Bodfather: A Little Less to Love

Subject #1 in the "Bodfather" 

Witness Reduction Program: Kerensa
First Check-in

Height: 5'7"
Starting weight:  254.8
Current weight: 249.2
Loss: 5.6 lbs.

It’s a dilemma.

Your big day – your wedding day – is there on the horizon.

You’ve got a reception to plan and you have to decide which crazy scripty font to put on your invitation.

And then there’s the matter of a dress.

Kerensa, the first participant in my “Bodfather” program, is scratching her head about when she should choose a wedding gown, given her recent success on the scale.

To those of you just checked in, my role as the Bodfather is to oversee a few selected individuals and give them any assistance I can as they work to lose weight and get more fit. Besides all the email support and encouragement I can muster, I’ve used my connections to hook them up with a free Philips DirectLife activity monitor to help them see how much (or how little) they’re moving during the course of a day.

Kerensa, a college student living in Oklahoma who’s always struggled with her weight, is getting married in June of next year and wants to be slimmer by summer. 

Which brings us back to the gown…

Does she go on and get one now and be mindful that it may have to be altered on account of her shrinking frame?

Does she wait a bit longer and see how this weight-loss business goes over the next few months?

Does she just paint her body white and drag a sheet behind her?

Kerensa is so confused about it that she’s actually asked my advice about the dress. Isn’t it enough that I’m riding shotgun on her weight-loss journey, catering the big event, giving her away at the ceremony and performing a medley of cowboy yodeling hits at the reception?

I’m sure that you’re going to provide her better advice on the wedding dress question than I’ve been able to thus far. I just want her to keep pushing herself, keep making smart choices about food, and keep rocking that scale.

And whatever dress she chooses, I hope it’s something that’s adjustable…



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Here Comes the Bride... Big, Fat And… Well, You Know

Subject #1 in the "Bodfather"
Witness Reduction Program: Kerensa

Height: 5'7"
Current weight:  254.8

As the Bodfather, it’s impossible for me to refuse a request on a person’s wedding day.

Okay… so technically Kerensa isn’t getting married until June, but the idea of helping her not be so big on her big day was too tempting to pass up.

A 23-year-old college student living in Oklahoma, Kerensa’s spent all her life struggling with her weight. Even though she’s lived a pretty active existence, she started seeing signs that her size – up to a high in the 280’s - was adversely affecting her way of life. She was tired all the time and if she sat down for long periods, her ankles swelled up like a puffer fish.

Then there was the thought of posing for wedding pictures. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime moment and thinking about flipping through the pages of a wedding album and cringing… well, that’s the kind of idea that’ll get you off your butt.

And beyond her wedding day, Kerensa saw a future impacted adversely by her own body.

“I know we want to have kids, and I want to be healthy for them,” she told me recently. “I want to be able to run and play with them... not be the fat mom who sits on the sidelines.”

Fueled by fear and driven by her wish to make a positive change in her life, she began a weight-loss program and started seeing some positive results almost immediately. But she’s been there before, and tends to run into a brick wall early in the game.

Why is that? Is it because her fiancé Justin accepts her just the way she is? Because she works at a Subway sub shop and has easy access to fattening foods? Because she’s a self-described “cheese whore”? Because her hectic school/work schedule keeps her from eating healthy and exercising like she knows she should?

Probably some of all that, to be perfectly honest, but she’s committed to making a change for the better. As a sign of her engagement in this venture, she’s vowed to send me her weigh-in numbers each week, and I’ll continue chronicling her tale as she takes the steps necessary to walk down the aisle as the fittest person she can possibly be.

Because more than anything, Kerensa wants a white wedding, not a wide wedding.


Measurements (in inches):

Neck -15 1/2
Chest- 43
Bust- 46
Waist-40
Midway-49
Hips-52
Thigh-31 1/2 (family nickname:  “Thunder-Thighs”)
Knee-21 1/2
Calf-19
Upper arm-17
Forearm-12 1/2



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