Advice from 43-Year-Old Mom Who Lost Over 40 Pounds In Less Than 30 Days
My name is Sharon Munroe. And I’m 43 years young!
I’d like to share a personal story that I know will resonate with you…
I was always one of the cool girls in school. I was captain of the cheerleading squad and was homecoming queen my senior year.
What’s more, I was one of those ‘skinny’ girls you love to hate. I was able to eat anything I wanted and still kept to a size 2. Heck, I didn’t even have to work out to keep my firm and toned body shape.
I used to chalk up my slimming figure to genetics.
After college, I married my high school sweetheart, Tyler. We backpacked through Europe for a year and then settled in St Louis with full-time jobs. About 3 years into our marriage, I gave birth to our firstborn child – a wonderful boy named Aiden.
And that’s when everything went downhill.
I was no longer skinny. I had gained 60 pounds while pregnant with Aiden. And no matter what I did after giving birth, I had not been able to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight.
As time went on, the busier I got. We had a second child and between juggling two children and a full-time job, there was no time to eat properly or even exercise. And the heavier I got.
It wasn’t long until I started wearing clothes that ranged from size 12 to 16.
I no longer felt confident or sexy. I had very little energy to do anything besides look after the kids and my job.
I even began to avoid having sex with Tyler, fearing that he would be turned off by the unsightly jiggles all over my body.
At times of desperation, I turned to countless fad diets — where I:
Ate food that tasted like cardboard
Choked down diet pills that made my heart race
Suffered through gut-wrenching workouts
Even starved me, desperate to lose the weight
Each and every time I would stop dieting for only a few days only to have the weight pile back on with a vengeance.
I had no idea what was going on with my body. I finally gave in and convinced myself that I was just getting older and this was the body that came with age.
…until a visit to the emergency room early one morning turned my life upside down.
It was a Friday night.
Tyler and I had our monthly dinner date at a Mexican restaurant. We finished up that night with something we had not done in months—sex!
I woke up shortly after falling asleep in Tyler’s arms, with crushing chest pains and heavy breathing. I thought they were just from the Mexican food and the lovemaking. So, I took a couple of tums and sat up for what I thought was heartburn to subside.
But the pain did not go away. My left arm started tingling. I woke Tyler up and told him what I was feeling. It didn’t take Tyler long to respond:
“Baby, I think you’re having a heart attack. We need to go to the emergency room right now”, he said while already putting his pants on.
I broke into a cold sweat a few minutes later and I started to believe Tyler was right. Not wanting to leave our children alone, I told Tyler I would drive myself to the ER. Tyler didn’t like it one bit but he reluctantly agreed.
On the way to the hospital, I couldn’t help but think about the situation I was in. I was only 40 years old and here I was having a heart attack. I kept thinking about how Tyler could be left a widow, all alone to take care of two young children.
That night at the ER, after several hours and tests, the doctors confirmed that I had a mild heart attack—they told me that based on my test results and current condition, I was very fortunate that it was not an even bigger one.
You see, l knew I was heavy and probably a bit overweight but little did I know that the doctors diagnosed me as clinically obese. Even worse, my ‘obesity’ had brought on cardiovascular damage.
The words that came out from the doctor that night remain vividly in my mind to this day:
“Sharon, if you don’t drop at least 40 pounds, I’m not sure you can make it to your next birthday”, he began.
“Your arteries are hardening, your BMI is over 30 and your cholesterol levels are through the roof! You’re only 40 years old but you have a body and a heart of an 80-year-old woman”, he continued.
I lost focus for a moment and asked myself rhetorically, “How did I get myself into this? I didn’t even finish eating that double chocolate cake at dinner!”
Everything had happened so fast that I didn’t even think twice about the ultra unhealthy lifestyle I had led the last few years—and the excess weight that came with it.
I really thought I was just getting older.
“You’re also showing signs of Type 2 Diabetes and I’m afraid to say that even weight loss surgery would be dangerous for you at this point”, the doctor continued with the bad news.
At that exact moment, I felt helpless and completely defeated. There was no way I could drop 40 pounds. Even with the fad diets, I had only managed to lose at most 10 pounds. But even then the weight always came back, with more weight.
I was released from the hospital the next day. When I got home, all I could do was to just sit and cry.
I did not know what I was going to do. Tyler and I had so many things planned for our future – our trip to Europe that summer, our plans to start our own catering business.
I even questioned whether I would be around to see my children’s next birthday.
I was sobbing uncontrollably when I felt a hand on my shoulder – it was my son Aiden. He had watched me cry the entire time. He put his arms around me and offered his assurance the only way he knew how:
“It’s going to be okay, mommy. Jesus will take care of you”, he said while holding back his tears.
At that moment, I felt guilty for letting this happen to me all these years. I knew I wanted to be there to see my son and daughter graduate from school, get married and see my grandchildren. I knew I had to do something but did not know what.
You know, I’m not a very religious person—I do go to church on almost every Sunday, but hearing Aiden speak about Jesus that evening compelled me to seek higher help at our church the very next day.
…and that’s where this sad story with the certainty of a doomed ending would turn around.
That morning at church, I met Kyle Cooper, a retired United States Marine Sergeant, who would eventually be the one that saved my life.
Unbeknownst to me at that time, Kyle was at church on his way to speak to our pastor, when he saw me sobbing uncontrollably. Being the big-hearted, caring person he is, he came up to me.
“Hello. What’s wrong?”, Kyle offered.
I stared blankly at Kyle, and for a moment, I wanted to tell him to get lost. But when I saw him in his marine uniform, everything came pouring out:
“My doctor told me that I’m going to die, real soon, if I don’t lose 40 pounds quickly. My cholesterol level is high, my blood pressure is high, my arteries are clogged and my body’s already showing signs of Type 2 Diabetes. I have to lose weight yesterday!”
I continued to tell him about how I had tried every fad diet and did every gut-wrenching workout but none of them had helped me lose any weight—nothing worked!
I started crying again and let out softly, “I don’t want to die this young. I want to see my children grow up. I want to travel the world with Tyler”.
Kyle looked at me for a few seconds, smiled and put his hand on my shoulder,
“I’m Gunnery Marine Sergeant Kyle Cooper. I just got back from Afghanistan where I’ve been fighting and training soldiers for the last six months. I have helped over 200 middle-aged reserve soldiers transform their overweight bodies and recapture their youthful health. If you’re willing to try, I’d like to work with you too”, he said with a very convincing face.
I looked at Kyle with disbelief and sarcastically and angrily retorted,
“What does a Marine Sergeant know about weight loss? Isn’t it a requirement for one not to be overweight in order to get into the marines? Are you kidding me? Please, just leave me alone!”
Kyle continued to smile and did not seem to be one bit affected by my rudeness.
For the next 15 minutes, Kyle proceeded to tell me everything he had discovered in the last six months— about how a disastrous mission in the mountains of Afghanistan led him to Sam Pak, a Korean medical student who would share with him an amazing weight loss discovery that has kept regular people in Asia with youthful energy and healthy bodies.
I sat in silence, mouth agape, in a trance, listening to every word…
He continued to tell me that he’d spent the last few weeks intensely planning on how to bring Sam’s remarkable weight loss method to the world.
The biggest revelation from Sam’s method was that women in their 30s, 40s and even 60s don’t lose weight and are storing fat because of metabolic acidosis. Metabolic acidosis occurs when your kidneys can’t get rid of food acid properly. It makes your body store fat and throws your fat-burning cycles out of whack.
No matter how much you work yourself to death in the gym or restrict your diets as much as you want, metabolic acidosis makes absolutely certain you never lose an ounce of fat.
He continued to explain metabolic acidosis might very well be the main reason why I haven’t been able to lose any weight.
Kyle passed me a folder with 21 pages of Sam’s notes. Those notes outlined a fat loss program that tells you exactly what food to eat and when to eat each food.
I was still very skeptical, especially when the notes included eating foods that I thought were not ok on a diet and excluded foods that I thought were ok on a diet.
But I owed it to Tyler and my children to at least give this program a try—I had nothing to lose but everything to gain.
I apologized to Kyle for my rude behavior and thanked him for coming up to me in my neediest of time and for sharing with me Sam’s program.
The next morning, I jumped out of bed like a girl on a mission. I headed to the grocery store and purchased every food listed in Kyle’s notes.
I remembered thinking “This seems a bit too easy, will this ever work?”
But I was desperate and ready to try anything.
Plus, Kyle obviously knows that Sam’s program works for fat loss since he had used it to transform the bodies and health of over two hundred overweight reserve marines, just a year earlier.
I immediately began eating the foods Kyle’s notes had outlined and followed the other surprisingly simple steps laid out.
Since I followed Sam’s notes, here are the SHOCKING results I experienced that I will always consider a true miracle:
My weight dropped like a rock from 216 lbs to 175 lbs in just 21 days. I no longer had to worry about my blood pressure or cholesterol levels. I’m happy to say that I have not had another heart attack!
I have since lost an additional 32 lbs (73 pounds total)! This was over the course of just one year. It was far easier than I expected, I never once felt hungry and I’ve not gained back any of the weight since.
I just had my 43rd birthday and, I feel as healthy and energetic as I did in my 20’s. Keeping up with children while juggling our business would have been impossible for me at my previous weight and condition!
My extreme fatigue and dramatic mood swings have disappeared and my creativity and “zest for life” have come roaring back just in time for our family’s trip to Italy this summer. And Tyler and I are having great sex (and lots of it) again. I truly couldn’t feel happier.
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