Archive for commitment
Anna joins WMU
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Anna begins her journey.
My name is Anna Nowak and I am a new member of the CFWLS Weight Management University program. I have spent the last few months watching the success stories unfolding at Dr. Clark’s Center and during that time I began to believe that I could be successful at weight loss too.
The day I signed up I had no idea what my weight or BMI was because I have spent years avoiding the scale and the truth is that I am very overweight. It has been easy to ignore weight gain when I can find pants with elastic waist bands and large shirts that cover my belly. However, it has been much harder to ignore the constant fatigue and back pain that accompanies too much weight and too little physical activity. It is way past time for a change!
So, the first day on the scale was a real eye opener. The scale read 194 pounds with a BMI of 32 (that is a body fat count of 39 %)….good heavens!
Now, I have not always been a ‘big’ girl. My younger years were slimmer although the weight has progressively crept up over the years. I have tried many diets to try to regain control, but as soon asI stopped the program, the weight returned or even increased! I also cannot even count how many times I bought a gym membership with the best intentions, only to stop going after the first few weeks. So with a track record of failure it was pretty easy to justify not even trying.
In any event, I decided to face my fears and overcome my excuses and join the program. My first visit with Dawn was awesome. She gave me great information and listened, really listened to my issues, concerns, and questions. She encouraged me to join in the Lifestyle Education and Group Fitness classes and I am glad she did. The educational classes offered a lot of detailed information and answered questions that I didn’t even know I had. The fitness classes are challenging because of my poor level of fitness but everyone is so supportive and encouraging and the instructors help you modify exercise to suit your abilities. I am already doing activities that I thought I might never be able to do again. My energy levels are increasing and in the last 3 weeks I have managed to lose 8 pounds!
Although things are a challenge, so far nothing in the WMU program has been beyond my ability to do, and best of all is the support and encouragement I receive from both the CFWLS staff and the other members. I feel that has probably been the missing ingredient in every other program I have ever been in before- folks cheering me on.
I am looking forward to the weeks to come as I get lighter and stronger. I understand that it will take time, but every little bit adds up. I am also setting mini goals as well as big goals and the great goal setting tips given to me by the Center have really helped me keep my focus. My next immediate goal is increasing my fitness by walking at least 5000 steps a day and working out at least 3 times a week. I will keep everyone posted on my progress. Thank you, CFWLS, for making this journey possible!
Mary Ann vs. the Ides of March
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Skies are gloomy, but Mary Ann reviews her goals.
The Ides of March are upon us! Ohio has been dreary and rainy and my moods have been the same. I have not been able to exercise due to knee pain and swelling. A trip to the orthopedist and an MRI next week hopefully will give me some good news or at least a recovery plan.
I also have made some poor food choices in the past week; pizza, pie and ice cream for our son’s birthday equaled 2 lbs of weight gain, add a week of horrendous work hours, drug rep lunch and overtime…if I let it, I could really get depressed and fall back in to old habits.
This is where the change occurs. Before I joined CFWLS, this would be enough for me to give up and start looking for a new diet plan after indulging myself. I remembered Claire’s words to me: positive self talk, pick up the challenge at the next meal. So I recognized these as temporary set backs; it is what it is, now get back on track! I reviewed my goals, broke down my weight loss weekly to reach my goal weight of 140 lbs. in 6 months. It is a pound of weight loss per week. This is doable!
Now some exciting news! We are planning a vacation. The end of March will find us in Virginia. I am looking forward to seeing my sister Karol and her family, visit the new weight loss center, get some exercise in, and meet the wonderful support staff in person, especially “Grandma Claire”!
I always perform best under pressure, 3 weeks to get back on track, drop a few pounds and be successful!
See you soon! Can I order some sun while we are there? I need light therapy!
New Year…New you! Join our “Losing it Hampton Roads” Campaign!
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Hampton Roads is “Losing It” – Join and Begin Losing Weight Today!
Get your free weight loss tips for the entire family.
Register at www.LosingItHamptonRoads.com
Here’s what you have to look forward to:
1. Free Report – Why can’t I lose weight?…and what to do about it! (no more procrastination)
2. Free weekly webinars “Weight Loss Success for the Whole Family!” with Dr. Thomas W. Clark – every Tuesday from 6pm-6:30pm beginning Tuesday, January 4, 2011. Look forward to your invitation each week via your e-mail inbox once you sign up.
3. Free weekly body composition analysis at the Center for Weight Loss Success (you will know why your body composition is important rather than just your weight) at 645 J. Clyde Morris Blvd., Newport News, VA 23601. When you stop by, you will also receive your free weekly tips for success and easy to follow recipes the whole family will enjoy! Come on in (Mon & Wed 9am-7pm; Tues 9am-6pm & Thurs 9am-5pm and Friday 9am-2pm) – you need your baseline body composition as soon as possible.
4. Special offers exclusively for Losing It Hampton Roads participants – more to look forward to!
5. The first 50 to sign up for Losing It Hampton Roads will receive a free signed copy of Dr. Clark’s Best Selling book – Game Changers
Meet the “losers”: Losing it CFWLS!
Posted by: | CommentsHere at Center for Weight Loss Success, we understand the difficulties that are involved in losing weight. Sometimes it is very difficult and frustrating, but working as a team can be uplifting and keep you going when it seems like all is not lost. We’re hoping that not only can you find some encouragement in following our personal weight loss stories, but that you will be inspired to join us on our weight loss journey. So let’s meet those CFWLS “losers”!
My name is Cat. I help people get scheduled for weight loss surgery. I am someone you will likely talk to when you call the office. I love it at CFWLS! My husband, Jeff and I have two college age children, Zachary and Courtney. I enjoy spending time with my family and friends, walking, reading and creative cooking.
Although my husband Jeff and I have, for the past several years, been practicing SOMEWHAT of a healthy lifestyle, he, at just 49 years of age, “threw us for a loop” this past year by having a heart attack while running bases with the high school softball team that he coaches. After emergency procedures, and a few days in the hospital, it was determined that it was time to “step up to the plate” and take our healthy lifestyle goals to a new level.
Although Jeff has extreme discipline, I tend to “cheat” and make choices that are less healthy. Therefore, my goal is to get on the same page with my hubby. Since I enjoy cooking, I’ve been experimenting with substitutions that are much healthier, but actually taste amazing! Since I hope to lose 12 pounds, I’ll use the many tools and suppport at CFWLS…I’m excited.
My name is Starkisha. I am a medical assistant/medical receptionist here at CFWLS. I have a son named Nyzere who is 3 years old. In my spare time I like to sepnd as much of it as I can with my son. I also enjoy spending time with my family and reading. My goal is to lose 15 or more pounds. Bring on the “Losing It CFWLS” challenge!
My name is Dani. I have been Dr. Clark’s Medical Assistant for the last seven years. I truly enjoy seeing people so happy as they lose weight and change their habits for good! I have four grown children and one grandchild. Recently, my life has gone through some major change, not necessarily good or bad, just the natural order of things.
This year my youngest graduated from high school and in the fall was off to college. This transition has not been easy for me as I have always worked and any free time was spend supporting the kid’s activities. Band, soccer and swimming kept me busy most of the time. Now what? Sit in front of the TV and eat after work? This is where I was headed…no way this can happen! I have by chance become involved with horse rescue. It is a place for horses that have been abused, neglected or in some cases the owners just cannot afford to keep them anymore. I have found my passion! This is so exciting and motivating for me. I am so motivated to lose the weight and get in shape so I can give my best to these wonderful creatures. I can feel my weight holding me back. I need to be able to move more freely and look forward to maybe riding again. So much ahead!
My name is Shawn and I am 42 years old. I have been married 22 years and have 2 college age children. I have worked in the medical field for 18 years. I enjoy spending time with family and friends, going to the beach and playing softball. My goal is to learn how to take care of me again and to lose 30+ pounds.
My name is Dawn. I have been with Dr. Clark’s Center for Weight Loss success for almost a year now! I work as a Lifestyle & Weight Loss Consultant and Personal Trainer here at the center. I too struggle to keep off those excess pounds and have joined the battle of the bulge here at our office. My goal is to drop 15 pounds in the next 4 months.
Health & fitness are my passion but traveling and cooking are my hobbies and I try to modify the recipes I collect on my trips to blend into a healthier lifestyle. My 50th birthday is right around the corner and I’d like to be around another 50 years!
My husband, Tim, and I have been married for 28 years and have a son & daughter who live in the area.
My name is Karol. I am a nurse and Dr. Clark’s wife. We have 4 children ages 8, 10, 13 and 14. I have always worked full-time and really love the exciting things going on at CFWLS and the opportunity to lose weight with everyone here. I work full-time here doing a lot of the “behind the scene” activities such as patient educational materials, website management, administrative duties, managing the construction for the new facility and anything else that needs to be done. I love the team here and I feel fortunate to be a part of something so special that will change the health of our community in such a great way.
I work long hours at the office and often at home and yet, I love what I do. Between this and taking care of our great (and very active) kids, there isn’t much time to focus on me and thus…I have put on weight. My goal is to lose about 15 pounds. My husband practices what he teaches each and every day! He always gets his protein in, eats properly and exercises nearly every single day - no matter how long his day was. You would think that would just “rub off”on me but we all make our own choices. During stress…mine aren’t always the greatest. I am motivated to lose this weight and join the ranks of our many patients who have easily incorporated great new habits into their lifestyle for good!
Wild Weekends and Weight
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Have you ever had one of those weekends? You’re running errands and you get hungry so you run through the drive through for fries. You smell the pretzels or the cookies while shopping at the mall, and you have to have one. You’re watching the game with your pals eating chips and drinking too many sodas, beers or wine. You have a great weekend.
And then you step on a scale.
Why is it that it is so easy for us to gain weight and SO hard to lose it? Putting on weight is no problem for most of us but losing it is a huge struggle. How can we gain several pounds in one short weekend of poor food choices? And how come if we balance that off with two days of healthy eating and exercise, we are never back at our starting weight? Why does it seem to take more work to lose the same two or three pounds than it did to gain it?
Well, one big reason it is easier to gain weight than to lose it is because eating more is easy. Adding 200 calories to your daily food intake is no big deal, but take away 200 calories and you might feel hungry and cranky. Food is good, and junk food is especially inviting and convenient, and many of us are not really aware of how many calories are in those little indulgences. There are many stumbling blocks out there- convenience stores, fast food restaurants, those kiosks in the mall, and even the grocery stores can all have calorie-laden choices.
A second reason that it is difficult to work off our weekend indulgences is reflected in a study conducted by Dr. Jules Hirsch at Rockefeller University. He found that our bodies slow down their caloric burn rate after we’ve been losing weight. We actually have to eat less to keep from gaining weight. If you go back to eating the way you did before you lost weight, you may gain more back than you started with- even though you are not consuming any more calories. It doesn’t seem fair, but that is the way our bodies are made.
Gaining weight is a survival mechanism. As people evolved we had to endure lengths of time with unreliable food sources. Our bodies became very good at storing and keeping fat that would be needed for energy when there was nothing to eat. When you’ve been reducing your fat stores by losing weight, your body worries that there might not be food coming, and so when you have a wild weekend, it is eager to store up fat, just in case there’s another famine.
Another aspect of your weekend weight gain might be water weight. Salt and carbohydrates can make your body hold onto water. So if your favorite weekend indulgence is a bag of potato chips, guess what? You could be retaining water, and that will show up on your scale. Many of us get discouraged by our water weight gain, but keep in mind it can take several days to lose water weight.
Bottom line – losing weight is much harder because it is work. You have to work on your diet, work on your exercise and work on your lifestyle! Try not to go hog wild every weekend so your body doesn’t grab back those pounds, and you don’t have to work so much harder to lose what you have already lost once.
photo credit Niklas Bildhauer
3 Strategies to Prevent Relapse After Reaching Your Goal Weight
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When it comes right down to it, the “secret” to keeping the weight you’ve lost off is really very simple: Don’t stop doing the things that helped you take it off in the first place.
Obviously, you’ll need to make some small changes in your eating and exercise so that you’re achieving energy balance (to maintain weight) instead of creating a calorie deficit (to lose weight). But other than that, the key to successful weight maintenance is maintaining the healthy practices that got you to this point.
Unfortunately, this isn’t always as easy or simple as it sounds. Old habits really do die hard. If you struggled with obesity for a long time, or if you lost weight by following some diet plan that you can’t stick with safely or easily, you can’t assume it’s going to be easy to continue eating and exercising in a healthy way now that the weight’s off. Just stopping your healthy lifestyle and going back to “business as usual” will put you on the fast track back to your original weight, and maybe with a few extra pounds.
Even if you’ve taken the gradual “lifestyle change” approach advocated by SparkPeople, you’re likely to find yourself facing a new set of challenges as you shift gears into maintenance mode. Being aware of and prepared for these challenges can make it a lot easier to meet them successfully. So let’s take a look at some of the strategies and approaches of people who have lost weight and kept it off.
Read the full story at sparkpeople.com.
10 Reasons to Walk Alone
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What’s so bad about walking alone? Here are reasons I sometimes enjoy walking alone.
1. Pace: It’s impossible to really go your own pace when walking with somebody else. Larry Longlegs or Suzy Shortlegs can be a pain to try to match pace with.
2. Getting together: It is hard to find a partner who is ready to walk when you are. Maybe I prefer mornings or after work or lunchtime, but any willing partner has an opposite preference. It gets expensive posting classified ads looking not for love but for a walking partner.
3. Early, late, or never: So you make a date to walk with a partner — and he shows up late, or doesn’t show up. Your schedule gets blown and you don’t get in the walking you planned to do. Sally Stressedout always arrives 15 minutes late with some heartbreaking excuse, expecting sympathy, while you’ve been getting in your walking pacing the floor.
4. The need for speed: I want to build speed, but my walking partners don’t want to racewalk. Or it may be a downer day and my walking partners have turned into racehorses. Ruthie Roadrunner or Sam Slug leave you in the dust or hold you back.
5. Tough enough: I want to do some hills but my walking partner whines the whole way up or down, dreads the next hill, etc. Or maybe it’s me doing the whining because my planned easy walk has turned into an Everest expedition. Wind, rain, sun, bugs, hills, dust, gravel, traffic are part of the walking experience — get over it.
6. Going the distance: I want to build distance to prepare for a long event, but my partners never want to do more than 10K. Not a problem — unless you’ve carpooled to where you plan to walk. Or the look they give you when you say you need to go another 5K and will do it alone.
7. Event choices: I want to enter a charity walk but my partner thinks it is too expensive or too crowded. There is a great walking event held an hour away, but my walking partner has chores to do and just wants to walk the neighborhood….again.
8. Chatter: Maybe I don’t feel like talking, or like listening. It gets embarrassing if you “zone out” and then realize they are asking you for an opinion or advice on the tale you weren’t really listening to. When doing a faster walk or hills, I usually don’t feel like talking, I feel like breathing.
9. Misery doesn’t always love company: On long distance events or speed events, I don’t want company, I am concentrating on my own form, my own endurance, my own needs. I don’t need anybody else’s misery intruding on my own.
10. Eat, drink, and restroom: With a partner, deciding when and where to take a restroom break, drink, eat a snack or stop for a celebration meal on the way home becomes a matter of negotiation.
For more of this article on walking alone, click here.
If you’d like more information on the various programs offered at Center for Metabolic Health come visit us at our website. We understand your commitment to meeting your weight loss goals and we’re here to help.
How to Set Weight Loss Goals
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Setting realistic goals – including weight, exercise, food and psychological goals – before you begin a weight loss plan is essential to a successful program.
Step1
Begin by setting some small daily goals. Your weight goal might be to lose 1 pound per week. If you hardly exercised in the past, you might want to walk around your neighborhood for 20 minutes every day. (If you like, split it into a 10-minute walk in the morning and another in the evening.) Your nutritional goal may be to reduce your fat intake. Your psychological goal may be to write in a journal every day.
Step2
Establish intermediate goals that are a little more ambitious than your original goals. For instance, two weeks after you begin to meet your daily 20-minute walk goal, extend your goal to a daily 1-hour walk; start eating smaller portions at every meal; and seek counseling for any self-esteem issues you might have.
Step3
Determine big-picture goals; this includes the total amount of weight you’d like to lose by the end of your program. Make a commitment to jog or run every day to maintain your weight and health; learn how you can shop, cook and eat as nutritiously as possible; and take up an activity that you think you have a knack for – this can keep up your self-esteem.
Step4
Set time frames for your daily, intermediate and big-picture goals. As you progress from one to the next, reward yourself. Go shopping, get a facial, take a weekend trip. You deserve it!
Full Story at eHow.com
Setting Realistic Goals
Posted by: | CommentsHow many times have you set a New Year’s resolution for weight loss that falls apart within a few months? You start 
out with the best of intentions with goals that sound great at the time. Chances are your goals were unrealistic and just didn’t fit into your lifestyle. And as the saying goes, “If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you are going to get the same results”.
Take small steps to implement your goals and ask yourself:
- Are you willing to make the changes necessary to reach your goal? If you are starting a weight loss or exercise program you need to ask yourself if you are taking on something that you can do for the rest of your life. If not, you may not be ready to make the changes needed for long-term success.
- What is it that you really want and are you willing to work towards your goals with commitment, time and persistence?
- Are your goals your own? They shouldn’t be your friends, family members, neighbors etc. It is really important to set goals that are yours alone and nobody else’s.
Goals need to be practical and not overwhelming because the only way you will achieve them is through implementation. If you want to save yourself a lot of aggravation, your goals need to be both attainable and realistic. Setting unrealistic goals is the main reason why crash diets and exercise programs fail. However, goals do need to be just challenging enough to keep you motivated and keep in mind that goals continue to change as you progress which means that you will need to readjust them as you move forward.
Once you have determined your specific goals you will feel empowered by taking small steps towards achieving them. By being specific you will be able to prioritize and stay motivated. Which goals are you the most passionate about?
Are you enthusiastic about your goals? It will be much easier to achieve your goals if their possibilities get you excited. If they don’t, you may want to re-evaluate the goals that you’ve selected.
Finally, setting a date is important as it will help prevent procrastination and give you encouragement.
Follow Dani’s Journey to Lose 45 Pounds in 6 Months
Posted by: | CommentsDani is like so many of us. She has struggled with her weight for a number of years. Follow along as she shares her journey towards long term weight loss success through the 6 month weight loss program at the Center for Metabolic Health which includes comprehensive education through their exclusive Weight Management University. You can follow Dani’s journey on the CMH blog!
