GET YOUR BODY MOVING: PERSONAL MOTTO LED TO 125-POUND WEIGHT LOSS
When Tawni Gomes stopped making excuses, she started losing weight
March 10, 2010
Get Your Body Moving-They’re Committed To Each Other
Get Your Body Moving-He Dropped 200 Getting Lost In Thought
GET YOUR BODY MOVING: HIS NICKNAME STILL STICKS
During college, Robert Kilroy was so tall and thin
Get Your Body Moving-She Found Her Motivation In Cyberspace
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
Get Your Body Moving-Oprah Made Her Move Her Muscles
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-Little Tricks Led To Lasting Success
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
Your Body Moving-Get Exercise Tops Her To-Do List
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-She Got In Touch With Her Thinner Child
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-He Picked Up A Racket
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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Get Your Body Moving-Mother Nature Got Him In Shape
GET YOUR BODY MOVING: SHE FOUND HER MOTIVATION IN CYBERSPACE
Stephanie Caviness wanted to slim down. But the 33-year-old Jersey City, New Jersey, woman had a hard time sticking with an exercise routine. So she turned to her computer for help, and she ended up losing 23 pounds.
For Stephanie, exercise was nothing new. She had tried it several times in the past as a way of getting in shape. “I had been gaining weight ever since I was in college,” she recalls. “I wanted to look better and feel better. But every time I started an exercise program, I’d lose interest. Eventually, I’d abandon my workouts.”
By 1998, Stephanie weighed 173 pounds. “I’m 5 foot 9, so I wasn’t really obese,” she says. “But I was having problems with my heart
Get Yourbody Moving-She Swam Off Her Postretirement Pounds
FENCING BROKE DOWN HIS FITNESS BARRIER
At the tender age of 21, Dan Collins was so overweight and out of shape that his doctor feared he was killing himself.
“I was 5 foot 10′/2 and weighed 239 pounds,” he says. “I was diagnosed with high blood pressure, and my doctor was concerned enough to put me on medication.”
That was in 1984. Rather than sit back and let medications take control of his life, the young newspaper reporter from Towson, Maryland, embarked on a complete body makeover. He cut the salt in his diet way down, put the brakes on his runaway eating habits, and began walking and stationary cycling regularly.
Two years later, Dan had his blood pressure under control and was down to a lean 182 pounds. He felt and looked great but was afraid that he was entering an exercise slump. “I didn’t mind the walking and other exercises, but I really wanted a different kind of sport that I could really get into,” he says. “I knew that was important if I was going to keep the weight off for good.”
For Dan, that sport was fencing. While not as chic as aerobics a la Jane Fonda was in 1986, fencing really piqued his interest because it is both physically and mentally demanding. Working up a sweat was fun and exciting each time he picked up his foil and donned his mask and protective vest. “People don’t realize that a good fencer needs both aerobic and anaerobic conditioning as well as a sense of strategy and emotional control,” says Dan, who’s the co-founder of the Chesapeake Fencing Club of Baltimore.
While many others have piled up old, trendy sports gear in basements and attics over the years, Dan still fences every week, just like he’s been doing for the last 14 years. He also works out at home using a stationary bike and free weights to enhance his fencing performance. After all these years, it’s safe to say that this lean, mean fencing machine has found the perfect activity to help him keep the weight off.
WINNING ACTION
Go for the unusual and exotic. Learning how to move your body