches to be served as lettuce wraps and eliminates sauces. Another tip is to immediately box up half of her meal in a to-go container to help keep the portion what it should be.
“We were down there for four days and I walked 25 miles,” she says. “I came back with a high weight loss.”
Better yet, she was able to really enjoy the vacation.
“Before, my feet would have hurt and my back would have been aching,” she says. “My 13-year-old daughter whined more than I did!”
And of course, on vacation, she opted to try out a treat.
“I had half of a scoop of ice cream,” she says. “It was good, but super sweet.”
So far, Walvoord has lost nearly 50 pounds and several inches.
“Every year my boss gives us jackets at Christmas,” she says. “The one he gave us last year I couldn’t even get zipped up. It was embarrassing because it was a 3X in men’s. But last night I tried it on and it’s almost too big.”
Fitting into smaller sizes is nice, but Walvoord says the real payoff has been in feeling better, physically and mentally.
“My moods are actually better,” she says.
And unlike past weight loss efforts, she says this feels more sustainable.
“I’m making changes that are going to be a lifestyle for me,” Walvoord says. “They’re just subconscious choices that I make now.”
Walvoord says it’s about more than how she looks.
“I want to get out there and live life and do things,” she says.
The MultiCare Center for Weight Loss & Wellness supports you before, during and after the weight loss journey.
