10:27 AM CDT on Thursday, May 20, 2004

MEG FARRIS / WWL-TV Medical Reporter

At 65-years-old she found the love of her life, but there was just one problem her wedding dress didn't fit. That's when she turned to medical reporter Meg Farris for help. Could she lose the weight? The answer is in this Weight Loss Wednesday report.

The year was 1946 when Myra Mitchell and Wilbert Solomon met. He was ten and she was seven. They liked each other as they went through Clark High School together, but then they drifted apart.

“When Betsy came year ’65… he lost everything,” said Mitchell. “So his family moved over the river and we lost contact with each other.”

Both married and had children, but after 45 years of marriage they learned they had something else in common, each had become widows.

WWL-TV She had the reason, but did she have the resolve?

They started dating, and then the big surprise: Wilbert proposed at the church they had known their whole lives.

“I was crying; I was really shocked,” said Mitchell.

Her answer was yes, but first there was some major business to take care of. Some one had given Myra a size 10 wedding gown, but she was a 14. So she wrote Eyewitness News and pleaded for help.

“I'll do anything to lose weight. Help!" she wrote.

So Myra was surprised with a personal trainer and nutrition expert, Leilani Heno of X-Trainers, who designed a workout schedule of cardio and weightlifting.

Myra got a notebook to record the new kinds of meals she was supposed to eat, and at first she got A's and B's on her report card.

But then came a huge backslide.

“The D's and the F's were strictly food: fried this and fried that, hamburgers, fast food,” said Heno.

And after eight workout sessions, she stopped showing up and wouldn't answer her trainer's phone calls.

“She missed the last five of six sessions and they were all excuse ridden sessions,” said Heno. “The sessions that she was here she tried she tried hard.”

So what happened to Myra? What more incentive could you want? She had a big wedding day, a free wedding dress, and free expert personal fitness help.

Well it turns out we can all learn something very important from Myra.

Lesson One: Sometimes free isn't better.

“There's lots of research that shows that if people don't invest something of themselves, some kind of payment, some kind of sacrifice, they don't value the program that is going to initiate behavior change,” said Dr. Melinda Sothern of the LSUHSC.

So you're more likely to go if you write that check out with your hard earned money.

What about the D's and F's on her meals? Myra blamed it on temptation.

“My intended is a gourmet cook and I tell him when he fries fish, you have to bake mine and that's what gave me the setback because of the cook that I have at home,” said Mitchell.

Lesson Two: Support is essential

“If it's a husband and wife and the wife is ready to make the changes in the home but the husband is not, we often say you can't really do this until your husband is ready to support this,” said Sothern.

In fact, Sothern said there's a readiness test that doctors give patients to see if any change is likely to work. From the start, Leilani wasn't convinced Myra was ready.

“The reason was external, not internal,” said Heno. “There was a date, there was a wedding, and there was a reason. There was nothing internal.”

Lesson Three: There has to be a realistic goal, a specific long-term goal.

Myra did tone up a little and only lost a pound or so, and she could not get into the size 10 dress. However she did come down one size into a new 12 that she bought.

After her wedding, she said for better or worse, she’ll get back to the gym.

“I will take this time because this was an excellent program I enjoyed it and I highly recommend it,” said Mitchell.