BEFORE: Majed Dalloul before he began the weight-loss programme. Right: HELPING HAND: Dalloul, right, with senior dietician Khaled Mokdem.    Photo by Umer Nangiana

By Umer Nangiana

Attired in a traditional white thawb (Arabic dress), he sits comfortably in the chair, rolling beads in his hands with a smile on his face. He can now afford to smile, of course. Just a year ago, he would not have even fit in the same chair, forget feel comfortable.
Weighing a whopping 194 kilograms, Majed Dalloul, was pushing his luck. Suffering from high blood sugar, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, high uric acid and high triglycerides, he was living on two insulin shots a day complemented by a number of tablets to control other hyper abnormalities in his blood stream.
The Palestinian, who has long made Doha home, had been declined surgical procedures for weight loss because of the high risk involved due to his medical condition. It finally came down to personal determination. Powered by a strong will to achieve the impossible, 44-year-old Dalloul lost 90 kg, shedding 77.7 kg fat mass off his body in just one year!
His cholesterol, blood sugar and uric acid levels have returned to normal. He has stopped all medication and now enjoys sound sleep and does not need insulin. Dalloul credits the turnaround to the VLCC Slimming Clinic in Doha which he has been visiting regularly for the past one year.
With the help of Khaled Mokdem, his counsellor and slimming in-charge at VLCC, Dalloul has been able to change his life for good.
“I arrived here in April last year. When I was starting out, my brother told me that one of his friends had lost 10 kg in 2 months and suggested that I should give it a shot. So I came here and met Khalid. We talked and I decided I would try and see if I succeed,” Dalloul tells Community in a chat recently at a VLCC facility where he is following a treatment plan devised by Khaled. 
“In the first month, I lost about 8-9kg, in the second about 15kg and I could not believe my eyes. I could only dream of it. That encouraged me to carry on. In six months, I dropped 40kg. It entirely changed my life. Even my close ones in family and friends could not believe it. When they saw me they failed to recognise me at first,” recalls Dalloul.
However, the reason for his success is determination and strong will-power. It is something that has to come from within. You have to take this decision yourself, he stresses.
Dalloul acknowledges that giving up on his favourite junk food and abandoning his bad eating habits all at once and following an exercise regime was not easy. If you are not personally motivated, you cannot do it. “Not everybody can do it, I know. It is very difficult. But the results encourage you to do it. Your life starts changing, you start noticing that your life is different, it is better now. Your sleeping time improves,” says Dalloul, before going on to add a tad emotionally, “I can see better now because my vision was affected due to high blood sugar. My skin has tightened up. My face looks younger. My friends say I look 20 years younger now. My life has completely changed.”
Had he known it would turn out like this, Dalloul says, he would have started 10 years ago. But he was not aware of such possibilities.
“I started thinking about my children and their future. I thought what would happen to them and who would take care of them if God forbid I land in hospital someday due to my deteriorating health. Then I decided I have to go for it,” Dalloul explains.
Now, his entire family, including children, has cut sharply on junk food and are following a healthy lifestyle.
“For him, it was a ‘to be or not to be’ situation. He had no choice. You know, his triglycerides count was 4,000. The normal range is 150. Just imagine! The laboratory technician thought it was a system error. He conducted the tests twice from his own pocket and every time the result was same,” Khaled, the senior Dietician at VLCC and Master of Nutrition and Food Science, tells Community.  
“You know what the technician told me? He said your blood is like milk. There were lines of white in my blood. It was dangerous,” Dalloul adds.
“At the VLCC, we devise a customised diet plan according to the medical case. In the clinical nutrition, we use some steps that include low-carb, low-fat and high-protein diet. In his case, we cannot use high-protein diet because he has a problem of uric acid,” says Khaled.
They had to give him high antioxidant diet which attacks the free radicals in blood. These free radicals are, in fact, a source of increased cholesterol and increase in bad fat. The antioxidants attack the free radicals and prevent increase in bad fat and cholesterol.
They helped him only through diet and no medication, herbal or otherwise and no unnatural measures, says Khaled. This much of weight loss was achieved through diet, therapy sessions and exercise purely, he adds.
They started him with walking; no running or jumping as it could hurt his joints or bones.
“I started feeling good right from the first month. I started with only 20-30 minutes daily and I felt tired initially but within a week, I started feeling better. I believe you cannot act upon such a diet plan on your own. Even if you managed to do so for a few months, you would not be able to sustain it,” recalls Dalloul.
When Dalloul arrived at VLCC, they did his body composition analysis after which they devised the best treatment according to his needs.
Khaled says there are multiple factors that contributed to his obesity problems. There were two main reasons. One was genetic, his family history and the other one was environment and his sedentary lifestyle, chiefly office work.
“My wife has been with me in this effort right from the beginning. I brought her here for a session on what to cook and how to cook for the diet. She is not obese but she also started following these guidelines by herself and has lost some 12 kilograms of weight although she had normal weight. She learned from me,” says Dalloul.
He is confident that he will be able to sustain this lifestyle without VLCC once he has achieved his target. His visits might decrease but he says he would continue with them as he has started seeing them as a family.
For anyone looking for weight loss, Dalloul recommends professional assistance. “Do not try it from whatever is available in the Internet or do not go directly for surgery either,” he says.