Employee Quadruples His Goal for Health
By Shawn Gaitaniella
Sales and Marketing Staff Lead Associate
Alcoa Forgings and Extrusions, Cleveland
In April 2009, our division took part in the Drop 10 in 10 program. I opted to shoot to lose 10% of my starting weight. I weighed around 210 pounds, was told by a doctor that I should think about losing some weight, was not happy with the way I looked, and didn’t have the energy level I used to have.
My wife, Jill, and I decided we were going to follow the program and strive for maximum benefit. We used the program manual/log to learn about how to eat healthier and in the right proportion/portions. We found an online food/exercise journal that tracked caloric intake and the number of calories burned through exercise. We bought a food scale and a new digital bathroom scale.
During the 10 weeks, we weighed or measured everything we consumed. We traded junk snacks for healthy snacks in the evening – when we did eat chips, we weighed out an actual portion instead of bringing the whole bag to the couch. We switched from a couple cans of regular soda each day to diet soda. We did yoga and cardio each night and I started running on a treadmill each morning.
At the end of the 10 weeks, I’d lost 40 pounds. A coworker told me that within three months of the end of a diet, the majority of dieters were back up to what they’d weighed before the start of the diet. He bet that in three months, I would gain back most of the weight. At the end of the three months, not only had I not gained the weight back, I lost an additional 10 pounds. In the year since then, I have maintained that weight. That puts me right in the middle of the healthy BMI range for my height/age. I don’t need the bathroom scale to tell if I drift outside of the +/- 2 pounds range I have set for myself! I’ve reduced my soda intake to an average of one can per week.
I’m not alone in achieving great results. My wife Jill lost between 25 and 30 pounds herself.
Among the best things the program taught us: what a healthy portion size looks like and that eating the right recommended servings helps us to feel fuller longer. We are no longer as regimented as we were initially when we weighted or measured everything we ate. But that’s because we no longer need to, now that we know what a portion size looks like. And I continue to run 3.5 miles each morning before coming to work.
