Archive

January 18, 2007

UW staffer improves her health — and gets temporarily famous

Most days, Ethelyn Abellanosa is just like other staffers who labor at the University of Washington. An administrator at the Henry Art Gallery, she’s on the job each day and performs the work she’s paid to do. But Abellanosa has been interviewed on the Today Show twice and the Tyra Banks Show once. She’s also been featured in the pages of People magazine and had lunch with Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York.

What’s her claim to fame? She lost over half her body weight — more than 200 pounds.

Even today, Abellanosa is no frail-looking waif. She carries about 155 pounds — perfectly height-weight proportional — on her 5-foot-7inch frame, and insists it has always been about health, not looks. “I didn’t go on a diet,” she says over and over. “I changed to a healthy lifestyle.”

It was, in fact, a health crisis — or rather two health crises — that triggered her weight loss. The first was not her own, but her father’s. The elder Abellanosa, she explains, came from a family in which six out of seven siblings got diabetes. In his case the disease struck in his late 30s, eventually causing heart disease and finally, a major stroke. By 2004 his health was severely impaired, and Ethelyn says she knew his days were numbered.

And then she went to the eye doctor, where she found that her vision had changed dramatically. She got a new prescription, only to return a month later complaining of headaches and was told that the vision had changed again. “Do you have diabetes?” her eye doctor asked her.

With much trepidation, Abellanosa went to her regular physician to be tested. “Like many people in that kind of situation, I made a bargain with God,” she says. “I said, ‘Please don’t let me have diabetes and I promise I’ll turn my health around.'”

The test was negative, and Abellanosa knew she had to make good on her promise. Her mother had had some success with Weight Watchers, so she decided to join as well.

This was, of course, not the first time she had tried to lose weight. Abellanosa says she can remember feeling fat as far back as the fourth grade. Looking at pictures from that time now, she realizes that she wasn’t, in fact, overweight, but that was how she thought of herself.

It was when she went through puberty that she really began to pile on the pounds. “Going to middle school is an intense experience for young girls, and I used food as a coping mechanism, to comfort myself,” Abellanosa says.

She tried diets in high school, but none of them seemed to work for her, and she hated exercise. So by the time she finished high school, she had simply accepted that she was going to be a large person.

“My parents were really great. They always taught me to be proud of who I am regardless of what size I am and to be confident,” she says. “I embraced the concept of the ‘Big, Beautiful Woman,’ and I figured if people had a problem with that, that was their issue not mine.”

So even as she earned a journalism degree at the UW and went to work for a state legislator in Olympia, Abellanosa kept gaining weight. She joined the Henry eight and a half years ago, and by the time she went to Weight Watchers in 2004, she tipped the scales at 363.6 pounds.

After her diabetes scare, Abellanosa did two things: She started making different food choices and she started exercising.

“I’ve learned that everything I put in my mouth is a choice,” she says. “I’m either choosing to have long-term success or short-term pleasure. The other thing I’ve learned is that my body is the house I have to live in the rest of my life and I can respect it by nourishing it and understanding that food is fuel or I can treat it badly.”

For exercise, Abellanosa started off taking a hydro-aerobics class and going to a women’s gym where she did a prescribed circuit of exercise equipment. Being seen in a bathing suit was hard, she says, but she made up her mind that she was there to take care of her health and she wouldn’t let other people’s stares deter her.

After eight months, Abellanosa developed what she calls “exercise rage” — boredom that made her want to quit. So she switched to walking and going to the IMA. When she got bored with the IMA, she began walking on weekdays and hiking on the weekends. Recently, she went rock climbing for the first time and she has plans to try snowshoeing. Constant change of activity is what it takes to keep her at it, she says.

It took Abellanosa nearly two years to reach her goal weight, which, sadly, her father didn’t live to see. He died in November of 2005 and she reached her goal in February of 2006. Despite going through a grieving process, she’s managed to keep the weight off.

In 2006, Abellanosa entered Weight Watchers’ Most Inspiring Story of the Year contest. She was one of eight chosen for first prizes in the region on the basis of an essay and a telephone interview, and was flown to Los Angeles, where she got a free makeover and appeared on the Tyra Banks Show with Sarah Ferguson. When she won the grand prize for the region in September, she was flown to New York and appeared on the Today Show, again with Sarah Ferguson. Then she got a call from People magazine, saying they were considering her for their “Half their Size” issue. That resulted in a trip to Miami for an interview and photo shoot. And just a few weeks ago, she was on the Today Show again.

Abellanosa hasn’t let all the attention go to her head. “All I did was set out to improve my health,” she says, “and having all these other experiences has just strengthened me to continue my commitment to good health.”

Does she have any advice for others who want to lose weight?

“Be honest with yourself,” she says. “If you want to do this, you can, but you should do it for you. It’s not about impressing someone, or wearing a certain size. It’s about taking care of your health.”