Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2004

Dedication pays off in pounds


Lori Wolfe/The Herald-Dispatch

Sheila Smith swims laps Monday before participating in a water exercise class at the YMCA in Huntington.

Sheila Smith won’t say what she weighed when she decided to really start losing pounds about 13 months ago.

What the 47-year-old will tell you is that she was on disability from her job as a public school employee because her arthritis made it too painful to get around and that she faced the possibility of spending the rest of her life in a wheelchair.

She was living in Louisiana at the time. When she stopped working, Smith moved to the Huntington area to be with family. A few months later, she started going to the Huntington YMCA and practicing Atkins -- a diet of strictly meat, cheese and eggs and a multivitamin.

Since then, she’s lost 204 pounds.

Her cholesterol has gone down, as well as her blood pressure. And best of all, she’s more mobile.

"When I come here in the morning and swim, I feel better all day," said Smith, who taught special education in Louisiana for 23 years. "I don’t feel stiff until about 10 o’clock at night. It will never get rid of the arthritis, but it makes it bearable."

Before she changed her lifestyle, she had trouble walking. When she went to the mall, she sat on a bench while her daughter held up clothes for her from the store window. When she went to Wal-Mart, she used the motorized wheelchairs.

"I stopped doing things I enjoyed because I hurt," said Smith, who has two 19-year-old adopted children. "To walk from the bedroom to the living room couch was atrocious."

The first week she went to the Y, she just sat in the water. Eventually, she was able to take a water aerobics class offered in the warm-water pool for members with arthritis. She couldn’t do most of the exercises at first, but kept at it. Eventually, the class got to be too easy.

After that, Smith continued to try new water aerobics classes and increase her activity level.

She said she’s fortunate that she can spend as much time as she does at the Y -- which anymore is three to six hours a day, seven days a week. Her workouts include various water aerobics classes, swimming a mile a day, weight-training and lots of abdominal exercises. A former EMT and volunteer firefighter, Smith also works part time as a lifeguard at the Y.

She now walks around the mall with ease. Last year, she paid someone to cut her grass. This year, "I have to fight my father for the lawn mower. I love it. I can run with it."

Her accomplishments are nothing short of miraculous, said her father, Doyle Smith of Huntington, who gets daily reports from Sheila about her weight loss.

Smith weighs herself every day. If she doesn’t lose, she swims extra hard.

Every once in a while, she plateaus in her weight loss, but she doesn’t cheat much. On rare occasions, she’ll eat a frozen yogurt from McDonalds, without the cone. Last week, she ate one garlic-cheese biscuit from Red Lobster. One little treat like that usually does the trick, and the weight loss gets going again, she said.

Her target weight is 140 pounds. At that point, she’ll start adding other healthy foods to her diet, but will continue the swimming workouts for life.

"My motivation is feeling better and encouragement from friends," Smith said. "People I don’t even know come up (and encourage me). It’s neat to share your story because it encourages other people, too."


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