YWM2014 - The Interviews Part 4

Welcome to Part 4 of my interviews with folks who attended the Obesity Action Coalition 3rd Annual Convention – Your Weight Matters 2014.

Starting out this round of interviews I talked with Laura Van Tuyl, she is a bariatric patient and was also attending to represent the Weight Loss Surgery Foundation of America. The WLSFA has helped fund thirteen bariatric surgeries over the last four years.

Next I was able to chat with Dr. Arya Sharma - and… I apologize in advance. I screwed up the recording. I don’t know what I did, but I managed to turn off the recording in the middle of the interview. I will be reaching out to him to try and re-do our chat. The image above is from the keynote talk Dr. Sharma gave.

After that I stopped to talk with Rock Toone, the creator and owner of Squeaky Cheeks - which is a talcum free foot and body powder. For those who are currently living with Obesity, it can offer relief in a lot of areas that are effected by chaffing and sweating. After losing a significant amount of weight, there’s the problems with loose skin… or maybe on a more positive note, the problems associated with being active… be it hiking, biking or running or whatever. Squeaky Cheeks can definitely help.

Rock is a firefighter that developed Squeaky Cheeks to fight the issues he faced while in his fire fighting gear, and found it could help all sorts of people. I could tell from chatting with him he has really come to respect and care about the folks at events like this. Here’s one of the promotional videos from their web site.

Next up was a group of folks I ran in to after lunch..  Carolyn and Danielle who are from Canada. Then I chatted with the Bariatric Foodie herself, Nikki Massie.

Next time I may need to take some notes or something about who I chat with… I bumped in to Jill, who I had done one of my first interviews with the day before. But it was great to get some feedback from her after she had a chance to attend some of the sessions and such.

I took advantage of a break in some of the action to go chat with some of the OAC staff and others who were at the registration booth, including Lindsey, Amber (who shares with us details on YWM2015).

And at this point, I obviously need to be paying more attention to my recording app - I seemed to change the audio file type to one that.. well, wasn’t as good of quality. Maybe by next year I’ll get this figured out.

Jennifer was one of our scholarship winners, is a teacher, and talked about what she can share with others from this weekend. Then after chatting with Jackie I also chatted with Edie - she was one of the first time attendees that I was in contact with as a member of the YWM Welcoming Committee.

Rounding out today’s set of interviews is my chat with Ted Kyle, Chairman of the OAC… and just all around nice guy.

Pandora Williams of Desperately Seeking Slender has been to all three OAC Conventions, and her experience at the first year has led to her becoming a personal trainer in order to help others.

Following that I cornered Joe Nadglowski, President and CEO of the Obesity Action Coalition to get his thoughts on WhYWM.

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