From overweight to cover girl

When Stephanie Giewont’s doctor told her weight was the reason she wasn’t getting pregnant, she knew what she had to do.

“My doctor told me it would help if I lost just even 30 pounds … Well I lost the 30, I kept going to lose 50 and just went ahead and lost 100,” she said, shrugging the shoulders of her much-slimmer frame.

Ever since I can remember, I have been overweight. From elementary school all the way through college and beyond, I have been dieting.

I tried creating my own diets and had been through a few formal ones as well. The week before I turned 21, I found out that I had Type 2 Diabetes. Even after that, I was still unable to lose the weight. I got married in November of 2008 wearing a size 20.

In June of 2009, I lost my job as a teacher. Due to my job loss, I became depressed, which triggered my depressive eating habits. I was sedentary at home and I put on an additional 30 pounds. My husband and I had been trying to start a family, without success, and my doctor recommended that I go to Medi. I was apprehensive at first because of my past failures with diets.

In March of 2010 I started going to Medi in Winter Park, Florida. After losing 11.7lbs the first week, I felt more encouraged to keep going…and I’m glad I did. After 2 weeks on the diet, my primary doctor cut my diabetes prescription in half!

Over the course of the diet, I stayed obediently to the plan they set up for me and saw my results weekly in the pounds I was losing. In September, my doctor took me off my diabetes prescription completely. My first goal was to lose 30lb, but after reaching it so quickly, I made it 50lbs. When I reached 50lbs, I said to my husband, “Well that was easier than I thought. Why not lose another 50?” When I got to 100lbs, I was astonished at my success.

I decided to lose the last 20lbs to take myself out of the overweight category on the BMI chart. In January of 2011, just one week shy of my 30th birthday, I reached my goal of 120lbs lost! I feel like a brand new person. I have more energy and more confidence in myself and my appearance.

My diabetes is under control with diet and exercise and my sugar levels have stabilized. I went from a size 24 to a size 6. It is an indescribable feeling. The support I received, from both my husband and the Medi clinic staff in Winter Park, and the structured diet was exactly what I needed to lose the weight. A lot of people have asked me when I will be off my diet. I tell them never.

Medi helped me to see that it has to be considered a life change, not a diet, and that is exactly what is has been for me. Thanks Medi for teaching me to be healthy and bringing me a brand new outlook and lease on life.

Following the doctor’s orders, after many previous failed dieting attempts, Giewont, of Oviedo, decided to check out the Medi-Weightloss Clinics in Winter Park in March 2010. After losing 11 pounds in the first week, and her goal of 30 shortly after, she decided to go all out and make a total lifestyle change.

After losing 120 pounds on the Medi-system’s high-protein, low-carb diet, she became more than just another success story, but the face of Medi-Weightloss, landing the July cover of Medi-Living, the company’s quarterly healthy living magazine.

Becoming a cover girl

“The way you have to look at it, is that it’s not just a diet,” Giewont said. “It’s a life change.”

She documented this life change in the essay she wrote about her weight-loss journey for the cover girl contest on Medi-Weightloss’ Facebook page.

Giewont, who had been diagnosed and taking medication for type 2 diabetes for the past nine years, said she was able to cut her medication in half after just two weeks on her diet plan — eventually being taken off them completely. Instead through her Medi-Weightloss plan, she was taking multivitamins and a low-dose appetite suppressant to help her get healthy.

“Stephanie was very methodical. She wanted to make sure she followed the plan exactly how we laid it out for her,” said Shelley Bradford, a health and wellness counselor at the Medi-Weightloss Clinic.

Changing her diet was hard, but she knew she had to do it if she wanted to succeed. Bread, Giewont said, was the hardest thing to give up.

“My doctor told me I’d probably have some weird food dreams; I didn’t believe him. But I did have two dreams about bread,” she said with a laugh. “My first meal once the diet was done was a Publix sub.”

Her new self

In dropping from a size 24 to a size 6, Giewont said it was hard for her to mentally compute the reflection she was seeing in the mirror.

“You can see the changes in the mirror, but I still saw myself as a large person,” she said.

But now that her weightloss is complete, she said she feels more comfortable going to places such as the beach or out shopping.

“Her self-esteem and her overall well-being improved,” her husband, Eric, said. “She is happier, more active.”

It wasn’t hard to find words for the cover girl contest entry, but what kept her from almost not entering was having to face and publicize her “before” photo — an image of herself she had tried so hard to forget.

“Looking at that picture, I was just in shock, wondering how I let myself get that way,” she said. “It was hard.”

But after some encouragement from her husband, she submitted the photo, made the top 10 on the national Facebook page and eventually took the top spot, earning her cover girl title.

The ultimate prize

Though the weight loss and national recognition was nice, Giewont still had yet to meet the one goal she had initially set out to achieve.

Earlier this month, after 10 months on the Medi-Weightloss program and two months working on her diet maintenance plan, she and her husband finally got the news they had been hoping for — the couple was expecting their first child.

“It was what we’d been hoping for the whole time,” her husband said. “It was fantastic.”

“I found out while I was at work — the doctor called me, and I just lost it. I started crying,” she said, her face glowing. “The best part of this whole thing was that I got pregnant.”

Learn more

Medi-Weightloss Clinics in Winter Park is located at 1234 West Fairbanks Ave. Call 407-673-5555 or visit www.mediweightlossclinics.com for more information.