THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 11, 1994 TAG: 9412140626
SECTION: HAMPTON ROADS WOMAN PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 147 lines
THERE'S A SUBTLE irony in the fact that Debra Owen, eight months pregnant, is wearing the same clothes she wore a year-and-a-half ago, when she weighed 284 pounds, and they're too big!
It's also an indication of just how far the Virginian-Pilot/Ledger-Star art director has come since she first launched a weight loss plan in July 1993, inviting Hampton Roads Woman staff writer Debra Gordon along to chronicle her journey.
Then, her only goal was to lose enough weight to fit into a bikini. In fact, in the first story we wrote about her, we dubbed her quest ``Operation Bikini.''
Now her goal is to deliver a healthy baby boy - due in late January.
With the birth of Owen's baby just a few weeks off, we thought this was a good time to take a look back at the past 17 months and at the progress Owen has made.
You could blame Owen's husband, Keith, for all this (not just the baby!).
It was a hot night in mid-July a year ago when Owen came home from work, tired, happy and ready to order a pizza, and found her thin husband exercising to one of her discarded aerobics tapes.
Inwardly, she groaned.
Outwardly she gave him a strained smile and offered to join him on his quest to lose 10 pounds.
Owen was no novice to dieting. She'd spent most of her life trying to shed excess weight from her 5'7'' frame - most of it unsuccessfully.
And now she weighed 284 pounds.
But this diet, she decided early on, was going to be different. Instead of cutting out everything she loved, depriving herself and becoming depressed, she would begin a life-style change, a ``no-diet'' diet, changing her eating and exercising habits.
``I'm making choices, not dieting,'' she said.
Basically, she did what all the magazines urge us to do - cut down on her fat and increase exercise.
For instance, instead of the lasagna and buttery cheese bread followed by three scoops of ice cream she used to eat for dinner, she was now dining on pasta with no-fat marinara sauce and butterless homemade bread, followed by fat-free frozen yogurt.
After she lost the first 20 pounds, she waited for her co-workers and friends to notice. Practiced how she'd drop her eyes and modestly accept their praise. But no one noticed.
She went shopping for clothes, expecting to find herself buying tighter, more attractive fashions. Instead, she says, ``I still looked dumpy.''
In fact, the first person to notice her weight loss was the cashier at the grocery store. She looked at Owen's driver's license, looked back at Owen's face, then back down at the license.
``You've lost a lot of weight, haven't you?'' she asked.
``Yes!'' Owen cried joyously. ``How can you tell?''
Wordlessly, she handed back the driver's license with its picture of a plump-faced Owen.
``I looked at it and went, `Oh, my God,' '' remembered Owen, who still has that old license. ``I could really see the difference.''
Part of the credit went to her new eating habits. But the most effective part of her program, she says, was the exercise.
She started with aerobic videos in her den. Then, after reading about Owen in HRW, personal trainer Wendy Pirovolos offered her services one hour a week. She put Owen on a regimen of weight lifting, aerobic exercising and walking.
And the pounds - and inches - slipped off.
Owen surprised even herself with how addicted she became to the exercise. When she was laid up for two weeks after a gall bladder operation, she said, she could feel her muscles ``melting.''
Eleven months after she began the diet, Owen, 63 pounds slimmer, bought her first sexy bathing suit. Black. With a sheer inset.
She was wearing fitted clothes, instead of oversized sweaters over leggings.
And she looked great.
But she didn't feel so good. She was nauseous, tired and couldn't even eat her favorite snack food of pretzels.
In early July, nearly a year to the day since she'd started her diet, she learned why.
She was pregnant.
Now, this was no ordinary pregnancy. Owen and her husband had been trying to get pregnant for eight years, ever since the birth of their daughter Brooke.
For eight years they'd forgone contraception, but still, she never got pregnant.
For the first couple of years after Brooke was born, it didn't bother Owen too much. But as the years went on, and every month passed without a pregnancy, she began to worry.
When Brooke was 5, and clearly out of the baby stage, the baby longings hit hard. Owen spent hundreds of dollars on home pregnancy tests every time she was even a day late. And she finally saw a doctor about the problem, who recommended she track her periods, lose weight and work on becoming healthier.
Owen tried, but she still didn't get pregnant.
She did diet - starvation dieting - she calls it, without exercising. And she lost massive amounts of weight, yet she still didn't get pregnant.
She never went back to the doctor, because, she says, ``I felt it was in God's hands and if it was meant to be it would be and if it wasn't it wouldn't.
But there was another reason.
``I felt that the weight was keeping me from getting pregnant,'' she said, ``but maybe I didn't want to go to the doctor and hear that.''
That probably was her problem, says Virginia Beach infertility specialist Dr. Jill Flood. ``Interestingly, weight at either extreme, either underweight or overweight, can definitely affect fertility,'' she said. ``The main function it affects is ovarian function, so if she was overweight, it's likely she wasn't ovulating; and now that's she's lost weight, she's in the range where she can ovulate and get pregnant.''
But it's difficult to tell patients that their weight may be contributing to their problems with getting pregnant, says Flood. ``They always say that they know people heavier than they are who have gotten pregnant.'' And they may be right. There is no magic number. ``But sometimes as little as a 20-pound difference can make the difference between ovulation and non-ovulation.''
Even at eight months pregnant, Owen's weight loss still shows. So much so, that a co-worker recently stopped her in the hall to congratulate her on her new figure. ``You look great,'' he said. ``Still losing weight, huh?''
``Not quite,'' she told him wryly. ``I'm pregnant.''
She's gained 11 pounds so far in this pregnancy, compared to 90 during her first pregnancy. That weight gain led to toxemia and an emergency Caesarean section. This time, she's hoping for a normal delivery with no complications.
And she's ready.
``I just want this baby to come out,'' she said on a recent winter afternoon. ``He kicks like a wild dog.''
The nursery is complete, right down to the piles of diapers and the miniature cowboy boots on the dresser.
With her customary artistic talent, Owen's created a fantasy farmland for the new baby, complete with a hand-painted cow border, a farmhouse mural and homemade crib bedding, pillows and curtains.
Perhaps no one is more excited about this baby than her husband, Keith. Throughout the years of infertility, Owen said, she never really knew how Keith felt about their inability to become pregnant.
Until the day a few months ago in the doctor's office, when the ultrasound showed they were having a boy.
``Then he told me this was a dream come true.'' ILLUSTRATION: GARY C. KNAPP COLOR PHOTOS
Laura Howard, left seated, Kate Johnson, standing, and Owen chat at
the shower held at Owen's home in Chesapeake.
Debra Owen, center, is surrounded by co-workers who threw her a baby
shower last month. From bottom left: Allison Schoew, Lee Ann
Dickson, Kate Johnson, Trina Masters, Ashley King, Brooke Owen and
Sarah Steinle.
by CNB