Archive: Around Town

One of the most recommended advisements for success in life is to model the behavior of someone who is already successful and has gotten to where you want to be.  Shape magazine has a standard column titled “success stories,” of which I am a big fan, which highlights the stories of women who have achieved weightloss success. It is no coincidence that common threads run through all of them.  If you want to lose weight, heed the practices of women who have lost it…in large quantities…and kept it off.

The first thread was small nutrition changes.  Jennifer (lost 70lbs) made small, easy “tweaks” to her eating habits by cutting back to one can of diet soda a day and drinking plain water instead.  Therese (lost 60lbs) ditched her 6-diet-sodas-a-day habit.  Erin (lost 30lbs) made big veggie-filled salads for her workday lunch.  Amy (lost 40lbs) stopped eating refined carbs like bleached white rice and instead ate lean protein like chicken and fish.  Therese and Rosemarie (lost 110lbs) started eating fruit, veggies, and fish.  Maureen (lost 20lbs to date) eats a mini-meal before she goes out so she doesn’t stuff herself.  Christy (lost 110lbs) started simply by cutting her portions.  Patti (lost 105lbs) drank more water and snacks on grapes around the house.

The next thread was small activity changes.  Dottie (lost 100lbs) joined a gym and started walking for only 10 minutes at first.  Lisa (lost 120lbs) started walking for 15 minutes and progressed to small amounts of running.  Rosemarie progressed from walking to running and is now a serious marathoner.  Even though everyone started with walking, all women list weightlifting as a part of their current fitness routine.

Time commitment was a major thread.  As Aury (lost 42 lbs to date) put it, if you procrastinate with your life, you'll procrastinate with your health and fitness.  Amy made group fitness her appointment that she had to keep, an appointment with common-goal friends that she made through class. Lisa looked at her exercise as a “second job” that she couldn’t miss.  Therese, who worked from home, started scheduling exercise and put an “end time” to her work day.

There is a motivation thread: many women relied on reminders and goals to stay the course.  Dottie would think when tempted, that “nothing tastes as good as thin feels” and would think of her daughter's cute jeans that she wanted to wear.  Christy knew exercise would become a habit if she kept it up for a month straight.  Therese would be teased about her healthy habits and learned to “answer only to myself.”

The most common thread, mentioned in one way or another, is that these women started to prioritize themselves.  Jennifer says, “I had been so used to paying attention to those around me, I neglected the single most important person: me!”  Dottie realized that she was the only one with the power to change her life.  Aury didn’t like the fact that job success happened at the expense of her well-being.  Erin said, “I needed to make myself a priority.”  Patti, mad from a Biggest Loser application denial, said, “I don’t need them, I can do it myself.”
Aury summed up the psychological thread by saying, "I don't want to deny that I have a weight problem anymore."  All these women lost weight, are looking good, are not afraid of social activities anymore, don't hate to look at themselves in the mirror, and are feeling great.  They changed their lifestyle for the healthier simply by putting their mind to it.  Become a success story that a magazine can write about.

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