C
SHRINKING MAN
This Week • January 22, 2014
The incredible
7
How Jim Crosby lost 178 pounds and
changed his life
Judi Bobbitt
[email protected]
“We crave what we eat,” he explains, saying he now craves fruits
and vegetables. As his body changed, he began to notice other changes, too.
“You feel better about yourself, more confident,” he enthuses. “My
eyes used to be on the ground. Now I smile more ... my personality
changed more than anything.”
Being able to buy clothes at “regular” stores for the first time, he
says, is “hard to put into words. It’s so empowering. I’ve got my life
back.”
He discovered he could fit comfortably into seats at the theatre
-- where he no longer buys popcorn and pop. There was more
room for him behind the steering wheel of his car. He went
to a concert at Massey Hall in April, and ran into some
golfing buddies he hadn’t seen since the previous September. They didn’t know who he was.
“I’ve created a bucket list now,” he laughs, rattling
off some of the things he enjoys -- skiing, white water
rafting, walking, ultimate frisbee, hockey and skating,
“everything we did in our 20s and 30s.”
He’s starting to play guitar now.
Most importantly, there were health benefits. He
went from suffering from severe sleep apnea to being able
to do away with his CPAP breathing machine at night with his
doctor’s blessing, and now sleeps just fine. His cholesterol
and bloodwork numbers, “borderline” before, are “normal
for the first time ever.”
His job now is to maintain his weight, and he
speaks at Harvey Brooker and encourages others in an
effort to pay it forward. In hindsight, he now realizes
how low his self esteem was as a heavyset man who
used to make self-deprecating jokes and refer to himself as Santa Claus.
“This is a second chance, I’m not going to blow
it,” he says firmly. “I’m not going back to what I was.
There is no amount of money that would make me go
back to that again.”
He doesn’t hesitate when asked what advice he
would offer anyone just starting out on a weight-loss
journey. “Don’t wait. Don’t think about it, just do it. It’s
the best gift you could give yourself. Don’t procrastinate.”
Stories of Inspiration will appear monthly in 2014.
If you have an inspiring story you’d like us to consider
sharing with readers, e-mail Judi Bobbitt at jbobbitt@
durhamregion.com.
durhamregion.com
OSHAWA -- Jim Crosby of Oshawa isn’t quite the man he used to
be. And for that, he’s grateful.
Describing himself as a “completely new person with a
second chance,” the 53-year-old husband and father of
two is happy to talk about how he lost an incredible 178
pounds in just 14 months, and changed his life. Back in
May 2012, when he started his journey to transformation, he expected to lose weight and slim down. And he
did, but along the way he discovered the process gave
him much more than a new physique.
“It’s changed everything.”
He was 400 pounds at his highest weight ever, “a
prisoner of my own routine.” After changing his
job to eliminate a lengthy commute time
and getting his finances in order, he says
he ran out of excuses not to do “the
third thing. One morning I woke up
and it just clicked. I couldn’t think
of a good reason not to. I was tired
of being tired.”
He signed up at the Harvey Brooker Weight Loss for Men
program in Toronto, where the
focus is on making healthy food
choices, eating regular meals,
keeping a food journal
and support group meetings. In the first week,
he lost eight pounds.
Five weeks in, he had
dropped 43 pounds,
and found he had
extra energy. It
was at that point he
began to exercise
at the Oshawa Legends Centre.
“That took off, and
all summer I couldn’t
get up there enough.”
At his starting
weight -- 367 pounds
when he enrolled with
Harvey Brooker -- he was
consuming 5,000 calories
a day. His new, healthy eating habits have him taking in
2,000 to 2,200 calories a day,
and “I’m not starving. I was
never hungry.”
He now eats healthy food
every three hours, and doesn’t
miss pizza and wings.
DURHAM -- Jim Crosby weighed 367 pounds
in May, 2012. He dropped to 189 pounds by
August, 2013.
Submitted photos