At 48 years old, Scott Ledford is what you could call a physical freak of nature. He bicycles over 5,000 miles a year and displays the absurdly-low resting heart rate of 46 – about 30 beats per minute below the national average.
Undoubtedly, Scott is a dedicated athlete with the sort of fitness goals reserved for only a small percentage of the population.
Yet just two-and-a-half years ago, Scott weighed almost 350 pounds and struggled with both high blood pressure and sleep apnea.
After much research and deliberation, Scott decided to make a change in his life, and he found Robert Richard, M.D., at Longstreet Clinic’s Center for Weight Management to help make that change happen.
For Scott that meant a gastric sleeve procedure – an operation where a significant portion of the patient’s stomach is removed in order to kickstart a drive to better health.
“With most surgeons, they do the operation, fix the patient and send them back to a general medicine doctor,” Dr. Richard said. “In bariatrics you are managing a chronic disease, and you have to work with patients long-term.”
Gain more than you lose
Scott no longer requires blood pressure medication or the aid of a CPAP mask in order to sleep properly, and he actually weighs less now than he did in high school. Yet for all the gains, Scott knows he must stay on the path he began with Dr. Richard months ago.
“It’s been an interesting, exciting journey, but you have to put your whole effort into it,” Scott said.
“But it’s a life-changing decision I’m definitely glad I made.”
To read the full story of Scott’s weight loss journey, click here.
To learn more about how to get started on your own weight loss journey, click here.
