Drink to Your Health! By Vera Tweed
Why gym workouts rank No. 1 for fitness success
Weight-Loss Success
Here’s how different weight-loss approaches stacked up in a survey sponsored by IHRSA.
Weight-loss Strategy
Percentage of Americans who reported being very successful
Exercising in a health club twice weekly or more frequently
30%
Following a formal diet
26%
Exercising outdoors
21%
Exercising at home
19%
Using diet pills
12%
Four years ago, at the age of 26, Maria Bova weighed 280 pounds and faced the very real possibility that she would get cervical cancer. An abnormal pap smear had led to the discovery of precancerous lesions, and her family history was already ominous: A grandmother and a great-grandmother had died of cervical cancer, and 10 cousins had hysterectomies before age 40 due to the disease. Bova’s family also had a history of diabetes, and her own cholesterol was high.
“I was a ticking time bomb,” she says. Since then, she has become a svelte picture of health — but not without overcoming formidable obstacles. “Anyone can do it,” she insists.
In the late summer of 2001, as a single mother of a 3-year-old, Bova had even more than her health to contend with. At the time her precancerous condition was diagnosed, she was in the middle of her divorce, her parents had recently moved to Chicago, and she had lost her job. She was living in Washington, D.C., at the time, and the prospects for a new job looked dim — and they got even dimmer after 9-11. But Bova’s survival instincts prevailed.
She also moved to Chicago so her son, Jake, would have the benefit of growing up in close proximity to his grandparents. She settled into a new home and landed a job as an executive with a telecommunications company. But she still weighed too much. “I couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded,” she recalls. So, in April 2002, Bova decided to take charge of her health.
She began walking, biking and watching what she ate. Three months later, she was down to 245 pounds. Following the advice of a co-worker, she joined a gym and began working out six days per week. After familiarizing herself with weight machines during an orientation training session, she added regular weight training, learning to use free weights in group sessions organized by a friend. On her own, she learned all she could about nutrition.
By the following December, Bova had met her initial goal of reducing to 190 pounds, and she kept progressing until she reached her overall goal of 170. By that time, fitness had become a passion, so she thought, Let’s just see where I end up. By the spring of 2003, she had dropped to 150 pounds, a weight she has maintained ever since.
Working out at the gym is how Bova stays at her healthy weight. She’s not alone. A survey sponsored by IHRSA found that exercising at a health club is the most successful strategy for losing weight — more so than exercising in other settings, following a formal diet program or taking diet pills.
“I don’t diet,” says Bova. “But I’m conscious of everything I eat. Now, food is my fuel.” Instead of eating three times daily, as she did in her heavy days, Bova eats five or six times every day.
“My original goal was to work out and lose weight and be a healthier person,” she says. “But along the way, I grew to love going to my gym.” At age 29, precancerous lesions are a distant memory. Now she’s training for triathlons with her fiancé, whom she met last year.
She also helped her mother lose 20 pounds and postpone knee-replacement surgery. “Some people think they’re too old to lose weight and get in shape,” says Bova. “But there isn’t a single person who can’t do it.”
Her newfound self-confidence led her to start working as a volunteer, helping disabled athletes compete in triathlons. One such athlete was a high-ranked amateur cyclist who was paralyzed from the waist down after being hit by a van. “She could have crawled into a hole,” says Bova. “Instead, she toured the country to promote triathlons. These amazing people inspire me every day.
“I’ve come 180 degrees, and I’m so happy,” she continues. “I feel like I have a really bright future that I didn’t have before.” The extent of Bova’s involvement in fitness may not be typical of everyone who joins a health club and achieves a weight-loss goal, but a healthy lifestyle always reaps big rewards.
Different Folks, Similar Benefits
Three years ago, Rick Gart, 5’ 11”, weighed 357 pounds and was so unhappily out of shape that he was almost suicidal. “I had a 52-inch waist, nothing fit, and I was so disgusted,” he recalls. Today, the 45-year-old mortgage broker is a trim 188 pounds — a weight he has maintained for the past two years.
Gart transformed himself by following a food and exercise program from a trainer at his club, and he helps maintain his new physique by sticking to his food regimen (three healthy meals daily without any sugar or white flour, and no snacks) and working out six days a week. “I wake up and go right to the gym,” he says. “And when I walk out, I feel like there’s not one thing I can’t accomplish. It’s a terrific feeling.” Last fall, he married the woman of his dreams.
While a lack of exercise is always unhealthy, the wrong type of workout can also cause problems. Elaine Georgiou used to do too much aerobic exercise, eat too little and struggle with her weight. “I would suffer for five or six months, lose weight by summer, then when the holidays came, I’d regain it,” says the 30-year-old computer software engineer from Denver.
With the help of a private trainer, Georgiou went from 180 to 153 pounds and from 24% to 15% body fat. She trains three times a week. Instead of an hour of aerobics, she alternates high and low intensities on a cardio machine for 20 minutes. Instead of countless fast reps with light weights, she spends 30 minutes doing fewer extremely slow reps with heavier weights. “You need to find the balance that works for you,” she says.
Pam and Kiko Cruz, owners of a hair salon in Minnetonka, Minn., and parents of 5-year-old twins, also discovered that the right workout brings success. Even though both had exercised for years, they couldn’t achieve their fitness goals. In March 2004, 33-year-old Kiko, 6’ tall and weighing 208 pounds, felt concerned enough about his health to hire a trainer at his club. “I also wanted a six-pack,” he admits. By November, he met his goal weight of 178 pounds — and he had his six-pack. “Before,” he says, “I was doing a mundane routine that wasn’t challenging.”
Pam was so impressed with her husband’s results that she decided to start her own program. Several years earlier, she had ballooned to 300 pounds while pregnant, and although most of the weight had disappeared with a healthy diet and exercise, she couldn’t get back in shape and was seriously considering a tummy tuck. “I looked like a duck,” she recalls.
Pam joined her husband in the gym and made quick progress. The 5’ 7” 39-year-old now weighs in at 148 pounds. “I’m totally ripped,” she says about her new form. And that tummy tuck she was thinking of getting? “One of my clients thought I’d had a tummy tuck,” she says, laughing at the irony.
She also helped her mother lose 20 pounds and postpone knee-replacement surgery. “Some people think they’re too old to lose weight and get in shape,” says Bova. “But there isn’t a single person who can’t do it.”
