Exercise Testimonial

Interview with Kara...

A 33 year old mom of three and social ray of sunshine, Kara does day care out of her home and has a cake decorating business. She saw her weight was creeping up and decided to do something about it. She began meeting weekly with a trainer for a workout and a pep talk. For several months she was stop and go with her workouts and motivation, she wasn’t finding her rhythm and was discouraged because the scale wasn’t moving. The turning point came when a heart to heart with her husband gave her the conviction to buy herself a Fitbit. The Fitbit tracks activity and allows her to connect with other users for competitions and encouragement. Now she takes 22,000 steps a day and makes sure she beats out everyone else in her group. More motivated and encouraged, she joined Weight Watchers where she meets weekly for meetings. She has also taken on a mentor role with a friend who is also trying to lose weight, which gives her more drive to keep going because she doesn’t want to be a hypocrite. She finds creative ways to move during the day like a children’s yoga video she does with her daycare kids. She walks to the store and back instead of driving and does stairs in between her laundry loads. The scale is creeping down, and when it doesn’t her trainer does body circumference measurements that show she’s losing inches and reminds her of all the cellular improvements in her body and brain she can’t see as a result of the exercise.

 “My emotional ability has improved a lot. I’m not a yeller by nature, but [before I started exercising] I really felt out of control of my life and just tired all the time. Since I’ve started exercising I haven’t been yelling at my kids at all. Like when we’re getting ready to leave and I know we’re going to be late because nobody’s doing what they need to do on time. Instead of freaking out about that and getting upset, I think, ‘Can I control this? Is this going to spiral my whole day? It’s not worth it. We will get there. Five minutes is not a big deal.’ It’s like I talk myself down off the ledge all the time which I never could do before. I am prioritizing myself which makes me way happier and way more happy of a person to be around, according to my husband [laughter]. I have a more positive outlook—It’s way easier to be positive and to untwist my thinking which was a really hard exercise for me.” 

“My ability to choose and rationalize has increased. A calorie for example, before I’d think, ‘I want a cookie’. Now I think, ‘I don’t want to spend 150 calories on that cookie.’ My food choices are less emotionally driven... I love working out with my friends the most. I did Dance Dance revolution with my friend for an hour and a half the other night and it was really hard, but it was so much fun.” 

When asked how she overcomes urges to skip her workouts she said, “Hmmm. That’s a good question. I’ve made it part of my schedule so I know when I’m working out each day and what that workout is. So, there’s no real talking myself into it or talking myself out of it. It’s just what happens at that time every day, just like anything else in life…”

“It really has improved my overall thinking of the big picture. Like one of the things [my trainer] told me before when I wasn’t having any results on the scale or even in my clothes and I was super frustrated and [she] said, ‘I wish you could see what’s happening on a cellular level’. So, I started thinking about that and that’s what I keep in the back of my mind: ‘If I could see what’s going on at a cellular level’. So, by working out right now I’m encouraging oxygen through my blood that’s making my heart stronger, makes my brain stronger, building new neurons, all those things. I never thought like that before. I just didn’t care. I was ‘ugh, I don’t want to move. How can I get from point A to point B with the least amount of movement?’  Now I’m like, ‘How can I incorporate more movement into getting my day to day things done?’  

“The other thing is, I never was really successful at looking at long term goals before, and now I’m like, ‘what do I want to look like’, ‘what do I want to feel like’, ‘what do I want to be when I’m 40?’ And before my only picture of that was weight-wise, and now I’m like, ‘what do I want to do professionally?’ All my goals have shifted and changed and grown. Just from losing a little bit of weight and feeling more in control of my life in general.”