On his deathbed almost 17 years ago, Lisa Nowalski’s father gave her an important message.

Lifting the CPAP mask off his face to talk, he told her that if she wanted to avoid an early grave, she needed to lose weight and get healthy, according to Lisa Nowalski.

She didn’t act on those words until 2012, when one January day she rode her bicycle two miles to the pharmacy to get her various high blood pressure, cholesterol and depression medications. She was on 14 different kinds of them, she said.

After riding back home, Nowalski told herself that if she could ride her bike four miles and not have a heart attack, she could shed the weight and get healthy.

After weighing in at 285 pounds at her heaviest, she has lost more than half that, working out at the Taylor Bend YMCA and the Suffolk Family YMCA.

“The energy level I have and the quality of life that I have has changed drastically,” she said.

The day after Nowalski rode her bike four miles and was inspired to get rid of her junk food, a friend from her church — Believers Church in Western Branch — invited her to the Y to work out.

Then, Nowalski said, at her church the next day, Pastor Jamey Stuart, inspired by Pastor Steve Reynolds’ book Bod4God, announced a series of sermons focusing on faith-based weight loss.

“I took in everything he said,” Nowalski said. “I bought the book. I friended Steve Reynolds on Facebook. Every day after that, I went to the Y and worked out.”

By the end of February, Nowalski said, she had dropped a large amount of weight. She hired a personal trainer for a year, and she taught Nowalski how to use all the gym equipment that was foreign to her.

Nowalski likes the exercise bikes and lifting weights.

The Taylor Bend Y hired Nowalski as a “Y-change coach” in April 2014, and the Suffolk Family Y hired her to the same position two months ago.

Somewhere in between — Oct. 22, 2014, to be precise — something happened to Nowalski that made her glad she’d shaped up.

A friend found her collapsed on the bathroom floor. She spent four days in the intensive-care unit at Sentara Obici Hospital with ulcerative colitis, before spending five weeks in the ICU step-down unit.

When she went to the hospital, Nowalski, at 5 feet 9 inches in height, weighed 120 pounds.

“Had I not lost my weight, they would have done exploratory surgery,” she believes. “I would have ended up on a ventilator — my airway would have closed down and I would have died.”

Nowalski also believes her Christian faith has allowed her to transform herself — and now she pays it forward. “I reach out to people now and I help people change their life for Jesus Christ,” she said.

“I’m very strict with what I eat,” Nowalski said. “I’m obsessed with working out. Even when I go out of town, we (her and husband Pete) find gyms to work out in. I believe it’s a part of my life forever.”

Nowalski invites anyone who wants help to lose weight and live a healthier life to friend her on Facebook.