After 20 minutes of wrestling with a new pair of size 62 bib overalls, David Anderson emerged from a dressing room, sweating profusely with buttons still undone.
Then the 50-year-old, 350-pound Tama area native landed in the hospital with congestive heart failure.
“The doctors more or less said, ‘We don’t want to see you in here again,’ and I don’t want to see them again,” he said.
Anderson’s older brother Walt is even bigger and faces knee surgery. Both have diabetes and high blood pressure.
“I don’t know how we got so big, we just did,” Anderson said. “We always had big suppers and I’ve got to be feeding my face the whole time I’m watching TV. ... Giving up food is like alcoholism, giving up the bottle.”
But for the chance to turn their lives around, the brothers are willing to go to great lengths.
They will quit their jobs and sell a car for plane tickets to the other side of the world.
Awaiting them and a 646-pound Wisconsin man, however, is half a million dollars worth of weight loss therapy at a Chinese hospital, all free as part of a new Winners In Life contest by the Marshalltown-based China Connection.
The therapy focuses on acupuncture, Chinese herbs and massage, along with diet and exercise.
“The more they have to lose, the faster it comes off,” said Ruth Lycke, China Connection CEO, who stumbled upon Chinese therapy through a foreign exchange student in 2004 after surviving a stroke and has brought nearly 100 Americans back for stroke rehabilitation.
“I don’t know what to think, but whatever comes, bring it on,” Anderson said.
The challenge is certain not to be all work and no play. Part of the success of the China Connection is the growing intrigue of medical tourism, Lycke said.
“They’ll get to see all kinds of things while losing weight and learning new habits. It’s a win-win situation for them,” she said. “... There’s a traditional Chinese proverb that says the patient is god. People are treated entirely differently than people are treated in the states.”
The hospital in Tianjin, China’s third largest city, claims Guiness Book of World Records titles for weight loss treatment, Lycke added, and she expects the brothers to shed approximately 200 pounds each in the six months to a year they are likely to stay overseas.
“I’d just like to come back pencil thin and walk into the casino [in Riverside where he worked] and have people say, ‘Who are you?’” Anderson said.
The brothers are expected to leave for China at the beginning of June. Video podcasts and blogs are expected to be posted online throughout their experience at www.chinaconnection.cc
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Contact Ryan Brinks at 641-753-6611 or rbrinks@timesrepublican.com
