Going small, winning big

On a lovely summer day, 58-year-old Kasey Naves had her hair and nails done at her favorite salon. Afterward, she went grocery shopping, drove home, and unloaded the bags herself.

Just an ordinary day, right? For Kasey, who once weighed 498 pounds, it was a liberating experience.

“Prior to that, I hadn’t driven by myself in seven years and hadn’t done anything by myself in 10 years,” said Kasey, a resident of Leesburg. “I felt I was free because I didn’t have to be dependent on anyone. I could be myself again. That was my first step in getting out among people and getting the old me back.”

Thanks to bariatric surgery and healthier eating habits, Kasey dropped 218 pounds in a short one-and-a-half years. The woman who once drank four gallons of soda a day and always ate Southern fried food and bread now enjoys a healthy diet of protein smoothies, fish, chicken, and vegetables.

Her weight loss yielded other benefits—eliminating eight of her 12 prescription medications and the need for a CPAP machine to breathe at night. Her cholesterol and blood pressure levels are normal.

“I feel better about myself than I have in a long, long time,” she says.

Kasey spent the past 10 years, as “a prisoner inside her own home.”

“I didn’t have a life and couldn’t do anything for myself. I was miserable and depressed. I hated being a burden to my friends and family members.”

But losing weight wasn’t just about improving self-esteem—it was a matter of life and death. She suffered from congestive heart failure, thyroid disease, and diabetes. Doctors strongly urged her to have bariatric surgery or risk suffering a fatal heart attack or stroke.

That warning meant Kasey had to take a long, hard look in the mirror. Unfortunately, there were no mirrors in sight.

“I took all the mirrors out of my house because I couldn’t stand to look at myself. The person I saw in the mirror was big and ugly. In a sense, not seeing my reflection allowed me to pretend I wasn’t as big as I really was. But when my doctor said that, I knew I needed to do something to lose weight.”

After meeting with B.E. Thompson, a Eustis resident who lost 320 pounds naturally, Kasey learned weight loss was an enormous challenge but not an impossible task. Inspired by his story, Kasey entered the Leesburg Business Wellness Challenge in 2013. Halfway through the competition, she was bitten by a brown recluse spider. The venom in her blood stream left her hospitalized for three months.

“I put on more weight because I was bedridden, which was so discouraging,” she says. “I couldn’t stand up to do the weekly weigh-ins so I was forced to drop out of the challenge.”

However, she made the temporary setback a steppingstone to success by getting back on track after recovery. She eliminated bread, soda, and sugar and dropped 88 pounds. That was a milestone for Kasey—she proved to doctors she was committed to lifestyle changes before undergoing bariatric surgery in September 2014.

However, she cautions surgery is not a cure-all solution.

“It is only a tool. Although it saved my life, it did not provide an easy way out and will ultimately fail if you do not make lifestyle changes.”

As a result of her weight loss, Kasey is living large these days. Her congestive heart failure is in remission; her clothes are five sizes smaller. She plans to lose 96 more pounds before having additional surgery to remove excess skin from her arms and legs.

“This is the most I’ve enjoyed life in a long, long time. My future goal is to become involved with charity functions so I can do good things in the community. I want to help others because they’ve been so gracious in helping me.”