Shift in Attitude
When you're under stress, at work or at home, your body increases its cortisol levels, a fight-or-flight hormone that tells the body to store fat. By reducing stress, running works to turn off that message. Mary Carney was stressed at her job and feeling bad about her weight when her daughter Katie suggested running as a faster means than walking to lose extra pounds. Similar to Arruda and Pierce, Carney eased into running by doing it for only one minute before returning to walking. When Katie suggested both of them run a 5k for breast cancer several months later, Carney reluctantly agreed, worried she would have to walk. "When I got there, I couldn't believe the crowd of people," she says. "I was not athletic as a child, and I got this adrenaline rush that I never expected."
Carney ran the entire course. Hooked on the experience, she became a runner, entering local races, following a training plan, cleaning up her diet and losing 25 pounds. Running became her lifestyle. "It changed my attitude. It gave me a sense of accomplishment that spilled over into other areas of life like my job and marriage," she says. "I just felt better about myself, more comfortable with myself."
Carney experienced a change in the patterning of her subconscious mind, according to Tom Kersting, Ph.D, physiotherapist and author of Losing Weight When Diets Fail. Our culture generally views exercise as a torturous, time-consuming activity. When Carney realized that running could be fun and exhilarating, she overcame the final hurdle to achieving lifelong weight balance--she adopted exercise and nutrition as her lifestyle.
This is not an easy feat, Kersting says, adding that our predisposition to view exercise as unpleasant stems from the fact that so much in our culture has been oversimplified. A person can now hit a button and pay her bills or do her grocery shopping, for example. This oversimplification makes anything that requires effort, like exercise, seem even more challenging in comparison. "Our minds have become conditioned to simplicity in accomplishing things. So exercising, to someone who has been inactive her entire life, can seem like climbing Mt. Everest," he says.
Carney, along with Aruba and Pierce, overcame this by taking baby steps. Running for just a few seconds or a few minutes to start. Their small, incremental success started to overcome their subconscious belief that exercise is drudgery. Once their minds shifted, they realized running was not only beneficial, but also enjoyable.
Arruda, Pierce and Carney eventually stopped trying to lose weight as they hit their ideal range. Then it was a matter of finding the right nutritional balance to feed their racing habit. "It was a strange moment when I realized I actually needed to eat more to have a better half marathon race result," Pierce remembers. Arruda preps for long runs by adding a sweet potato to her dinner for extra calories, and Carney adjusts her portion sizes accordingly.
"The body will do its job, when given the right conditions to find its normal weight range," says Scritchfield. These women all created sustainable conditions to enable their bodies to be their best.
"Anyone can do this," Carney says. "You just have to decide you want to and incorporate it into your life."
Exercising for 30 to 60 minutes, three to five days a week is a good beginner cardio program. Whether you're running, walking or a combination of both, it should be a challenge, she says. Scritchfield also suggests strength training one to two days per week to build lean muscle mass. "Muscle is active tissue that's burning calories and allows you to feel strong and empowered," she says.
Above all, don't get down on yourself. "We can be our worst critics and judges," Scritchfield says. "In the beginning, your success is that you got dressed and got out there, because that's already change."