TOPS members Dwayne and Joan Aker of Warwick had gone through countless trials and tribulations before finding a weight loss system that worked for them. “Not everything that works for one person will necessarily work for the next person,” says Dwayne, who weighed 427 pounds upon joining the organization in October 2016.

After trying Weight Watchers, Omada Health, and MyFitnessPal, which all offered great help and resources, he still wasn’t finding what was a good fit for him. “I had heard it all and I was so tired of the so-called yo-yo dieting; loose a few pounds, get discouraged or have a setback, and gain all the weight back, plus more!” said Dwayne.

As a child growing up in Exeter/West Greenwich, he was always over weight, and much larger and taller than his classmates. After High School, he joined the Air Force as an Avionics Technician. “The military carved off all the pounds I had been carrying around with me and showed me I didn’t have time to eat such large plates of food.” he recalls. “By the age of 19, I was a base physical fitness instructor and was in the best health of my life and enjoyed both strength and speed!” After the military, as the years went by, his health began to deteriorate while his weight steadily increased as an unknown enemy had been lurking within. “Time seems to have a way of playing cruel jokes on someone with undiagnosed eating disorders like I had,” he says, while relaying the fact that he suffers from both food addiction and compulsive over-eating.

The couple’s Nutritionist, Dr. Beth Rocchio of Integrated Medical Weight Loss in East Greenwich, is credited with diagnosing both he and his wife with their addictions, (Dwayne as a chronic overeater and Joan as having a sugar addiction). After attending meetings with both Dr. Rocchio and Overeaters Anonymous, “We learned that just like an alcoholic, or any other addiction, you needed to see the problem as an addiction and put a name to your problem,” Dwayne says. Cutting down on food didn’t work. “If I had some kind of ‘trigger food,’ such as Doritos, then the entire package would be consumed before I could stop and I was looking for more!” he says while discussing what it’s like to suffer from food addiction. Part of what also helped him is his steadfast faith in God. “Only God can break the chains that bind us,” he says, “Just like any addiction, to really beat it, you need something or someone bigger than your problems. That’s my Christian God for me and my wife!”

He and his wife, Joan Aker, have been happily married for nearly 19 years. “We have been binge buddies for most of that time,” she says. Upon learning that Dwayne was facing Bariatric Surgery as a safer alternative to losing weight, it shook their world and they knew they needed to act fast and take this journey together. “If only one of us went on a “DIEt,” and the other did not, we knew we would fail and continue in our norm of extreme self-destructive behavior.” she explains. “I would have rather continued in double digit ac1 levels with my Diabetes and lose the toes my doctor said I would rather than giving up pastry and pasta and sugar, but what I could not do would be to not support my husband in this life threatening situation.”