Weight Loss for a Kidney Transplant Patient

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By John Tiniakos

A client recently came to me for help with weight loss. He was the recipient of a kidney transplant one year ago. He was extremely overweight for his body type (he carried the majority of the weight around the mid section) and was desperate to lose the excess fat. His name is Ted.

First of all Ted had a sedentary lifestyle. He worked in an office environment and did not exercise at all. He asked me to put him on a regular exercise program. I suggested that he join a health club and begin walking on a treadmill 4-6 times per week. I also suggested that he improve his diet but he declined and said for now he was just interested in exercise. I told him to walk as long as he could and at a fairly brisk pace. He began with 30 minute sessions for a couple of weeks then 45 minutes for the next couple of weeks and then 1 hour and so on.

Presently he is alternating between 1 hour and a half and two hour walks, 5 days a week. Ted also uses the incline option for 15 minutes per session at level 1. He says the training sessions are pretty challenging and that he perspires quite a bit. Ted added that his physical condition has improved and he felt much better. He was 8 weeks into the program and was happy with his fitness progress but disappointed with the weight loss part. He had only lost 6 pounds from the time he started.

Ted came to me and said that he was now ready to hear my thoughts on diet composition and restriction. I asked him a few questions and found out that he watches television quite a bit in the evenings. And during that time he munches on snack foods. The munching continues right up until bed time. He also wakes up during the night and goes to the refrigerator for sweets, ice-cream, etc. His breakfast, lunch and dinner meals weren’t really so bad with respect to calorie, carb and fat contents.

So the real problem was his late night snacking. We had to work on that. To keep it simple I just asked him to do one thing at the beginning. And that was to stop eating 3 hours before bedtime. He tried that but said that he just could not stick to it. He found it very difficult to not munch while watching television. I asked him what time he went to bed and he said at 1:00 am. And that he watched TV until 1:00 am (which meant he snacked until 1:00 am).

I suggested he find something else to do (besides television) between 10 pm and bedtime (last 3 hours). That may help eliminate the munching because it’s associated with watching TV. I found out that he was taking part time correspondence courses and did his assignments after dinner, approximately between 6-9 pm.

I asked him to switch his television and homework time periods around - In other words, to leave his homework for the last 3 hours before bed. Because he didn’t want to miss his TV shows I suggested that he tape them each night and to watch them the following day after dinner.

This way he could still snack while watching his programming and refrain from eating during his study time. He said that was not so difficult to do because he normally didn’t binge during this period anyway. Although he still felt the urge to snack periodically but didn’t find it as difficult to fight off. Eventually he got used to this new system.

Two months later, he had lost another 15 pounds of fat. He couldn’t believe it, because he wasn’t really dieting. What happened was, because he stopped eating 3 hours before he went to sleep, he stopped waking up in the middle of the night. This eliminated his trips to the fridge which resulted in a reduction in total daily food intake – and this happened just because he slept through it (which didn’t require any work). In addition, in the mornings he woke up easier with much more energy.

Ted says he has twenty five more pounds to go to reach his target weight. Now we will work on diet composition and will follow that with increases in exercise intensity. I will update you on his progress.

Author:

John Tiniakos helps make weight loss easier through proven weight loss methods using information and analysis from the worlds leading scientists. To receive John’s Free 7-Part Weight Loss Mini Course please visit: Weight Loss Mini Course

Categories: Diet Plan, Diet Program