GET YOUR BODY MOVING: SHE TOOK A DEEP BREATH AND LOST215 POUNDS
LisaKay Wojcik was so overweight and out of shape that even 2 minutes’ worth of exercise left her so breathless that she feared she’d have a heart attack. But finding the way to breathe correctly helped put her at ease to do the exercise that eventually helped her lose 215 pounds and regain her self-respect.
LisaKay, of Romulus, Michigan, watched her weight climb to 325 pounds through two tumultuous marriages. The combination of personal upheaval and unhealthy weigh gain left her an emotional wreck. “I had no self-esteem left,” she says.
But LisaKay believed in an old but true cliche. When things get that bad, there’s only one way to go: back up.
“I wasn’t emotionally prepared to tackle the problem with my marriage, but I believed that I could improve myself,” LisaKay says. So she went out and bought a low-impact aerobics tape, slipped it into the VCR, and started following the instructor. “After just 2 minutes, I was sweaty, beet red, and breathless,” she says. “I thought I was going to die.”
Convinced that she was having a heart attack, LisaKay called
911. “When I got to the hospital, the emergency room doctor tersely told me that I was merely out of breath,” she recalls. “And he told me to warm up next time.”
Too embarrassed to try aerobics again, LisaKay switched to a seemingly simpler activity: walking. Her first time out, she walked one-quarter mile so slowly that it took 40 minutes. Three months later, she could do 1 mile in an hour.
Six months later, LisaKay was ready for a more intense challenge: a “fat-burner” aerobics video. With her legs kicking high in the air and her arms moving nonstop, she was unaccustomed to such high oxygen demands
GET YOUR BODY MOVING: SHE DANCED HER WAY TO A PERFECT SIZE 8
When Jennifer Johnson decided to work off her extra pounds, she Knew that no ordinary aerobics class would do. She needed an exercise that would be fun. So she signed up for cardio dance lessons at a gym in La Selva Beach, California.
“I’ve always enjoyed aerobic activities,” Jennifer explains. “Between the music and the movement, there’s so much energy. When I observed the cardio dance class, I was excited at the prospect of being able to move my body that way.”
On her first day, Jennifer felt nothing but frustration. The other students were much more experienced, and she questioned whether she’d be able to keep up. But the team atmosphere
GET YOUR BODY MOVING: PERSONAL MOTTO LED TO 125-POUND WEIGHT LOSS
When Tawni Gomes stopped making excuses, she started losing weight
GET YOUR BODY MOVING: HIS NICKNAME STILL STICKS
During college, Robert Kilroy was so tall and thin
GET YOUR BODY MOVING: FROM MATRONLY TO MARATHONER
Marlene Dropp was so out of shape that she couldn’t even walk around the block. Seven years later, at age 51, she walked a marathon.
A veteran dieter, Marlene had struggled with her weight all of her life. Sometimes she’d lose a few pounds, but they would always come back.
Then one day, as she looked in the mirror, Marlene realized how much she disliked the image that she saw. “I was a frumpy 200-pound matron,” says the mother of four. “My dress had stripes, a frilly collar, and fluffy sleeves, like something my mother would have worn. I couldn’t fit into more fashionable clothes. That’s when I started feeling like a blimp.”
That’s also when she decided to do something about it. Because of her weight, Marlene had always felt too self-conscious exercise in public. But this time, she was determined.
So one beautiful morning in 1989, with her husband at home to watch the kids, Marlene decided on impulse to take a walk around her Hibbing, Minnesota, neighborhood. To her surprise, she arrived home energized. “That’s when I decided to make walking part of my daily routine,” she says.
Immediately, Marlene set a goal for herself. She wanted to advance from walking around the block to walking 5 miles a day. Her neighborhood is laid out in half-mile circles, so she just kept adding circles to her route. Within 2 months, she achieved her goal. So she set her sights on a new objective: She wanted to cover a mile in 13 minutes. A year later, she could do it with ease.
Within 2 years of starting her exercise program and making some changes in her eating habits
END EMOTION-DRIVEN EATING: SHE QUIT HER BIG-TIME JOB AND LOST 85 POUNDS OF PRESSURE
For most of her life, Cindy Arvayo was an active person. Then, she started climbing the corporate ladder at an electronics firm in pressure-packed Silicon Valley. “With that came all the stress,” says Cindy, age 45. “I got into the habit of numbing out with food.”
After about 13 years, her weight had crept up to more than 235 pounds. She was working 70-hour weeks managing several manufacturing groups. Even though she never had time or energy to work out, she wanted and needed to be active. “I felt guilty that I wasn’t, so I ate even more,” she says.
Then one day, Cindy asked her husband a question that most men would never want to answer: “Does my weight bother you?” His thoughtful response turned Cindy’s life around: “What I miss is being active and doing fun things with you.”
“His words made me want to be a better woman,” Cindy says. Her first step was to join a health club, where she took a beginner-level aerobics class. But she knew that wouldn’t be enough to give her the healthy, balanced life she desired. So, 6 months into her exercise program, she quit her job and went back to school to become an esthetician. (Estheticians do facial and body treatments.)
This wasn’t a rash decision on Cindy’s part. “I had accomplished everything that I had wanted to in my job, and I felt that it was time for me to move on,” she explains. “Having my own beauty business was a lifelong dream, so I decided to go for it.”
With that single decision, Cindy unloaded much of the stress that had driven her weight gain in the first place. “It was the best thing that I ever did for myself,” she says. She no longer felt the overwhelming urge to overeat. She got back to the active and athletic life that she had known before. Gradually, she lost 85 pounds.
These days, Cindy works just 3 days a week, operating her own skin-care center. She’s also training for her second sprint triathlon, a race involving a roughly l/i-mile swim, a 20-mile bike ride, and a 10K run. Most important, she’s happy. “I made the choice to find the balance that was missing in my life,” she says.
WINNING ACTION
Find out what really matters. Like Cindy, so many of us are in jobs that we don’t care about, and we aren’t doing the things that we love. We numb ourselves with food as a way of stuffing down our real emotions, desires, and dreams. But life is short and we go around only once. Draw courage
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GET YOUR BODY MOVING: VARIETY SPICES UP HER WORKOUTS
Whenever Cheryl Allard goes to the gym, she abides by her 10-minute rule: Use one machine for 10 minutes, then move on to something else. This strategy helped her beat the boredom that nearly ended her exercise program. It also helped her lose 100 pounds.
Cheryl began working out in 1997 after finding out that she had high blood pressure. At the time, she weighed 265 pounds. “I was chubby even as a child,” recalls the 50-year-old sewing machine consultant from Chicago. “My parents lived in England during World War II, when food was rationed. They had the mindset that food was never to be wasted. I was raised to clean my plate.”
As Cheryl got older, the pounds kept piling on. “I tried every diet under the sun to slim down,” she says. “Once, I even lost 40 pounds, but they all came back.”
Then, Cheryl’s husband persuaded her to get a physical. “I hadn’t been to our family doctor in years, and my husband kept bugging me to go,” she explains. “I went just to keep him quiet.”
But Cheryl was the one left speechless after her doctor handed her a prescription for blood pressure medication. “That got me motivated to lose,” she says. “I didn’t want to be taking pills for the rest of my life.”
Cheryl went to a nutrition counselor, who helped her revamp her eating habits. She also joined a local gym, where she started using the aerobic-exercise equipment. “I felt self-conscious at first because of my size,” she says.
Over time, her self-confidence grew
GET YOUR BODY MOVING: SHE CREDITS HER VICTORY TO YOGA
Melissa MacKinnon overcame a lifelong eating disorder by using the mind/body rituals of yoga to change the way she looked at food and at herself.
Melissa, of Schenectady, New York, can trace her destructive eating pattern back to the age of 9. “I would starve myself for days before giving in to overwhelming cravings for Oreo cookies or any other sweets that Mom had on hand,” she recalls. “I wasn’t too particular, but afterward, I’d get angry at myself.”
It was a vicious cycle that followed her all the way to graduate school. All the while, her weight fluctuated wildly. By age 26, she weighed 220 pounds.
“Intellectually, I knew that I had an eating problem and that it was only making my life worse,” Melissa says. “But my mind and body were at absolute odds, and I couldn’t get them to reconcile.” Until she discovered yoga.
“It looked so relaxing and easy, so perfect for my imperfect body,” Melissa says. And she knew that she had to get active if she wanted to slim down. She had tried aerobics, but it just didn’t appeal to her.
Yoga did more than get Melissa in shape. It had positive effects that she never expected. Her energy level soared. As she became more attuned to her body, she understood its need for proper nourishment. She began craving greens and vegetables instead of chocolate. She replaced refined sugars with brown-rice syrup. “As yoga rewired my mind, I learned to take better care of my body,” she says.
In 8 months, Melissa lost 60 pounds. Now age 33, she has maintained her weight for 7 years without resorting to the extremes of bingeing and starving that once tore her life apart. “And I owe it all to yoga,” she says.
In fact, she’s so thankful to yoga for changing her life that she became a licensed instructor in order to share its benefits with others.
WINNING ACTION
Trim and tone your body with yoga. Gentle and low-impact, yoga may not seem like a calorie-burning activity, but it is. And it has other benefits as well. As Melissa discovered, the discipline of yoga has a mind-body effect that can go a long way toward untying some of the mental knots that may be standing between you and your weight-loss goals.
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GET YOUR BODY MOVING: FRIENDS HELP FRIENDS LOSE
In 1994, Anita Beattie’s doctor gave her a harsh ultimatum: “Lose weight or don’t come back to see me, because you’re wasting my time and your money.”
His words stung, but Anita knew that her doctor was right. She weighed 157 pounds and she also had diabetes
GET YOUR BODY MOVING: MOTHER NATURE GOT HIM IN SHAPE
John Bradley always loved being outdoors. As a youngster growing up in northern Maine, he spent many more summer nights sleeping outside than in. His days were filled with work on his family’s potato farm, fishing, swimming, canoeing, and hiking in the woods.
Now age 45, John still finds joy in the great outdoors. It not only relaxes him but it also helped him lose 30 pounds.
John, who ran his own farm for more than 20 years before becoming a student at the University of Maine, had a weight problem | for most of his life. He ate too much of the wrong kinds of foods, and despite his active lifestyle, it showed.
“My family always kept a lot of sweets around the house,” he says. “And I had a special fondness for french fries and Coke. I drank Coke all the time.”
Every now and then, John would diet and lose some weight, only to regain it. By age 40, he reached 220 pounds. “I realized that slimming down wouldn’t get any easier as I got older,” he says. “And I knew that I’d be a lot healthier without the extra pounds. So I made up my mind to get rid of them for good.”
John paid more attention to his food intake, eliminating fried foods, desserts, and high-calorie snacks. He kept an eye on his portion sizes, too. For exercise, he began doing situps, working up to 100, five times per week. But what really made a difference, he says, were his nightly nature walks.
Every evening after dinner, John, sometimes accompanied by his wife, would step out his backdoor and head for the old logging roads that cut through his 270-acre farm. He’d wander the roads for an hour, sometimes two, observing nature in all her glory. He’d spy bears and their cubs; coyotes; moose; and deer. “Even when I walked alone, it was never lonely,” he says. “I might see muskrats or beavers or trout in my stream. But I knew I’d almost always see something.”
John so enjoyed his nature walks that he never really thought of them as exercise. Yet in combination with his improved eating habits and his sit up regimen, they got him down to a healthy 190 pounds in about 6 months. He’s been holding steady since 1996.
“If I wasn’t active, I’d gain weight quickly,” John says. “But the exercise that I do is a pleasure. I’m always glad to get outdoors. It’s where I feel best. It’s the place where I most love to be.”
WINNING ACTION
Pursue your exercise through your passion. One of the best ways to stick with your exercise routine is to find an activity that you look forward to. If the traditional choices such as running, biking, and swimming don’t interest you, ask yourself what does. Bird watching? People watching? Karate Swing dancing? Anything that gets you moving can help you slim down and shape up.
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