Dee Wolk
This is how Dee Wolk lives life today, but it wasn’t always that way.
According to Dee, when she was in her 30s, her formerly affluent father passed away after spending most of his money. A few years later, her first husband died from a heart attack, leaving her to run a struggling dry cleaning plant with little business experience but no other choice.
Dee took over the plant, despite the day when she was robbed by men with a double-barreled shotgun. She remarried, but was unhappy, and making her even unhappier, she continued to suffer from a lifelong struggle with her weight. Determined, Dee finally figured out how to drop 42 pounds and keep them off, and since 1983 she’s built a business around helping people to lose weight, developing the non-diet answer to permanent weight loss now called Dee’s Weight Solution (www.thinneryou.com ).
Dee teaches her workshops at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Integrative Medicine, as well as other organizations in Ohio, and recently teamed up with partners including Ladies Who Launch Incubator member Diane Davie to launch Dee’s Weight Loss Solution nationwide, starting with the creation of a six-week self-help program on CD.
Meet Dee at Ladies Who Launch LIVE in Cleveland on June 23rd, and get advice from her below about taking care of yourself so that you’re in the best shape possible to take care of business…
Deprivation Doesn’t Work
Dee: “If diets worked, wouldn’t you only need one? What happened on my last diet - it was a 700-calorie-a-day diet. I only lost nine pounds in two months, and I couldn’t do it one more day because it was so depriving. I said, ‘I’m going off of this, but I’m going to watch every thing I put in my mouth.’
Eating Because of Emotions
“I was determined not to gain the weight back. But I gained back double the weight in less than two months. I was depressed and despaired. I didn’t understand that I had wrecked my metabolism from all the yo-yo dieting (and that was part of why I was gaining back weight).
“I was an emotional eater. Not one of these diets ever helped me with my emotional eating. I said to myself, ‘Maybe I should give up. It sure would be easier. ‘ But when I finally connected my intellect with my emotional eating, I came up with this realization and it is very important: ‘Fat and happy would never be compatible for Dee Wolk.’ So I decided that I was going to find the solution.”
Discovering Non-Diet Weight Loss
“I looked into - how is the body designed to lose weight? How do you eat to keep it off? What do you do about emotional eating? It was a journey - two and a half years of research. I learned that diets only address your symptoms; they never get rid of the cause.
“My bait is weight loss - everyone wants to lose weight. But my program is about self-love, empowerment, and the realization that positive changes can happen in your life but you need a plan, you need tools, you need techniques and coaching to make this happen.”
Learning to Love Yourself
“You have to learn how to take care of yourself, how to love yourself, without using food when you’re not physically hungry and that is a key to my program. I lost 42 pounds 24 years ago, and never gained one pound back. I eat all the foods that I love. I get incredible results. What I’ve tried to create here is a program that delivers its promise - immediate, consistent, safe and permanent weight loss.”
Developing Her Non-Diet Program
“When I first started, I didn’t realize I was going to teach this. I just lost 42 pounds, and people came up and asked me, ‘What diet did you go on?’ They were ready to write it down. I didn’t diet. I learned how to eat. They didn’t believe me. They said, ‘What does learning how to eat have to do with losing weight?’
“When they saw I wasn’t gaining it back, they really got interested, and that’s how the teaching started. Now I have people who come to me from all walks of life. About 20 percent of my clients have been doctors, and I just finished teaching a Senator - I did phone classes with him. He lost 26 pounds in seven weeks without dieting.”
Reaching a National Market
“In 2006, with encouragement and endorsements from many doctors and other clients, I teamed up with several partners (including a preventive and occupational physician and Cleveland Ladies Who Launch Incubator member Diane Davie, a former corporate HR executive) to form Dee’s Weight Solution Corporation so that more people could end their personal struggle and have access to the tools and techniques required for permanent weight loss.
“We took my eight-week intensive lifestyle program and the learnings from my 20-plus years of successful weight loss coaching and created a six-week, self-directed, standalone, self-help audio program and workbook which has yielded incredible results for individuals. Whether someone needs to lose five, 25 or 50 pounds, this audio package provides practical tools and techniques to achieve a healthier, thinner and happier lifestyle.
“I also offer long distance non-diet phone counseling and teleconference phone classes, and will soon be offering Web-based classes.”
Weight-Loss Help Can Be Company Perk
“One of the biggest pharmaceutical laboratories is starting (the six-week) program on June 8th - they’re picking up the cost of the program for employees and letting them do it during work time. If they lose weight and keep the weight off for one year, they’re giving them a $250 gift card.”
Feed Your Emotional Hunger
“I teach (people) how to sustain their weight loss by knowing what to feed their emotional hunger - this is such a key to permanent weight loss. I created ‘life-enhancers.’ A ‘life-enhancer’ a day keeps the fat away.
What Are Your ‘Life-Enhancers’?
“Is it coming home to your pets, or a hug with your significant other? Is it calling a friend who you haven’t talked to in a long time? Taking a wonderful long shower with a wonderful gel? Is it watching ‘ Sex in the City’? Listening to music?”
Do Something Nicer for Yourself Than Raiding the Fridge
“It’s breaking the rhythm of reaching for food for all your emotional hunger, and creating a new rhythm of doing things for yourself - they don’t have to be big-deal things.It could be straightening out your closet - closure is a ‘life-enhancer,’ I had a creative client take a cookie jar in her kitchen, empty it out and put slips of paper with her ‘life-enhancers’ on it. Food doesn’t get rid of stress, but ‘life-enhancers’ do.”
Entrepreneurial Opportunity
“We’re getting our licensing program off the ground. I have a doctor who took my program last fall from Canton, Ohio, who has lost a total of 45 pounds - she was a “sugarholic”. She’s now teaching my program at the Alliance Hospital in Alliance, Ohio. Among others, we also have a fitness and wellness outsourcing entrepreneur in D.C. who’s trained her team to teach it to their corporate and individual clients, and we are in discussion with a number of other potential licensees.
“We’re looking for compassionate, caring professionals who would like to be licensed to facilitate the Dee’s Weight Solution program. These might include doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, nutritionists, fitness trainers, holistic/naturopathic/alternative medicine practitioners, and beauty, spa and wellness professionals. I offer the six-week program, facilitator training, and a facilitator guide, along with on-going personal coaching as part of the licensing package.”
What Dee Gained from the Ladies Who Launch Incubator
“It was very inspirational. I think it’s important for women to support women. I think we’re born as competitors and I think we have to become sisters so that we can help each other grow. And I felt that this kind of climate was there (in the incubator). I always say if you put a rose beside a lilac, they’re both beautiful. Why do we have to compete?”
Words of Advice
“Never give up. I think the only thing that made me feel (like giving up) was being extremely fatigued. Being an entrepreneur and going toward goals is the most exciting thing you can do in your life, but the trade-off is you’re going to get tired sometimes.
“You believe in what you’re doing, you have the passion, which becomes your purpose, and you hang in there. I think that’s what creates success. There’s no such thing as failure. Failure is a process of learning how not to do something.
“I like to say, “When I fall down, I grow up.’ It’s important to get out of your own way to go forward.”
Our Favorite Quote of the Day
“No one does anything in life without some kind of payoff. Whatever that payoff may be - you have to want it enough to make the commitment to it. Want is the power.”
