Bariatric surgery and exercise gave her a new life

By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer

•	"My obesity made me a prisoner. And now, I'm absolutely free." Robin Shugars

The photos, only a few years old, are of Shugars herself, though one might never guess at first glance. The difference, she understands, is that dramatic. Even Shugars refers to her photographic image in the third person.

"I look at her and I thank her, because I know she did the very best that she could," says Shugars, 43. "There are a lot of people who don't want to remember themselves that way, but I keep it fresh in my mind. I never want to go back."

Shugars, a Detroit native who has lived in Hawai'i off and on for much of her adult life, is a lean, athletic 5-feet-7 with a slow-burn vitality that seems at odds with the edgy bustle of the rest of the cafe. The photos she has brought with her show what seems to be a much older woman. There is a facial resemblance, to be sure, but the woman in the photos is much heavier, her proportions exaggerated.

"I look at her as a good friend who got me through life at those difficult times," Shugars says. "She just didn't know how to deal with grief and loss in a healthy way."

Food as an escape

Robin Shugars works out at least twice a week at 24-Hour Fitness. "I keep going until I feel the burn, until I can't go anymore," she says. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

Shugars keeps old photos of herself as a reminder of how far she has come.

Shugars was 32 when her marriage dissolved in 1992. Other traumas soon followed: her father died, she underwent a hysterectomy, her beloved dog of 12 years died.

"It all happened in a span of three years," Shugars says. "I can look back at my weight gain as a series of reactions to losses.

"The way I dealt with grief was I took Ben & Jerry (the ice cream) to bed every night," she says. "I isolated myself from other people. It was just me, my son and Ben & Jerry."

In three short years, Shugars gained nearly 200 pounds, going from an average weight of 150 pounds to a high of 346.

"I was addicted to refined (carbohydrates) — candy, cake, any carb you put through a machine and add sugar to," she says. "If I could have IV'd it and walked around with that IV pole, I would have."

With the weight gain came a host of physical and psychological problems. For seven years, Shugars tried every diet she could find. She joined Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig. She tried the cabbage-soup diet. When she moved to Hawai'i four years ago for the third and final time, she sought out "Hawai'i Diet" physician Terry Shintani for help. Nothing worked.

"Psychologically, I just felt like a failure," she says. "It's no fun being that big and knowing the calorie content of everything you eat and not being able to stop.

"I was trapped in morbid obesity; I couldn't get out of my body."

Shugars worked when she could, supervising school lunchrooms and selling medical supplies, but severe depression and mounting physical problems made it difficult to stay at a job. When she decided to return to school at the University of Hawai'i, she chose to major in art, in part because she had an interest in and talent for painting, but mainly because, at more than 300 pounds, she "couldn't fit behind a desk."

Something had to give.

A turning point

"In spring 2000, I was walking to the bus stop when I twisted my ankle, fell, and ended up breaking my ankle," Shugars says. "Up until that point, I told myself that I was OK because, even though I was big, I was strong. When I broke my ankle, I didn't have that to count on anymore. I realized that I wasn't strong anymore."

On the advice of a close friend, and in consultation with her psychiatrist and physician, Shugars decided to take a drastic step to reclaim her life.

Shugars underwent a medical procedure called a gastric bypass wherein her stomach was surgically reduced and a portion of her intestines re-routed.

The surgery was risky — Shugars was told that roughly 1 of every 200 patients dies within the first month — but Shugars knew she had no alternative if she hoped to live a more normal life.

"To get to the point where you need surgical intervention is very humbling and very ego-deflating," she says. "It just seemed like I was led by prayer. and it was OK because I had already tried everything else."

The long run

Shugars, never at a loss for a good metaphor, says her surgery was nothing more than a good tool.

"If you're going to renovate your house, a hammer is a necessity," she says. "But you can't renovate your house with only a hammer."

Translation: The surgery worked, but if Shugars hadn't changed her lifestyle and worked through the psychological issues that exacerbated her condition, the weight would return soon enough.

"They say you lose the bulk of your weight in the first 18 months," she says. "After that, if you don't continue with healthy habits, you'll gain all the weight back."

With a smaller stomach left to process her food intake (she could only manage half a jar of baby food per meal the first few days after surgery), Shugars lost an average of three or four pounds a week.

After a year, she had lost about 100 pounds. Overall, she has lost 188 pounds in a little over two years. Last year, she had surgery to remove six pounds of excess skin.

"I looked like a shar-pei," she says.

Keeping the weight off will be a lifelong challenge. Already, the initial momentum of rapid weight loss has worn off. Shugars says she's now in the "maintenance phase," where the rewards of hard work are less evident.

Still, having risked much to get to this point, Shugars is unbending in her adherence to the two unavoidable tenets of weight loss and maintenance: proper diet and exercise.

Eating right means Shugars studiously avoids her old friends, the refined carbohydrates.

"The mental and emotional part of recovery meant letting go of all that food," she says. To help do that, Shugars goes to therapy to confront all of the old traumas that food had helped her avoid.

Exercising has been a much less difficult charge for Shugars. Having shed the weight equivalent of a full-grown man, she's having fun exploring the athletic limits of her new body.

Shugars' workouts started conservatively with a single climb up one flight of stairs. That progressed to two trips up the stairs, later to a one-mile walk to the UH-Manoa campus.

By March of this year, Shugars had worked her way up to race-walking the eight-mile Great Aloha Run.

"I figured if I could do that, I could start running a little bit," she says. And so Shugars joined Dr. Jack Scaff's marathon clinic. After her first two weeks, her volunteer coach in the beginner's group kicked her out — to the intermediate group.

"If you ask me, she's just a dyed-in-the-wool runner who was disguised all this time by her extra weight," says Norm Uyeda, another volunteer coach. "Under all that excess pounds there was just a runner screaming to get out."

Shugars now runs four days a week: three moderate five- or six-mile runs on weekdays, and a Sunday run of 10 miles and counting.

Shugars' 14-year-old son Troy has also joined the clinic and has shed some 20 pounds of unwanted weight.

"Running is such a great stress reliever," Shugars says. "It's time to meditate and work out what went on in the day."

All that running has put Shugars in enviable aerobic condition — her resting heart rate is a wow-inducing 42 beats per minute — but that isn't enough for her. Three months ago, Shugars started hitting the gym to build her strength and bring some shape to her emerging muscles.

She works out at least twice a week at 24-Hour Fitness on Kapi'olani Boulevard. A typical one-hour session finds Shugars doing 12 to 15 reps of 90 pounds on the bench press. She also works her abs, lats, thighs, biceps and triceps.

"I keep going until I feel the burn, until I can't go any more," she says. Her workout regimen doesn't leave much time for other activities, but Shugars also enjoys hiking and snorkeling. She'd love to take a crack at paddling.

Shugars' other new passion is shopping for clothes that fit her new physique. In three years, she has gone from a snug Size 28 to a just-right Size 8.

"I'm free now," she says. "My obesity made me a prisoner. And now, I'm absolutely free."