![]() ![]() ![]() When it comes to food, his key is planning. When he’s not training, he cuts back on his mileage. Now, when he’s training for a race, he runs 20 to 40 miles a week and says that’s the right balance for his health and his family. Nothing stopped him from pounding the pavement, be it a storm outside or a storm of a different sort brewing at home. He says he used to joke that he traded an eating addiction for a running addiction, but there is some truth to it. Running has also become a family affair five of his eight children have run with him at various races. By May 2008, he had reached his goal weight of 150 pounds. He ran the 26.2-mile race in January 2008. Almost immediately, he signed up for another one. He was sleeping better, had more energy to play with his children and was more productive at work. “I love the freedom to be out there and think about what’s going on, what’s important for me.”īy the time he ran that half-marathon, Sommer had lost about 75 pounds. What’s more, he realized he liked running, not only because it helped him lose weight but because it was a stress reliever. He signed up for a 5K race before the half-marathon and finished. I wondered, what did I just get myself into?”īut he forged ahead and noticed the weight was coming off faster, at a rate of about 2½ pounds per week. “When I started to run, I just had to run for one minute, and I was out of breath. Looking back, he concedes he might have been a little delusional to think he could run a half-marathon simply because he had been riding a stationary bike and had lost a little weight. Certain it was meant to be, he registered to run the half-marathon. The very next day, he was approached by someone offering a training program for a race that was four months away. One morning, he told his wife he wanted to run a marathon. He walked everywhere, which allowed him to shed a noticeable amount of weight. Sommer spent the summer of 2007 working in a camp. He was still eating three meals a day but choosing his love of life over his love of food. This time was different: He was seeing results, so he stuck to it. ![]() He had dieted before but never successfully. He stopped eating desserts and started eating fruits and vegetables. “Little by little, I started to cut out everything bad for me,” recalled Sommer, of Passaic, New Jersey. If each episode’s cliffhanger was good enough to hook him to the next episode, he’d keep going for as long as he was watching. So in June 2007, he bought a stationary bike and started pedaling while watching episodes of the TV show “24.” He started riding it for an hour a day. Squeamish about blood, he knew “that was not going to happen.” The doctor told him that he had to lose weight and that he would have to prick himself every day to check his blood sugar. Yet he was in denial about it until that doctor’s appointment. His father had been a chronically stressed smoker with type 2 diabetes, and Sommer knew he was following in his father’s footsteps. That year of mourning was stressful, driving him to become an emotional eater who packed an additional 30 pounds onto his already heavy frame. The fear first hit Sommer when he marked the anniversary of his father’s death. “It was my come-to-Jesus moment,” the rabbi said.Īt the time, he was a father of five and knew that he had to do something or his wife would end up a widow and a single parent. Type 2 diabetes is usually a byproduct of obesity extra fat on the body makes it hard for your system to produce enough insulin to keep blood sugar levels at a normal level. But what really got his attention was when the doctor told him he had type 2 diabetes. He knew he was overweight at 250 pounds: 100 pounds overweight, to be exact. That was when he gave in to his wife’s nagging and finally went to the doctor. His track record isn’t bad, considering he only started running in 2007. ![]()
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