Sunday diversion: Cat worker goes from fat man to Iron Man
Bloomington Pantagraph profiles one John Brown, a Caterpillar employee who went on a fitness kick a couple years back and hasn’t stopped since. He lost 140 pounds in just over two years after winning a Caterpillar weight-loss contest. Brown’s Seven Steps to Fitness:
- Accept the truth. You are fat because you’re eating more than your body is using. Slow metabolism, genetics and other “reasons” you’ve been using to explain away your weight are inconsequential compared to that simple fact.
- Keep a diary to keep track of what you do. Make fitness a priority in your life or die younger; the choice is yours.
- Embrace the enemy and make it your ally. Food is the tool we use to make us fat, but it is also the key to how we get thin and stay that way. Enjoy food, but do it the right way.
- Learn to listen to your body and give it what it needs, not what it thinks it wants.
- Set goals, lots of them — hard ones, easy ones, weight goals, fitness goals, exercise goals. Make whatever you can quantify into a goal. It feels great to live a life filled with constant and repeated achievement.
- Surround yourself with people who represent the person you want to be. A support group of people who have achieved what you wish to achieve is more powerful and more permanent than any drug, program, plan or gimmick. They will not let you fail. Join clubs for support and information. Members thrive on each other’s successes.
- Reaching your goal weight is not the end of your journey. See it as the beginning of the next phase. Plan for the future by setting goals beyond losing weight.
To me, losing weight is like quitting smoking: you have to ready to change. Meaning, you want to be thinner more than you want all the goodies that make you fat. I lost almost 40 pounds by hiking and cutting out snacking, so I know it can be done.
Anybody can lose weight…I am living proof 😀
Permalink | Posted January 10th, 2009, at 9:04 pm