Celebrating My Mobility, Health, & Weight Loss on GLP-1s at EPCOT Next Month!

I love Disney. I love Walt Disney World and Disneyland. On the east coast, especially EPCOT and Animal Kingdom. On the west coast, especially Disney’s California Adventure.

So as I began getting healthy and more mobile, I saw an opportunity… a goal… the first was to walk around EPCOT by the week after Thanksgiving 2024. I then changed that to doing the Disney Princess 5k at EPCOT in February 2025. However, they sold out in minutes, so needed a back-up plan.

How I Got Here

At 405 lbs. (a BMI of 76.5), I found myself in the hospital April 22, 2022 with heart and lung complications from COVID. I’d been bedridden for a decade and nearly immobile for 20 years before that. Lying in my hospital bed, a beautiful electrophysiologist (a cardiac specialist), Dr. Shravan Ambati, talked to me about my future if I continued the way I was. He immediately snapped me out of my hypnotic state of continual eating.

I stopped eating Uber Eats that day and lost 40 lbs. in 3.5 months. Then I started Trulicity and my labs began getting better, my HbA1c started lowering. I lost 86 lbs. while on Trulicity. A month after stopping Trulicity, I started on Mounjaro. This is when the real changes to my labs kicked in! My Type 2 Diabetes went into, and remains, in remission. My blood pressure normalized. My Chronic Kidney Disease went down (which is good) from a 3b to a 3a. My cholesterol and triglycerides became normal. My liver labs were fantastic. Even my heart problems stabilized and I didn’t need the heart meds anymore. Altogether, I was taken off seven different medications, including two insulins, that were to help me with complications from extreme obesity.

About 370 lbs, I began walking more around the house with the walker. Around 350 lbs, I did the same with the cane. I soon began walking on my own in the house, strange since I had not done that in a decade.

When I got to about 300, maybe a tad lower, I began walking outside. First to the bottom of the stairs and up again. Then I ventured further and further. It was a red letter day when I made it to the mailbox at the end of the driveway! Eventually, I was able to get to the corner, then walk part of the neighborhood, then around the block, then to the light… and beyond.

I was also working with soup cans as weights for resistance training. As I kept losing weight, I got some resistance bands and worked with those. I got some weights, then started with sitting exercises for old people on YouTube. And I progressed quickly from there.

Now I have lost 250 lbs., weighing 155 lbs. (BMI 29.3). So in 2.5 years, which is 30 months I went from 405 lbs. to 155lbs. And I still have many pounds of sagging skin! That’s a whole story on its own for another day.

Minus 175 Lbs.: First Visit to Disney On My Feet

On December 29, 2023, I went to the Beach Club and walked to the International Gateway (the back entrance) of EPCOT.

In my post “Down 175 Pounds: Disney Celebration!” I wrote:

I looked down at the pedometer and saw I’d walked right at two miles. In two hours. Tears fell onto my cheeks, as they are now as I write this, that I could go so far and for so long on my feet, in this quite foreign body I’m inhabiting now.

Minus 250 Lbs. – Moving the Goalpost

The stars aligned to be able to bring my family together from across the United States for the third weekend in October, so I changed my walk date to October 20, 2024. My 80+-year-old mama (who was a 42-year Cast Member at Disney World), her husband, my brother, my daughters Meghann (who is on tirzepatide, too), her husband, her three kids (who are, of course, three of my grandkids), my daughter Aimee and her two girls (and my two youngest grandbabies) are all converging in Orlando to walk with me around EPCOT.

It gives me shivers of excitement and a bit of worry if I can do it. One rotation is 1.2 miles, so I can easily do that. I can walk over three miles, so I should be able to do three rotations, right? That is my desire. To walk, continuously, around World Showcase three times. Then I will go on rides with the kids and grandkids. I have asked everyone to walk with me around once, then they can disperse and go on rides while I walk the other two trips around alone.

I’m going to have a Disney shirt made that says “I lost 250 lbs.” and something else, not sure what yet. I might say something about GLP-1s, but not sure if that is going too far.

I remember all those “Lose Weight Now. Ask Me How!” buttons Herbalife recruits used to wear. (Herbalife was an obnoxious MLM in the 70’s and 80’s.) If I could think of something like that, it would be good. Any ideas, anyone? Let me know in the comments!

It would have been fun to have the press there, but alas, there are no bites. We will be taking a lot of photos to chronical my enormous achievement and you can bet I will be crowing about it here in the blog and my getting-ready-to-be-launched Podcast: The Power of GLP-1s. I’ll let you know when it goes out!

Ready, Set, WALK!

While I want to Disneybound as Minnie Mouse, I will have to wear a hat on my bald head instead of Minnie ears. I have a history of malignant melanoma (x3) and have to be protective of my skin and since my head is shaved, a hat it will have to be.

As a sidenote, my hair has thinned tremendously from the weight loss, but no one can tell but me and the lady who buzzes my hair. When people talk about their hair falling out because of weight loss, I giggle and think how lucky I am not to have that problem. Well, not that anyone can tell.

I have my Sketchers, my leggings, socks, my Minnie baseball hat, and pondering the shirt. (I sound like such a girl!!)

I’m ready. Are you?!