“The support of
the CalvertHealth
Weight Management
team was crucial to
my success...”
Blair Scroggs of Charlotte Hall never used to take full-length photos of herself and never dreamed she would one day crave exercise. In the last two years, she’s transformed into this once unimaginable version of herself.
“I never thought I would wake up and crave exercise!” Blair said.
Blair was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes in 2019 and went on insulin in 2022. That same year, she had a hysterectomy. All of this contributed to an 80-pound weight gain. In September 2023, Blair sought help, which brought her to meeting Dr. Jessica Erisman and team. At the time, Blair’s primary goal was to get off insulin.
“Once I found out that was one of the reasons why I had gained so much, I wanted to get off of it. When I first started weight loss treatment I was up to 140 units of insulin at one time for meals, which is a lot of insulin,” Blair said.
Blair had a wide range of bumps in the road throughout her weight management treatment. She had to try several medications before one worked well for her. Once she and her team found the right medication for her, she faced shortages of that medication. At first, she rapidly lost some weight and gained it back fairly quickly.
“It never made any sense,” Blair said of the frustrations.
Thankfully, she had the Calvert Health Weight Management team so she wasn’t alone in those frustrations. Blair said Dr. Erisman’s support was crucial to talk about the challenges and to troubleshoot how to deal with issues. In the beginning of her journey, Dr. Erisman helped her troubleshoot her water intake.
“Anytime I go there it’s like talking with a close friend,” Blair said.
Once Blair started the right medication for her, it helped her really hit her stride. In one month, she lost seven pounds.
“The medication has definitely been a proponent of my success. It hasn’t been all of my success,” Blair said.
Blair worked hard to find ways to make exercise fun for her. Shortly after her hysterectomy, she started driving 45 minutes each way to an Aqua Zumba class twice a week. Then, she started seeing advertisements for a virtual reality app called Supernatural which looked like fun. She bought a virtual reality headset, bought the app membership, and started playing every day. She found so much joy in doing the headset workout class. It was enough to make the switch away from the time-consuming drive to Zumba.
Blair also bought a Peloton bike and is proud to be on a 40 week “streak” of using the bike. She found she really likes the gamification and social aspects of home workouts while making them more accessible as they don’t require driving. She even got to take a live Peloton class at Peloton’s New York City studio with her favorite instructor. She earned multiple coveted callouts during the class, where the instructor Cody Rigsby acknowledged her for her bejeweled cycling shoes.
There’s been a lot of what Blair calls “non-scale victories” along the way, like not requiring a seat belt extender on the plane for her New York trip, finding out she could buy a dress in the XL size for a concert instead of a plus size.
“I haven’t seen an extra large since high school. It’s so exciting to be able to find clothing in a normal size,” Blair said.
And best of all, she no longer takes insulin and won’t have to travel with the supplies any more after her 75-pound weight loss.