Carla Benning

9g Collagen with Calcium, D3, K2 and Magnesium

I've lost 41 pounds on a weight-loss shot. My back finally quit aching on the stairs. Then I read one paragraph in an article about these shots, and I haven't eaten the same way since. A doctor listed three kinds of people who should pay the closest attention to what they're keeping when they lose weight fast. I'm all three. And what he said about them sent me home to open the food app I'd ignored for eight months. What I found in that app is why there's a new bag next to my coffee maker now. It's also why a retired gym teacher named Hal yells at me in a church basement every Tuesday and Thursday. But it took two expensive mistakes and one bad morning in a parking lot to get there. First, the three kinds. I'm 64. I dispatched school buses for the county for 27 years. 61 buses, about 4,000 kids, out the gate by 5:40 every morning. If a bus was going to be late, I knew it before the driver did. I started the shot last fall. My doctor and I decided on it together after years of trying everything else. It's been the right call for me, and I'm not here to tell anybody different. My back quit aching on the stairs somewhere around pound 25. My doctor said that makes sense. Less weight, less load on your back every step you take. My daughter cried the day I made it up her porch steps without the railing. So when an article about weight-loss shots came up on my phone in the pharmacy line, I read it like a report card. I figured I'd get an A. The first half was about people like me. Less weight. Less load. Easier stairs. Then, near the bottom, the paragraph. One doctor said the people who should pay the closest attention to what they're keeping when they lose weight fast are older adults. Women past menopause. And people who've never exercised. I'm 64. Menopause was thirteen years ago. And the last time I exercised on purpose was a Jazzercise class in 1986. I quit when the leg warmers wore out. Three for three. I read it three times standing in that line. The pharmacist called my name twice. Here's the part I kept rereading. When you lose weight fast, it isn't all fat. Some of it can be lean tissue. And when you eat a lot less, there's a lot less room for protein and the nutrients food used to bring. For eight months I'd stepped on the scale at every checkup and counted what came off. Every pound was a gold star. My sister called me Skinny Minnie at Easter. The ladies at church asked for my secret. Nobody ever asked what I was keeping. Including me. So I went home and opened the food app my doctor's office told me to use. I'd logged two days in March and quit. I logged a regular Tuesday. Coffee. Half a yogurt. Six crackers with a little cheese. Three bites of salmon at dinner, because that's all the room there was. The app said 34 grams of protein. For the whole day. I logged Wednesday to make sure Tuesday wasn't a fluke. 29. The only other thing on either day was my calcium pill. Same one since I turned 55. I sat at the kitchen table with my phone in my hand and thought about my Aunt Dot. Dot was 5'2" in her wedding pictures. She taught me to drive a stick shift in her Ford Falcon. She could carry a full laundry basket up from the basement and talk the whole way. By 80 she was 4'10". She walked bent over like she was looking for something she'd dropped. I drove her to her appointments for the last six years. I'd watch her ease into my car one piece at a time. A hand on the door. Then a hip. Then a long breath before she swung her legs in. I always figured that was just Dot. Just getting old. I looked at my Tuesday and my Wednesday and I wasn't so sure. I didn't sleep that night. I kept thinking about how proud I'd been on my daughter's steps, and how fast I'd stopped asking questions after that. I dispatched 61 buses for 27 years. When something goes wrong on a route, you don't panic. You make a list. So at 4 a.m. I made one. 1. Protein at every meal. Real food first, even when the shot says I'm not hungry. 2. Move. Something heavier than a grocery bag, twice a week. 3. Take the list to my doctor before I change anything. 4. Fill in the nutrients there's less room for now. Item three was easy. My doctor kept the shot right where it is. His nurse gave me a protein number to aim for at each meal. I eat eggs now. I hate eggs. Item two scared me. So I skipped it. Item four is where I made my two mistakes. Mistake number one was a tub of collagen from the grocery store with a woman's face on the front. Two heaping scoops. I tried it in iced tea and it sat on top like pond scum. The foil seal took a steak knife. And on the shot, I can get down maybe six ounces of anything before I'm full. Two scoops needed a whole glass. I lasted six days. The tub is still in my pantry, about seven-eighths full. Mistake number two was a bone formula from the pharmacy. Calcium, vitamin D, the works. A serious-looking box. Six tablets a day. Each one the size of my thumbnail and chalky as sidewalk chalk. On the eleventh morning I sat in the pharmacy parking lot with the third tablet in my hand, gagged, and started crying. Not about the pill. About Dot. About being 64 and scared and failing at item four on my own list. $83 for that box. I threw away more than I swallowed. That's when I finally did item two. Hal taught PE at the middle school for 31 years. Now he runs a strength class for women over 60 in the basement of First Methodist. Tuesdays and Thursdays, $5 a session. Eight of us, a rack of dumbbells, and folding chairs we're not allowed to sit in. I almost turned around at the door. The first Tuesday I lifted a 5-pound dumbbell and felt like I'd pushed a school bus. Hal yelled across the basement, "Good! Again!" Nobody had said "good" about my body in a very long time. After class he found me at the coffee urn, staring at my pill organizer like it owed me money. He asked what was wrong. I told him all of it. The article. The app. Dot. The tub. The parking lot. Hal pulled up one of the folding chairs we're not allowed to sit in. "You're doing the part most people skip," he said. "You came to train it. Now you've got to feed it." He drew it on the back of the sign-up sheet. Bone is living tissue. Most of the adult skeleton is replaced about every 10 years, and it depends on daily nutrition. And bone isn't a rock. It's a frame of collagen with minerals laid down on it. Collagen is about 90% of bone's organic framework. "Your calcium pill brings the minerals," he said. "Nothing on your Tuesday feeds the frame." Then he tapped my two mistakes. The tub was the frame with no minerals. The box was the minerals with no frame. And neither one was going down a stomach that's full after six ounces. "So what am I supposed to do?" I said. "Ask Lou." Lou is Hal's wife. She's 71, and she brings a thermos of coffee to every Thursday class. That Thursday she unscrewed the lid and held it under my nose. It smelled like coffee. Just coffee. "One scoop," she said. "Every morning for two years. DensiaPlus." I went home and checked it against my list, line by line, the way I used to check bus routes. By then I'd made a second list, just for the label. Collagen in grams, not a "blend." Studies on collagen peptides commonly use 2.5 to 15g a day. Calcium, with D3 and K2 beside it. Magnesium. Vitamin C and copper for the collagen. One scoop that disappears into hot coffee, because some mornings coffee is all I can face. DensiaPlus checked every line. 9 grams of collagen peptides. 660mg of calcium citrate. Calcium helps build and maintain strong bones. Vitamin D3, which helps your body absorb calcium. Without enough D, you absorb only a small fraction of the calcium you eat. Vitamin K2 (MK-7), which activates osteocalcin, a protein that helps bind calcium into bone. Magnesium. About 60% of the magnesium in your body is in bone. Vitamin C, which is needed for normal collagen formation. Copper, which is needed to cross-link collagen fibers. One thing I want to be clear about. Collagen isn't a complete protein. My scoop doesn't replace a protein-rich meal. It's item four on my list, not item one. Week 5, the bag came. One scoop in my coffee at 5:40, out of habit. The coffee still tastes like coffee. Week 8, I hadn't missed a morning of the scoop or a single class. Week 10, I logged another Tuesday in the app and showed it to my daughter like a report card. Week 12, I stepped on the scale at my doctor's office and asked a different question for the first time. Not "How much did I lose?" "What am I keeping?" He said nobody can see that from a scale, and we'd talk about a bone scan at my next physical. That's his department. I don't know what's going on inside my bones. Nobody can tell you that from the outside, and I won't pretend otherwise. What I know is my Tuesday looks different now. Coffee with a scoop. Two eggs I don't enjoy. Greek yogurt at lunch. Chicken at dinner, even if it's four bites. Hal at 10. I went back and read that paragraph again last week. Older adults. Women past menopause. People who've never exercised. I'm still 64. Menopause isn't going anywhere. But I'm not someone who's never exercised anymore. There's a 12-pound dumbbell under my bed to prove it. Two of the three, I can't change. The third one, I changed on a Tuesday in a church basement. If you're on a weight-loss shot and you're past 60. If menopause was a while ago. If the last time you exercised on purpose involved leg warmers. If dinner fits on a saucer now and your vitamins haven't changed in ten years. If there's a tub in your pantry or a box of chalky tablets you couldn't finish. If you've only ever counted what's coming off. Think about what you're keeping, not just what you're losing. DensiaPlus is built the way bone is built. 9 grams of collagen peptides for the frame. 660mg of calcium citrate and 198mg of magnesium for the mineral. 1,320 IU of vitamin D3 to help absorb calcium and 132mcg of vitamin K2 (MK-7) to help bind it into bone. Vitamin C for normal collagen formation and copper to cross-link collagen fibers. Zinc and boron to round it out. Unflavored. No gluten, dairy or added sugar. One scoop in your morning coffee. That's the whole routine. Right now it's up to 70% off: buy 2 bags, get 1 free, or buy 3, get 2 free. It's covered by a 90-day money-back guarantee, empty or full. Make your list. Carla Benning, 64, retired school bus dispatcher, Tuesdays and Thursdays with Hal P.S. If you take a blood thinner like warfarin, talk to your doctor before starting anything with vitamin K, this included. Calcium can affect how some medications are absorbed, so ask your doctor or pharmacist about timing. Keep taking anything you've been prescribed, including a weight-loss shot. Your doctor makes those calls. P.P.S. Up to 70% off: buy 2, get 1 free, or buy 3, get 2 free. Send this to the friend in your Tuesday group who's on the shot too.