Make walking for weight loss a team sport.(Walker&#39;s World).

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A woman who needed to lose weight describes joining a Wellness Program with a team approach. She found that sharing ideas about low-fat diet and walking routines gave her the necessary motivation to change her life style. She lost 45 pounds in about six months.

Full Text :COPYRIGHT 1995 Rodale Press, Inc.
Corinne Price knew dieting wasn't the answer to her lifelong struggle with weight gain. At 58, her weight was at an all-time high, and she tried to accept it as a natural process of aging.

But when she joined her school district's Wellness Program and became captain of her Wellness Team, her responsibility to her teammates led to a search for new solutions. With three simple steps, Corinne and her fellow teachers began to drop pounds and gain energy. After six months of spirited team effort, not only bad Corinne walked away S2 pounds, she bad inspired her husband to lose 35!

"I've dieted all my adult life--up and down, up and down. But by the end of 1991, I knew I'd lost control of my `yo-yo.' My weight was higher than it had ever been. I looked terrible and I felt worse. My feet hurt and my ankles were swollen. I had to struggle to get my panty hose on.

In October, I had a physical exam and found I was borderline hypertensive and had a cholesterol reading of 270. My doctor was concerned and put me on two kinds of medication.

I knew I needed to lose weight and to exercise, but after teaching all day, I'd come home so tired that all I wanted to do was sit down, put my feet up and relax. Too often, that's how I spent the entire evening. Of course I always had enough energy to get up and get something to eat! My usual diet was to skip breakfast, drink 10 or 12 cups of coffee, have a very low-calorie lunch and then come home from school ravenous!

I became depressed and tired as the year wore on. All the crash diets I'd tried in the past failed. By December, I'd convinced myself that fatigue, obesity, hypertension and high cholesterol were just part of the aging process and that I would just have to accept them. On New Year's Day 1992, I didn't even bother to make my usual resolution to lose 20 pounds before school was out in June.

`CRISCO KIDS'

When I returned to work after the holidays, I received some information from the school wellness committee. They wanted to form teams in each of the schools in the district to become involved in learning about healthier lifestyles. Since `dieting' was not a requirement, I decided to give it a try. volunteered to be the captain for m building, knowing that I'd feel obligated to stay with the program.

We called our team the Crisco (a little fat in the can). We had 10 team members who planned to work together for 10 weeks.

The Wellness Program stressed making healthy choices in life regarding food, exercise and reducing stress while supporting each other in our efforts. Each team member was responsible for trying to find things that would work for everyone.

I sat down with a bunch of Prevention magazines to try to find some tip that would help my team succeed. noticed two recurrent themes, walking and reducing fat in the diet. After a week of writing down everything I ate and recording fat grams, I came up with the following regimen. Each day I'd focus on three things: drinking 8 to 10 glasses of water, limiting fat grams to 15 per day and walking for at least 15 minutes.

MOVING RIGHT ALONG

It was very cold and windy where we lived, so I invested in a treadmill right away. I watched the morning news while I walked, turning up the volume full blast so I could hear. Luckily, my husband was already awake and didn't mind the noise!

To help the team, I wrote notes of encouragement, clipped recipes and shared new-product finds. We became so enthusiastic, we kept our group going long after the Wellness Program officially ended.

Much to my surprise, 1 lost 5 pounds in 10 days and began to feel better! It was exciting! I began to add other healthy changes. I cut down on my coffee consumption, reduced salt and increased the length of my walks. The first month I lost 12 pounds. I wasn't hungry and I had so much more energy, I felt like a new person! My teammates were experiencing the same results. After 10 weeks, the team lost 128 pounds!

By February, I had increased my walking to 30 minutes every day on the treadmill. And for the first time in my adult life, I began eating breakfast--a bowl of cereal and skim milk.

TEAM FOR TWO

My husband decided to join me in my low-fat-diet-and-walking regime. He tried the treadmill but didn't enjoy it, so in good weather, we walked a half mile to a nearby lake, around the lake and back home, which made a nice four-mile loop. At times I tried walking with tapes and headphones, but I found I enjoyed meeting people on the track, saying hello and exchanging a few words.

My husband and I had fun shopping and reading labels to find low- and no-fat items to work into our diets. Ice cream had always been our downfall, but we discovered we could be very happy with nonfat frozen yogurt.

The Wellness Program ended, but our team decided to stick together. By June we had lost another 100 pounds. I had lost 40 pounds and felt better than I had in years.

My doctor couldn't believe it when I saw him in July. By then, I'd lost 45 pounds, my blood pressure was at the low end of normal and my cholesterol was 170. My doctor agreed it was O.K. for me to stop all medications.

Three years after starting my program, I feel like a new person. My husband and I continue to eat a low-fat diet and walk one hour daily. We've retired and spend our winters in Florida, where it's much easier to walk! We've maintained our weight and feel great. I have lost a total of 52 pounds and my husband has lost 35. As for my team, they disbanded. But a year after my retirement, I got a phone call. They started a new group and they're using me and my ideas for inspiration."

Source Citation
"Make walking for weight loss a team sport." Prevention Dec. 1995: 113+. Academic OneFile. Web. 26 Dec. 2009. .

Gale Document Number:A17831610

Disclaimer:This information is not a tool for self-diagnosis or a substitute for professional care.