January 16, 2013 – Donna Elle knows it’s hard to stick with a resolution.
She also knows that it can be done. She’s been doing it for six years.
“I started my weight-losing journey in 2003, but it wasn’t until 2007 that I buckled down and stuck with it,” says Elle, a TV reporter with WRCB-TV Channel 3, deejay and fitness instructor at the YMCA and D1 Chattanooga, a fitness/sports training facility, co-owned by Peyton Manning, in East Brainerd.
Since then, she has lost 88 pounds — just 12 pounds away from the goal she set for herself nine years ago at age 27.
“I finally got on the right track when I realized I needed to get with a program that I could do for the rest of my life, not just three months,” she says.
“I also remind myself often that I will never go back to the lifestyle I had before losing my weight, and I forgive myself when I mess up, just like I did over the holidays. I’ve already made up for it.”
The goal, fitness experts say, is to ditch the diets, the “all or nothing” mentality and the “no-pain, no-gain” fitness goals. Losing weight and keeping fit is more about using common sense to eat less junk food, move more and have fun doing it.
“To be healthy we must all have something I call ‘ancient wisdom,’ which is a trait that past cultures strongly relied on to maintain their health. Ancient wisdom was based in the natural laws of eating natural, chemical free, unprocessed foods the way nature intended them to be,” explains Ed Jones, owner of Nutrition World Chattanooga. “The other word for ancient wisdom could possibly be ‘common sense.'”
Ultimately, he says, the secret to a successful diet is loving oneself.
“Thirty-four years of being in the health business has taught me that the most important rule for being healthy is (that) we must love ourselves fully because no one takes good care of things in their lives that they dislike,” Jones says.
So instead of embarking on yet another diet, why not try to lose roughly 1 pound a week by creating a modest 500-calorie deficit each day? That’s easily accomplished by slashing about 250 calories from your diet (the equivalent of five Oreos) and burning about 250 calories through exercise, such as a brisk two-to-three-mile walk. You can do that easy.
Here are 52 tips for each week of the year, compiled by the Los Angeles Times, and this is just scratching the surface.
Article by Karen Nazor Hill courtesy of The Chattanooga Times Free Press. The Los Angeles Times also contributed to this story
CLICK HERE to view the entire Times Free Press Article, including the 52 tips from the Los Angles Times.