Pam Wurst before and after her dramatic weight loss.Many people will choose weight loss as a New Year's resolution, but many will fail say expertsOne clinical psychologist says people sabotage themselves by not being clear on their goalsPam Wurst, iReporter Seth Leigh each lost over 100 pounds in their weight loss programs
(CNN) -- Pam Wurst struggled for years to lose weight. One of the triggering points for her to finally shed pounds was when a 5-year-old child patted her stomach and asked: "When is the baby coming?"
"I about died," she said. "I wasn't even remotely pregnant, just really overweight."
Wurst, a 39-year old instructional designer, artist and consultant from Marietta, Georgia, lost about 100 pounds, starting from 264 to a low of 155. She lost most of her weight in the first nine months and has kept the majority of the weight off for more than six years.
iReporter Seth Leigh of San Tan Valley, Arizona, a computer programmer, has also struggled with his weight. He says he found the motivation to lose at least 110 pounds in nearly seven months so he could return to the Army National Guard in 2010 as an officer. (He has lost 135 pounds to date.)
See his full iReport
iReporter Seth Leigh before and after his weight loss.
He was 40 1/2 when he started his weight loss regimen. "I was facing an age deadline to get back and knew that once I turned 42 years old, it would be forever too late," he said.
The new year represents a time to create resolutions and for many Americans, weight loss will be high on their lists.
And while Wurst and Leigh's weight loss stories are a success, experts say most people will fail at following through on their resolutions.
Clinical psychologist Mark Crawford of Roswell, Georgia, says some people sabotage themselves by not being clear on their goals.
He offers some tips for getting it right.
1. Be specific about your goal.
"Saying that you want to lose weight is way too general," Crawford said. "You should set specific goals, like you want to lose 5 to 10 pounds."
2. Set a realistic goal.
Make sure you set something achievable and sustainable.
3. Establish a plan to reach your goal.
"Say things like I'm going to exercise four times a week, and I'm going to eat smaller portions," said Crawford.
4. Set a time frame to reach your goal.
"Thirty days is a manageable goal to start with, and then go from there," he said.
Above all, Crawford says stay the course.
Some people sabotage themselves by not being clear on their goals.
--Mark Crawford. Ph.D.
"You will make mistakes," he said. "You will have slip-ups, it is part of it." But never use it as an excuse to give up.
A website supported by the National Institute of Health notes "the key to successful weight loss is making changes in your eating and physical activity habits that you can keep up for the rest of your life."
And even if you don't need to lose weight, it's a good idea to follow healthy eating and exercise habits to keep you healthy throughout your lifetime.
How did Wurst and Leigh shed pounds?
When Wurst first started her journey, she set a goal of fitting into a size 14.
"I didn't know how long it would take, but I felt like I could accomplish that in a year and I did," she said. She now wears a size 10 or 12, which exceeded her plan.
Wurst said when she first started losing weight, she set a goal of exercising six days a week, and three of those days were 22 minutes of cardiovascular moves. After a few months into her Body-for LIFE-program, her job required her to travel a lot and she cut back her workouts to three to four days a week.
Wurst changed her eating habits, too, and stopped eating junk food. She tries to set a goal of eating four to six small meals a day to speed up her metabolism.
Her meals often include proteins with portions the size of her palm such as fish, chicken, nuts, tofu, mushrooms and eggs. She eats carbohydrates such as multigrain rice or multigrain crackers. Wurst tries her best to avoid processed foods and soda.
I had a few times during that heavy-duty weight loss period when I would go out and ride 20 miles on my bike at 11 p.m. or midnight.
--iReporter Seth Leigh
Leigh had a different plan to shed his pounds. At the height of his exercise program, he spent up to five hours a day working out. His routine included walking, biking, swimming, lifting weights and burning calories on a treadmill or Stairmaster.
The iReporter restricted his diet to about 1,500 calories a day.
"I didn't have any time to waste or any days when I could afford not to exercise and eat properly if I wanted to qualify with the right weight for the Guard," he said.
"I had a few times during that heavy-duty weight loss period when I would go out and ride 20 miles on my bike at 11 p.m. or midnight, because I hadn't exercised yet that day and I wouldn't let myself go to sleep having missed a day," he noted.
Both Wurst and Leigh were motivated to reach their goals, but experts differ on their opinions on how much exercise is necessary and what type of foods to eat in order to lose weight.
For those of you planning a weight-loss program in 2011, consider guidelines the National Institute of Health offers on its website to help you get started.
Losing weight can be a challenge
Wurst said before her big weight loss, she tried a lot of methods to lose pounds, including drugs prescribed by her doctor.
My doc shrugged it off and said 'fat people are jolly.'
--Pam Wurst
"In 2000, they tested my thyroid and found it to be very slow, and I was prescribed 300 mg of Levoxyl a day and told it would help," she said.
Six months later, she returned to her doctor in tears and said the drugs weren't helping.
"My doc shrugged it off and said 'fat people are jolly.' " she said. "I was heartbroken."
She struggled for a few more years until a friend visiting from Tampa, Florida, in 2004 helped her get started on the diet and exercise regime he used.
"At last, I finally found a program that worked," she said.
Leigh said he struggled for years as a heavy person and said he weighed more than 300 pounds for about an 11-year stretch.
For him, the motivation to achieve a dream is what it took to finally get him back to better health.
"I would imagine myself standing, in a nice new suit, in front of the Officer Selection Board, answering their questions about why I wanted to get back into the Army National Guard," he said.
"I must have imagined that interview with the board a hundred times while working out," Leigh noted.
Both Wurst and Leigh say the best part of their journey is they are now happier people than they were before the weight loss.
"I feel great and love to tell people about my story," said Wurst.
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Safety first
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Trisha Cluck/Getty Images
Back in the 1970s, researchers in Japan studied child laborers and discovered that, among their many misfortunes, the juvenile workers tended to be abnormally short. Physical labor, the researchers concluded, with its hours of lifting and moving heavy weights, had stunted the children’s growth. Somewhat improbably, from that scientific finding and other similar reports, as well as from anecdotes and accreting myth, many people came to believe “that children and adolescents should not” practice weight training, said Avery Faigenbaum, a professor of exercise science at the College of New Jersey. That idea retains a sturdy hold in the popular imagination. As a recent position paper on the topic of children and resistance training points out, many parents, coaches and pediatricians remain convinced that weight training by children will “result in short stature, epiphyseal plate” — or growth plate — “damage, lack of strength increases due to a lack of testosterone and a variety of safety issues.”
Kids, in other words, many of us believe, won’t get stronger by lifting weights and will probably hurt themselves. But a major new review just published in Pediatrics, together with a growing body of other scientific reports, suggest that, in fact, weight training can be not only safe for young people, it can also be beneficial, even essential.
In the Pediatrics review, researchers with the Institute of Training Science and Sports Informatics in Cologne, Germany, analyzed 60 years’ worth of studies of children and weightlifting. The studies covered boys and girls from age 6 to 18. The researchers found that, almost without exception, children and adolescents benefited from weight training. They grew stronger. Older children, particularly teenagers, tended to add more strength than younger ones, as would be expected, but the difference was not enormous. Over all, strength gains were “linear,” the researchers found. They didn’t spike wildly after puberty for boys or girls, even though boys at that age are awash in testosterone, the sex hormone known to increase muscle mass in adults. That was something of a surprise. On the other hand, a reliable if predictable factor was consistency. Young people of any age who participated in resistance training at least twice a week for a month or more showed greater strength gains than those who worked out only once a week or for shorter periods.
Over all, the researchers concluded, “regardless of maturational age, children generally seem to be capable of increasing muscular strength.”
That finding, which busts one of the most pervasive myths about resistance training for young people — that they won’t actually get stronger — is in accord with the results and opinions of most researchers who have studied the subject. “We’ve worked with kindergartners, having them just use balloons and dowels” as strength training tools, “and found that they developed strength increases,” said Dr. Faigenbaum, a widely acknowledged expert on the topic of youth strength training. (His most recent book is in fact titled “Youth Strength Training.”)
But interestingly, young people do not generally add muscular power in quite the same way as adults. They rarely pack on bulk. Adults, particularly men but also women, typically add muscle mass when they start weight training, a process known as muscular hypertrophy (or, less technically, getting buff). Youths do not add as much or sometimes any obvious muscle mass as a result of strength training, which is one of the reasons many people thought they did not grow stronger. Their strength gains seem generally to involve “neurological” changes, Dr. Faigenbaum said. Their nervous systems and muscles start interacting more efficiently. A few small studies have shown that children develop a significant increase in motor-unit activation within their muscles after weight training. A motor unit consists of a single neuron and all of the muscle cells that it controls. When more motor units fire, a muscle contracts more efficiently. So, in essence, strength training in children seems to liberate the innate strength of the muscle, to activate the power that has been in abeyance, unused.
And that fact, from both a physiological and philosophical standpoint, is perhaps why strength training for children is so important, a growing chorus of experts says. “We are urban dwellers stuck in hunter-gatherer bodies,” said Lyle Micheli, M.D., the director of sports medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston and professor of orthopedic surgery at Harvard University, as well as a co-author, with Dr. Faigenbaum, of the National Strength and Conditioning Association’s 2009 position paper about children and resistance training. “That’s true for children as well as adults. There was a time when children ‘weight trained’ by carrying milk pails and helping around the farm. Now few children, even young athletes, get sufficient activity” to fully strengthen their muscles, tendons and other tissues. “If a kid sits in class or in front of a screen for hours and then you throw them out onto the soccer field or basketball court, they don’t have the tissue strength to withstand the forces involved in their sports. That can contribute to injury.”
Consequently, many experts say, by strength training, young athletes can reduce their risk of injury, not the reverse. “The scientific literature is quite clear that strength training is safe for young people, if it’s properly supervised,” Dr. Faigenbaum says. “It will not stunt growth or lead to growth-plate injuries. That doesn’t mean young people should be allowed to go down into the basement and lift Dad’s weights by themselves. That’s when you see accidents.” The most common, he added, involve injuries to the hands and feet. “Unsupervised kids drop weights on their toes or pinch their fingers in the machines,” he said.
In fact, the ideal weight-training program for many children need not involve weights at all. “The body doesn’t know the difference between a weight machine, a medicine ball, an elastic band and your own body weight,” Dr. Faigenbaum said. In his own work with local schools, he often leads physical-education class warm-ups that involve passing a medicine ball (usually a “1 kilogram ball for elementary-school-age children” and heavier ones for teenagers) or holding a broomstick to teach lunges safely. He has the kids hop, skip and leap on one leg. They do some push-ups, perhaps one-handed on a medicine ball for older kids. (For specifics about creating strength-training programs for young athletes of various ages, including teenagers, and avoiding injury, visit strongkid.com, a Web site set up by Dr. Faigenbaum, or the Children’s Hospital Boston sports medicine site.)
As for the ideal age to start weight training, Dr. Faigenbaum said: “Any age is a good age. But there does seem to be something special about the time from about age 7 to 12. The nervous system is very plastic. The kids are very eager. It seems to be an ideal time to hard-wire strength gains and movement patterns.” And if you structure a program right, he added, “it can be so much fun that it never occurs to the kids that they’re getting quote-unquote ‘strength training’ at all.”
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Christoph Niemann
Drinking water before a meal helps you lose weight? that's the question by Anahad O'Connor in today's "Really?"Column explores.
Dieter's were invited to deal with this trick for ages, simply arguing: the water fills the stomach which hunger.But only in recent years, studies have confirmed this.
In the last followed a randomized study, published a group of overweight subjects age of 55 and on low-calorie diet for about three months in the journal obesity in February, scientists at Virginia Tech. half that people said two cups of water before each meal to trinken.Am end of the study the water group average 15.5 pounds, compared to 11 pounds in the other group lost.
To learn more, read the whole story "the claim: drinking water before meals AIDS weight loss," and then please join the discussion below.
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The facts End of November marks the gluttonous holiday season. But a simple step could help keep food intake in: a glass of water before meals.
Share your thoughts on this column that well blog.«
Go to well» Dieter's were invited to deal with this trick for ages, simply arguing: the water fills the stomach which hunger. But only in recent years, studies have confirmed this.
In the last a randomized study published in the journal obesity in February, followed topics age of 55 and on low-calorie diet for about three months a group of overweight scientists at Virginia Tech. Half was told people to drink two cups of water before each meal.At the end of the study the water group lost had average 15.5 pounds, compared to 11 pounds in the other group.
A 2008 study showed a similar effect, finding a reduction of 13% calorie intake at overweight individuals that before breakfast water verbraucht.Aber of a third study, this one in 2007, had a peculiar determination: drink water 30 minutes before a meal calorie intake and feelings of hunger in older adults, reduced but had little influence on the topics under 35.It is noted that older adults are at risk of being overweight and obese, further studies should determine whether this is effective for the aging population the researchers not clear why.
Studies show The average person gains over a pound between Thanksgiving and January .the most adult profit one to two pounds per year during a lifespan to fend off holiday pounds can go a long way.
The BOTTOM LINEDrinking water before a meal can calorie intake, reduce, although the effect most prominent in the elderly seems.ANAHAD O'CONNORscitimes@NYTimes.com
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