Almost three years ago, Debi Mitchell of St. Petersburg, Fla., wanted to help an out-of-state friend who was dealing with some health problems.
“He wasn’t doing well. His wife called me, and she was crying. I jumped on a plane to be with her, but when I got there, I felt like a burden,” she tells TODAY.
com. Mitchell’s foot pain, and shortness of breath were so bad that she couldn’t walk. “My friend had to drop me off and go park the car herself.
I thought, ‘What am I doing? I can’t even walk across the street,’” she says. “I was retired. I wanted to walk, and I wanted to go places.
” Back home, she told her doctor what had happened and asked for a cardiac workup. Nothing was wrong with her heart. Her weight was causing her symptoms and slowing her down.
An orthopedic surgeon said she needed her knees replaced. But there was a problem: Her body mass index (BMI) was too high, so she didn’t qualify for the surgery. Mitchell, now 68, knew she needed to do something about the pain.
She found out that if she lost 10 or 12 pounds, she would qualify for . “I thought, ‘I can lose 10 pounds.’ I weighed 285, so I had so much to lose.
But I found that no matter what I did, I would , and then I would quit,” she says. Mitchell saw an ad for on Facebook, and she was intrigued. Fluid Running is a guided deep-water running program where the and avoid injury.
Mitchell had never been a runner, but she grew up in Florida and was always in the water. She had been .
