Besides healthy eating, Aguiar joined Planet Fitness where she said walking and weight lifting helped her to lose weight and gain strength.
If Kayla Aguiar’s spirit had been broken, it would have been understandable.
Instead, the young woman overcame years of pain from scoliosis and being bullied at school for wearing a back brace and being overweight. Today, Aguiar is physically and mentally stronger than ever — and has lost some 85 pounds to boot.
“Proud” is how Aguiar, 23, describes her feelings.
“Every day, there’s progress,” Aguiar said. “What motivates me is helping other people.”
Aguiar was in the fifth grade when she was diagnosed with scoliosis, an abnormal curvature of the spine that occurs most often during the growth spurt before puberty, according to the Mayo Clinic web site.
By the time she was in seventh grade, Aguiar was wearing a back brace 24 hours a day and “starting to have a lot of pain.”
“I got made fun of my whole life,” Aguiar said.
Despite the physical pain from her severe curvature, Aguiar stopped wearing the brace.
“It was the emotional pain,” Aguiar said. “I just took it off. I couldn’t take it. I’d rather deal with the physical pain.”
No pain medication would alleviate her suffering, and it was too soon for any surgical options to be effective.
Aguiar said she turned to food. By the time she was 18 years old, she weighed 235 pounds.
“That was basically my outlet,” Aguiar said.
Her body was unable to handle the excess weight and caused gall bladder disease, needing surgery to remove the organ.
Aguiar said she tried to work as a teenager.
She got a part-time job making smoothies but would often “leave early because of the pain.”
Aguiar decided she would need to go ahead and have back surgery to correct the scoliosis. It was considered major surgery with a “huge risk” of paralyzation.
To decrease her risk, she started dieting to get herself as healthy as she could before the operation.
Aguiar underwent surgery on Nov. 30, 2011. An 18-inch titanium rod was fused into her spine. Then, it was three months of bed rest. At six months out, she started walking again.
Then, the real healing began.
“I started to pay attention to what I was eating,” Aguiar said.
Aguiar consumes a mostly vegetarian diet of “whole foods.”“Most people think it’s hard to lose weight. It’s not if you just eat what the earth provides,” Aguiar said.
Source: Herald News, 1st Dec 2014
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