Thurmond, 42, who home-schools her three children in Advance, N.C., weighed 192 pounds in December 2007 and was having foot problems, heart palpitations and frequent fatigue. She saw a photo of herself and says: "I was horrified. I looked like someone blew me up. My face looked so fat."
At about that time, a gym with bargain-basement prices opened close to her home. She began working out, and later she started cutting calories. At 5-foot-5, she now weighs 164 pounds.
It was a small investment that yielded big returns. She now works out so intensely that a fellow gym member recently asked her what she was training for, and Thurmond quipped, "I'm training against fat."
Her story was selected by a panel of experts to be featured in USA TODAY's sixth Weight-Loss Challenge in the newspaper and online at dietchallenge.usatoday.com. This year's challenge, which runs every Monday through mid-May, focuses on losing weight on a budget.
The dieters who submitted their stories took small, cost-effective steps that led to big strides in weight loss. Some bought athletic shoes and started walking or running. Others joined inexpensive gyms. Most started cooking more and eating out less, and all do their best to food-shop economically.
Rae Goodman, 40, a child care provider in Kennesaw, Ga., weighs 135 pounds, down from a high of 225 in November 2005. She used the free website sparkpeople.com and gradually increased her exercise. Her trimmer, fitter body means she finds bargains on the clearance racks.
"I like the sales on clothes I can get now. Everything that's small is on sale. It's fabulous. I can buy a size 4 designer shirt for $4," says Goodman, who is getting married Saturday. She has a 19-year-old son from a previous relationship.
• R.V. Stephens, 69, a retired surgeon in Phoenix, says that in six months, he has dropped from 205 to 160 pounds by following a low-carb diet and walking 10,000 steps or more a day. "I bought a pedometer for $25," says Stephens, who can fit into his Air Force uniform from 38 years ago, when he served during the Vietnam War. He is married with three adult sons.
These dieters "watched not only their calories but their pocketbooks," says Edith Howard Hogan, a registered dietitian in Washington, D.C., who helped select the challenge participants.
"As we all face economic uncertainties, it would be so easy to comfort ourselves with all the wrong foods," she says. "But it's better to treat yourself to a good, reasonably priced diet with lots of fruits and veggies, lean protein, whole grains, low-fat dairy and healthful snacks."
Gradual weight gains
Many of the dieters report that their weight crept up gradually.
Goodman is frank about how she packed it on: "Poor eating habits. Sedentary lifestyle. Working too many hours and eating terribly. Lack of motivation. I like junk food. I like pastries, chocolate, wine."
Now, she buys mostly organic food, shopping for special discount sales. She watches her portions and fills up on fruits and vegetables.
Stephens says he gained over the course of years partly because "the doctors lounge was filled with doughnuts and bagels." But last summer, his physician told him he needed to lose weight because his blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugars were all too high.
He lost his weight and is keeping it off by steering clear of snack foods and fast foods. He is on a low-carb diet and has learned to season grilled salmon and chicken in a variety of ways. But he does treat himself to pizza every week.
Thurmond gained about 30 to 40 pounds with each pregnancy. "With each baby, I lost all of the weight but 10 pounds. When I was done with three kids, it was 30 pounds."
Then her family moved twice, and she gained 10 pounds each time. Plus, she didn't make time for herself. "I thought I didn't have time to exercise. It was the last thing on my list. I'd get up with the kids. I take care of them and school them all day, and I didn't want to go to the gym at 9 o'clock at night."
She didn't really notice how heavy she had gotten. "I stay home. I wear sweatpants all day, and I didn't realize that my clothes didn't fit anymore."
Her health was suffering. She huffed and puffed going up the stairs. When a family-owned gym opened 2 miles from her house, it had no enrollment fee, so she felt compelled to give it a try. "It was open 24/7. There were no excuses."
The price of her membership: $27.50 a month. "It costs me less than a dollar a day to go there. You could spend a dollar on a Coke or something that you shouldn't have."
But she was so out of shape that it wasn't easy. "I tried the elliptical machine, and in five minutes, my heart rate was too high and I felt queasy and out of breath. I tried the tread climber, treadmill and bicycles."
Thurmond experimented with the best time of day to exercise. She found that if she put it off until night, she often didn't have the energy to go to the gym.
She now exercises first thing in the morning, although if she had her druthers, she wouldn't. "I say this with great emphasis: I don't like getting up and exercising in the morning. I'm a night owl. But my mom picks me up at 7 in the morning, and we go to the gym. I get home about the time the kids get out of bed. When I exercise in the morning, I feel a million times better all day."
For the first month or so into her weight-loss journey, she exercised religiously, but the scales didn't budge. People told her she was gaining muscle, but Thurmond says, "I didn't want to hear that." Her brother kept reminding her that she had to count calories and weigh her food, so Thurmond decided to give it a try. "I wrote everything down. At first it was annoying."
She dug out a small scale to weigh her food. Sometimes after she figured out the calories, she put the food back in the package.
One of the most helpful things she did was take notes on how she felt after eating meals. If she ate something for lunch, and a half an hour later her stomach was growling, she jotted that down. "It was helpful to know what filled me up and what left me hungry."
Thurmond, who co-owns a residential construction business with her husband, watches her food bill closely. The family doesn't eat a lot of meat, frozen meals or junk food. They rarely eat out or get takeout. She makes almost everything from scratch. She estimates she consumes about 1,300 calories a day.
Working out works
All of the dieters who are featured in the eight-week series approach exercise with gusto.
Goodman sometimes works out twice a day, but she gradually built up to her current fitness level. "In the beginning, I didn't have the money or time for gym membership. I didn't have a treadmill, so I just started walking at a local park and on a track. I did that for a couple of months.
"Then I bought a treadmill and started paying in installments. I did the treadmill once a day for a while; then I did it twice a day for 45 minutes at 4 a.m. and the last thing at night. I did that for almost a year."
Then she chatted with people on sparkpeople.com, and they said she needed to go to a gym to be with like-minded people. "So I started at Bally's, and it took off from there. I started doing the spin class. I was slimmer and I wanted a tighter body, so I began weight training. I'm now lifting hundreds of pounds."
On the other hand, Stephens, the retired surgeon, is sold on walking. He wears a pedometer. "I walk at least 5 miles five days a week and 7 miles the other two days. I walk a mile in about 17 minutes. I'm bringing my pulse up to 120 to 130. I try to play golf once a week."
Thurmond mixes up her routines, doing an intense aerobic workout using different exercise machines for 45 to 60 minutes three days a week. Two or three other days, she does a cardio workout for 20 minutes and then intense weight training. "I change it up," she says.
She says she could save even more money by doing the same workout at home but finds that "going to the gym is motivating. It's like silent support. It has been worth itself over and over. When you go there, you might as well do what you are there to do."
She doesn't sugarcoat her experience.
"This journey was very difficult, a lot of hard work," she says. "You read magazine covers that say, 'Lose 10 pounds in one month' … or 'Lose inches with this simple plan!' That was not the case for me. Nothing fell off or melted away or was easy. I had to work harder than I wanted to."
She isn't aiming for a perfect body. "I don't expect to look like I did before children. I don't expect to be thin or slim."
She'd like to get rid of a few more pounds, but overall she's happy with the changes in her looks. "My legs are like rocks. I have very muscular legs."
And, she says, "I have a waist again."
-Article from www.usatoday.com
---This is very very much inspiring! No matter if you're a model or simply a housewife, you deserve good health and happy body image, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment