SK woman sheds the extra pounds, finds her inner beauty

Watching her pick daintily at her chicken salad over lunch, her lovely Southern manners on display, it’s hard to imagine that she once weighed 400 pounds.

Hearing her relate how much fun she had at the punch bowl party of the Senior Action Committee, it’s impossible to believe that she once feared meeting new people.

Listening to her share the story of how South Kitsap Commissioner Charlotte Garrido recently handed her a card with the request that she consider “being a docent for the county,” it seems that she must have always been this joyful and bubbly.

Yet, B.J. Young assures me she hid who she was for years, covered in layers of adipose tissue or, what one may more indiscreetly call “fat.”

Her physical and spiritual journey began in Tennessee, where she recalls being labeled “Big’un” by her first grade gym teacher.

While the racially oppressive world of the south taxed her sensitive soul, moving to the Pacific Northwest as a teenager left her feeling naïve and lonely.

Still it wasn’t until she married at 19 and experienced abuse at the hands of a jealous husband that her weight skyrocketed.

“The more I weighed, the less he worried about me leaving him and the less he hit me,” she recalled.

The weight gain from two pregnancies added a welcome cushion. “I could still be my kids’ loving mama,” she said, “however heavy I got.”

She never expected the weight to keep climbing, never anticipated the struggles and humiliation that would follow.

She was just trying to avoid the pain.

Like all addictions, the thing she hid in brought about its own problems and its own pain.

“I broke every scale I stepped upon, topping off at 400 pounds,” Young said. “For a while, I hid out in a one-woman office, horrified if any people I spoke to on the phone would suggest meeting. Then there were all the health problems.”

In 2006 her doctors asked her to choose between lap-band surgery and a gastric bypass. However, a dear friend of hers who regained weight after bypass surgery passed away as she was making her decision.

“I took that as a sign that I had to do this the old fashioned way,” she said. “So I began my long journey home, back to me.”

She started by ‘hobbling’ from her house to her porch swing, where she rocked and sang old gospel songs and lullabies, the songs she had sung her babies.

Then, her sister suggested she walk around her yard.

She did, and slowly she added more changes to her diet and more exercise until the day she decided to join Curves.

“I weighed 355 pounds,” Young said, “55 pounds lighter than when I started.”

Over the years, she’d lose 10 pounds and regain five, but slowly with the support of many, her weight loss kicked into high gear.

As the pounds melted, the real Betty Jean started to emerge.

She discovered she is someone who still loves to write poetry, songs and stories and is working on a children’s book with a spiritual slant.

She wants, she says, to do so many things she never thought she could or would. She hopes to dance and sing in public and let her children and granddaughter know their real mother and grandma.

She’s like many of the people Tim Waibel, co-owner of Sugardaddy’s Salon, admires for “their interesting and compelling stories.”

Waibel has a special place in his heart for people who make “these amazing transformations.”

The chef and former owner of my favorite downtown Bremerton restaurant, Simon August, Waibel loves food, fitness and beauty in all forms.

His friend, Andrea MacDonald, owner of the Olympic Fitness Center, saw him as the perfect person to offer advice to her Boot Camp Challenge participants.

He sees her clients when they are two weeks into the six-week program and again when they finish.

“Not once have I recognized someone,” Waibel said. “All look so different. It’s as if they are lit from within with this fire. They become so powerful.”

Waibel and his business partner, James Harris, are so committed to helping people feel good about themselves both inside and out that they offer a percentage discount that matches one’s weight-loss percentage up to 25 percent.

“Everyone who has come in has maxed out at 25 percent,” he said. “They have all lost significantly more.”

Waibel’s and Harris’ generosity doesn’t stop there. They offered a dollar off to every customer who came in with a pound of food for the Fitness Challenge, up to $10 off a hair or nail treatment.

In total, they collected nearly 75 pounds of food.

Brenda of Wisteria Lane collected close to the same. Altogether with B.J.’s contribution of 170 pounds of carrots, potatoes, apples and oranges, the Fitness Challenge food collection netted 310 pounds of food for the local food bank.

While Tim, Brenda and James found it easy to get people to donate food, they found it harder to convince anyone to try to lose weight.

They recognize that people have to be emotionally ready to make those types of transformations. They have to be ready, like B.J. to leave the pain, the past and the fat behind.

Contact Sugardaddy’s at (360) 895-7838, if you have a weight loss accomplishment that needs celebrating.

Mary Colborn is a Port Orchard resident.

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