Overview
Mercy LIGHT is a physician-supervised weight-loss program that treats obesity as a disease. At the first appointment, new patients meet with a physician — either medical director Dr. Debra Doubek or Dr. James Gardner — to assess their medical history, weight history, and recent lab results. The physician helps the patient set specific goals, then organizes a team of professionals — including psychologists, dietitians, personal trainers, registered nurses and possibly even a bariatric surgeon — to create a program that will allow the patient to reach those goals. Each program is designed with the individual’s health challenges, personality, fitness interests and eating tastes in mind, making it easier to maintain the program long term.
Because it is a medical program, Mercy LIGHT can often be covered by medical insurance. While weight loss is certainly most people’s primary objective for entering the program, the program also monitors and sets other types of individual health goals for clients, such as lowering cholesterol and managing blood-glucose levels.
Motivation
Both Beer, 47, and Lewis, 46, are entering the program not only to slim down their waistlines, but because they have found that their weight is contributing to other health problems as they age. Both men still have young children (Beer has four children, with the youngest in third grade, and Lewis’ family will welcome a new baby next summer) and want to improve their health so they can be active participants in their children’s lives.
“My main goal here is to get healthy,” Lewis said. “I have a 12-year-old daughter and my wife is expecting, and I’d like to be able to keep up.”
As men who are very active in the community and with their families, both say it has been difficult to make healthy eating and exercise a priority. They hope the challenge and the accountability of publicly having to announce their monthly weight loss will force them to stick to the program and get results.
“I don’t want to do the crazy diets — the cabbage soup diet and all that,” Beer said. “That’s why I went with Mercy LIGHT. They work around your life and find what works for you. I’m hoping this competition will be the kick-in-the-pants I need to stick with [the program].”
As an added incentive, Beer and Lewis are collecting pledges from the community on the challenge’s website — mercylightchallenge.com — for every pound they lose, with proceeds benefiting the Terry C. Johnson Center for Basic Cancer Research. Both men have lost immediate family members to cancer, so cancer research is a cause they are dedicated to supporting.
“I try to do something to benefit the Cancer Center every year,” Beer said. “I realized I hadn’t done anything for 2007, so I decided this would be a great opportunity.”
Progress
Beer and Lewis will appear around the 15th of each month on WIBW-TV (most likely during the 6 a.m. news) and on KMAN and B104 radio stations to announce their monthly weight-loss totals and how the program is going. Their progress and the amount of pledges they raise will also be posted at mercylightchallenge.com and published monthly in a paid advertisement in The Manhattan Mercury. The two men will also keep a blog about their experience on the website.
For more information about the Mercy LIGHT Challenge or Mercy LIGHT, visit mercylightchallenge.com or call (785) 587-4275. Mercy LIGHT has a free monthly seminar for the public to learn about how its program works, generally scheduled on the third Tuesday of each month in the boardroom of the Mercy Regional Sunset Campus, 1105 Sunset Avenue. In February, this meeting will be Tuesday, Feb. 19, at 5:30 p.m.
