Linda Rabe, student

 First of all I have stopped smoking now for 6 months; this is my first progress towards a healthy life. I am 49 years old and I need to take serious measures of staying healthy. I bought a book called Quit Smoking the Easy Way. It was a book about hope in quitting and not how bad smoking is. It worked for me and I know it could change your life. My second step is loosing weight. I have now lost 20lbs in two months time. What I have done with accomplishing this goal is limiting my sweets and bread. I am on a 1500 cal intake a day. I have cut out snacking and I try to eat more vegetables’ and fruit.  I also now pack my lunch with healthy alternatives, such as whole grain bread that are high in fiber, which keeps you full for a long time. Fiber intake is the key ingredients in loosing weight and making sure you keep the calories low. The things that help me to relax are dancing to the oldies, meditating on my spiritual beliefs, and deep breathing techniques. I am not big on working out, so I try to do things that I enjoy such as walking and swimming. All these things I take into an account to a healthier lifestyle. No matter what age you are you should still try to quit smoking and eat healthy then you won’t have to worry about it later on in life.

As each year has passed I began to feel that I was becoming slower and lazier than the year before, and my weight kept inching up a pound here and a pound there.  With 5 grand children and 2 more on the way (and I’m not 50 yet) you would think that this Granny would be running herself ragged, but I kept picking all the easy tasks with the grand kids like watching movies going out to eat, etc. When this Springs Motion Promotion started I just thought I would sign up and get a free pedometer and maybe get a little walking in. Little did I know that in just 4 short weeks I would loose 10 lbs.

I have to say that having the pedometer on me every day makes me consciously make better decisions. I have not changed my whole life style and I eat like I did before, however, now I pay more attention to what I am eating and I am electing to walk when I can instead of riding or driving short distances. I actually find myself trying to beat my step count from the day before.

As another note, with some better weather happening more frequently, the grand kids are now asking me to walk the half mile to the end of my dead end road to see the horses and then we have to walk that half mile back and sometimes I am carrying the 2 year old. So I am getting in more steps and exercise with them as well.  I even went on vacation during this time period and took my pedometer with me and wore it 5 out of the 7 days. (No weight gain on Vacation. I thought that was unheard of, but not this year. Yeah!)  I plan to increase my activity this summer by spending more time walking and working out in my pool (I know the grand kids will help me there as well.)  I’d just like to say, you don’t know what an additional 2000 steps will do for you. I didn’t think it would do much when I started either. But I am happy to say every little bit of activity helps and I no longer have 10 of those pounds to show for it!