For some, losing pounds may be just an idle pledge they make every New Year. But for others, eating better and becoming healthier become lifestyle choices that they carry with them throughout the year and beyond
By Rebekka Coakley
It’s that time of year when many people resolve to rid themselves of the post-holiday bulge. While some of us swear every year to eat better foods and exercise more regularly, we soon realize that we’re back to spending more time on the couch and eating greasy fried foods and delectable sweets.
Despite this, there are people who really do stick to their pledges to adopt a healthy lifestyle and lose weight, one way or another.
Leigh Irvin of Bellwood is surrounded daily by burgers, fries, hot subs, hot dogs, pancakes, and eggs. She and her husband own Irvin’s on Main in Bellwood, a diner-type restaurant where she spends most of her time. As a mother of two kids, she says she gave up caring about herself to take care of her kids. But when the 33-year-old started developing anxiety, depression, and other health concerns two years ago, she decided to take action.
“I was lying on my couch one day, depressed, when I saw an infomercial for P90X” — a home-fitness training program on DVD — “and thought I’d give it a shot,” she says. “I ordered it at full price — it wasn’t cheap, so I knew I’d make myself do it.”
At her heaviest weight, Irvin, who is 5-foot-5, weighed 172 pounds. When she received P90X, short for Power 90 Extreme workout, she read through the manual that came with the program. She was considered obese and was not in good enough physical condition to pass the fitness test the manual gave, but she decided to try the first workout anyway.
“All I had to do was hit play and try,” she says. “The first day I was so sore, but I made myself do it the next day and the day after that. I couldn’t get through the whole thing at first. I had no athletic ability whatsoever, but I kept trying and eventually got through each workout.”
Each day offered a different workout. From lifting weights and doing yoga and cardio work, she was able to keep up with the program and follow its guidelines to eat healthier. It called for her to work out six days a week, then rest and eat whatever she wanted on the seventh day. With the help of an iPhone application that helped her chart her caloric intake, which she calculated based on the program’s instructions, she started seeing results and feeling better right away.
“I ate more meals throughout the day, but they were smaller, so I was actually shrinking my intake of food,” she says. “The program instructs you to take pictures in your underwear at 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days. I started out as a size 14; went down to 10 by the first 30 days; a size eight at 60 days; and after 90 days I was down to a size six. Anyone can do it, and it feels great.”
When she had noticed after 90 days that she wasn’t losing any more weight, she changed her exercise routine. She took her German shepherd for long walks, then they started running a little during those walks, and now she and her furry running partner run about three miles a day — and she’s down to a size two. In addition to running, she lifts weights three times a week and is still eating healthier foods. She went from sodas, cakes, and chips to carrots, nuts, and hard-boiled eggs. She says now that she’s cut sweets out of her diet, she doesn’t crave them, and when she does take a bite of a birthday cake or something sweet, it doesn’t even taste good to her anymore. She’s also reduced her carbohydrate intake to just one a day.
“I eat a lot of fish. My husband, the chef, broils it at the restaurant with vegetables, or cooks a chicken for me that I can have with salad,” she says. “It’s harder in the summer, with cookouts — hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, and sodas — but you just have to take the time to figure out what you can eat. I still eat the meat, I just don’t put it in a bun. I cover it with condiments. You really have to plan your meals ahead if you want to lose weight.”
She says that she lost 43 pounds total and feels a lot better — her anxiety and depression are gone and she’s healthier overall. She knows how hard it is to break unhealthy routines, with kids and busy work schedules, but sometimes her kids run with her, and the whole family is eating healthier foods.
“I feel younger than I ever have, and I have more energy than ever before. Since I joined the gym, five of my friends also have joined the gym and one of them even runs with me now,” she says. “You need to surround yourself with people that inspire you — but only you can motivate yourself to work hard every day.”
Much like Irvin, Toby Capparelle of Bellefonte began losing weight by exercising. As co-owner of TC Transport, 45-year-old Capperelle went from playing baseball and working out in college to driving a truck all day long, eating sugary foods, and drinking caffeine to stay awake.
“I was overeating, feeling really run down, and dealing with heartburn and acid reflux every time I ate,” he recalls. “People actually said to me, ‘You’re getting fat!’ I was tired of hearing it. My sons are members of the YMCA [in Bellefonte] and I figured I’d join too — try to make some changes.”
He admits he was nervous to join since he was feeling out of shape, but he started by working with Rachel Garmon, the sports and wellness director at the Bellefonte YMCA. She runs a boot camp from 7 to 7:50 a.m., Monday through Friday. The program fit Capparelle’s schedule perfectly, so it was an easy decision to take the class.
“During the first class, I did 100 squats and I honestly felt like a model wearing high heels, my legs were so sore. They felt like rubber,” he says. “But Rachel made the classes different every time, from Zumba to yoga to weightlifting, and they actually were fun. After the first week I wasn’t sore anymore.”
Garmon also advised Capparelle on healthier eating habits, and soon he had more energy and was feeling better about himself. After seeing the change in Capparelle, who lost 15 pounds, his wife and sister started working out at the YMCA as well. He says seeing results kept him motivated.
And having others notice doesn’t hurt either. Instead of telling Capparelle he looks fat, people who haven’t seen him in a while tell him he looks really good.
“Just hearing that and feeling how loose my clothes are feels so good,” he says. “Instead of having to buy the next size up in pants, I actually dropped a size. I wish I’d done this 10 years ago.”
Garmon, who motivated Capparelle to get into shape, says she knows what it’s like to be overweight and how hard the struggle is to lose weight.
“When I gave birth to my son I weighed 232 pounds,” the 30-year-old says. “Two weeks after I had him I still weighed 206 pounds — and I’m 5-foot-5. I now weigh 147 pounds and wear a size six, smaller than I was in high school.”
Although she works in the fitness industry at the Bellefonte YMCA, she says she has struggled with weight gain and trying to lose it. That has given her better insight while working with clients.
Garmon was very active as a kid, swimming, playing volleyball, and lifting weights during her teenage years. In her early 20s, she managed Corporate Wellness Facilities and Programs in Columbus, Ohio. Through that work she gained experience in personal training and teaching group fitness classes. She began running boot camps and weight-loss programs and cofounded a fitness studio in Columbus. When she moved to Bellefonte, she began working for the YMCA and earned her bachelor’s degree in organizational leadership from Penn State.
With her career experience, she says she has learned that some people who struggle with their weight have addictions and/or emotional eating problems. Stress also is a huge factor in weight gain.
“With all of the information that is out now, most people generally know what they should be eating, but what they actually choose to eat may be entirely different,” she says. “Exercise definitely helps to curb stress and anxiety and lifts your mood, which helps people make better eating choices.”
She recommends people who are serious about making healthier food choices keep a food journal to put their eating habits into perspective. She adds that people who actually think about what they’re putting in their mouths might think twice about junk food. She also recommends eating five to six smaller meals a day, consisting of fruits, vegetables, proteins, carbs, and healthy fats. She says these foods should boost the metabolism while curbing overeating.
From her own experience losing weight, as well as from working with clients, she knows that a person has to have the desire to change their eating and exercising habits in order to achieve it.
One of her most recent success stories is about a 60-year-old client who was seeking help after being diagnosed with diabetes and placed on medication. Garmon began to train the woman three times a week, and the woman did yoga twice a week on her own. Within a couple months, the woman had lost 20 pounds and her doctor took her off the medication. The woman attributes her weight loss to exercising and developing a healthy eating plan.
For Kristin Sommese, a graphic-design professor at Penn State, losing weight at 47 years old came when she started working with a personal trainer. She started working out at East Coast Health & Fitness in State College when the gym first opened in 1991. She took spinning, yoga, and Pilates classes, but decided a year ago she wanted a workout routine to do on a regular basis.
She signed up with a trainer, Bridget Sardo-McGary, who was supposed to give Sommese a routine she could do on her own a few times a week.
“The workout was so challenging, she pushed me for that whole hour,” Sommese says. “I decided then and there I’d never push myself that hard, so I asked her to be my regular trainer.”
Sommese started working with Sardo-McGary twice a week and is now going three times a week and running up to five miles at a time, which she says she could never do before her training. She’s doing a combination of strength, endurance, cardio, and plyometrics, a type of exercise designed to produce fast, powerful movements.
Since she started her training, Sommese has lost 15 pounds from the hard workouts and eating right. She’s cut out most processed foods from her diet, and eats smaller meals more often.
“I only eat fresh foods that are high in protein, and only when I’m hungry,” she says. “It hasn’t been hard to stick to at all, and I feel great — healthier than I have in a long time.”
Sommese says for her a personal trainer is key. Sardo-McGary keeps her motivated and pushes her beyond what she thought she was capable of doing.
“She always says, ‘You can do it,’ ” Sommese says, “and it turns out that despite my doubts, I actually can,”
While diet and exercise are the most traditional ways to lose weight, for Susan Hunter, a Penn State employee from Tyrone, they just weren’t enough.
“Even though I was watching what I ate and exercising, I wasn’t losing any weight,” the 50-year-old says. “I was facing serious health issues. I was short of breath, had joint pain, was prediabetic, and I had high blood pressure. Something needed to be done.”
That’s when she decided to talk to her doctor about gastric bypass surgery, an operation that essentially shrinks the stomach so a patient cannot physically eat as much as he or she is used to eating.
“I have known a lot of people that have had it done, so I looked into it,” Hunter says. “It took me a couple of years to even get comfortable with the idea of it.”
According the National Institute of Health, only people who have a body-mass index (BMI) of 40 or higher, or with a BMI of 35 or higher with a life-threatening condition, will be considered for the procedure. Hunter, who is 5-foot-8, weighed 267 pounds and had a BMI just above 40.
Before she could have the surgery, however, she had six months of doctors’ visits, which were required by her insurance to prove that diet and exercise were not making as much of an impact on her weight as she needed to prevent further health complications. During that time she also met with a registered dietician to talk about pre- and postsurgery, as well as a psychiatrist to make sure she was ready for the change and could handle it.
Hunter explains that she had a Roux-en-Y gastric-bypass surgery, a permanent surgery where her stomach is stapled off, as opposed to Lap-Band surgery where a gastric band is placed around the upper part of the stomach and is readjusted during a year while the stomach shrinks. Hunter says she chose the Roux-en-Y surgery because, although the actual surgery is more complicated and takes longer to heal, it’s permanent and does not need to be readjusted.
She was in the hospital for two days after her surgery, which was in December 2009, and says she had no complications but was pretty sore afterward. She scheduled the procedure over her holiday break at Penn State and took a second week off to allow herself time to heal. During that time, she also had to give herself injections in her stomach every day to avoid stomach clots, and was not allowed to do any heavy lifting.
At her six-week checkup with her doctor, she’d already lost 32 pounds. At her three-month checkup, she’d lost 50 pounds. After one year, she’d lost 120 pounds and her BMI was down to 22.3. At 147 pounds today, Hunter eats much smaller, healthier meals, walks on her treadmill regularly, and is no longer prediabetic. Her joint pain is gone, too. Something else she’s noticed — the bronchitis that she had seemed to get for a few weeks every February did not come in 2010 or 2011.
She says the surgery probably saved her life and she no longer continues to eat when she’s full. Her husband doesn’t think she eats enough anymore, but she’s just eating smaller meals, five or six times a day.
And since losing weight, she loves shopping.
“I now have fun trying on new clothes,” she says. “I’m still looking at the old hide-me-clothes I used to buy, but I can’t shop at Lane Bryant anymore. I like shopping at Ann Taylor Loft and JCPenney, but I love being able to shop at Victoria’s Secret for myself now since it was something I could never do before.”
Rebekka Coakley lives in Bellefonte, is a freelance writer, and works for Penn State.
