FACE IT...LAUREN SUE HAS LOST WEIGHT:
A picture may be worth a thousand words...
http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p=999&gid=6910251&uid=719113 
but how about nearly
2,000 words explaining step-by-step the secret to Lauren Sue’s success: Between July 4, 2000 and March 10, 2001, while pregnant with my 4th child, I gained 50 pounds. At birth, Joey weighed less than 7 lbs, not the 50 lbs I expected him to weigh. I tried in vain to lose the weight after he was born, dropping 20 or so for a brief period of time and then promptly putting back on 30 or more. I spent the first 3 years of my son’s life at the highest weight of my life. It was a place I thought I'd never escape from, sinking heavily in to quick sand that tasted like French fries and key lime pie. I had become an emotional eater, finding solace in sweets, finding comfort in carbs.
As February turned into March in 2004, my 37th birthday passed and I was failing yet another New Year’s Resolution to lose weight. I kept putting off a birthday shopping spree with my Mom that I was completely dreading. I was barely fitting my size 14’s (I'm 5'3" and usually a size 8) and now I had nothing to wear. My wardrobe was shrinking as I was growing. Mom figured new clothes would be the perfect gift.
Then one sleepless night I came across a Winsor Pilates infomercial on television. It looked like something I could do. I figured
what did I have to lose; after all, Mari Winsor was guaranteeing results or my money back…perhaps it could be
“my birthday money back”. I totally believed every word this woman was saying. The next morning I told my Mom about the infomercial and asked her what she thought about ordering Winsor Pilates in lieu of clothes for my birthday. She agreed and on March 2, 2004, I finally used my birthday money and ordered my first set of Winsor Pilates. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.
So what exactly did I have to lose after discovering Winsor Pilates?
- Only 4 weeks after beginning her program, I had lost 20 pounds and dropped from a size 14 to a size 10. I felt better than ever
- Two months later I was down nearly 30 pounds and was fitting a size 6.
- Three months after beginning Pilates, I had lost nearly 40 pounds and I was fitting into a size 2!
- One year since discovering Winsor Pilates, I’m still fitting those size 2’s (even junior size 14’s and 16’s) and I’ve lost a total of 70 pounds! (ha, ha...it's now 2 years since I discovered Winsor Pilates and now I'm halfway through a very unexpected pregnancy. I'm SO totally not fitting those size 2's now...)
- I’ve gained strength I never imagined possible. I’m even able to do REAL pushups for the first time in my life…and this is even 6 years after my Parkinson’s began.
- I never thought I'd fit a size 2 (my original goal weight was a size 8). But even MORE shocking than my surpassing my ultimate goal was having the chance to share my success story with Mari Winsor in Hollywood for the 2006 Winsor Infomercial (along with Jess). Talk about a dream come true! And then to grace the cover of magazine in a bikini in June 2006...ladies, if I can do it YOU can do it!
I know my results may not be typical, but over the past year I’ve witnessed countless other friends and family, both online and IRL, who have also had great results since capturing the Winsor Pilates addiction. And just as all of us are all unique individuals, so too are the rates at which we each achieved our results. One thing to keep in mind is how long we’ve each carried our extra weight. The longer you’ve been overweight, the longer it may take you to lose those extra pounds. Additionally, other factors may contribute to slower results, such as medical conditions (thyroid, for example) and side effects from prescriptions (like weight gain or water retention), among other things. Regardless of the rate, one thing remained a constant: everyone who became addicted to Winsor Pilates was gaining strength, gaining stamina, standing taller and dropping sizes. As I said on the infomercial: If you do it will work. All you have to do is DO IT! Of course, it wasn’t JUST Winsor Pilates that contributed to my success, rather a combination of healthy eating, exercise and self-discipline. Below are the 10 Steps To Lauren Sue’s Success:
1) First was discovering an exercise I really liked. In my case, obviously, it was the Pilates. In the beginning I actually had to bribe myself to work out. I figured if I potty trained my son with the “reward system”, I could “Pilates train” myself in the same way. In my case
I wouldn’t allow myself to go online until I did my daily Pilates. Now I have to bribe myself to get housework accomplished while I look forward to Pilates. And I couldn’t believe I was actually sculpting my body slim without the cost of a gym, a personal trainer, workout clothes or even the cost of athletic shoes.
Just a couple Winsor Work Out tapes while working out in the privacy of my own bedroom. Simply amazing…
2) The addiction quickly grew as I began to see results from my efforts; every little bit of success was a huge motivator for me and I soon learned that every little bit I did was a step closer to my ultimate goal of better health.
Pilates will only work if you DO it. Mari said you’d get faster results doing it more frequently,
so I dedicated time each and every day. In fact, I didn’t miss a day for those first 6 months of doing Winsor Pilates. Since surpassing my ultimate goal, I now only do Mari’s recommendation of 3 times a week, 20 minutes a day.
(I am currently using Mari's book The Pilates Pregnancy as a reference, since I'm limited to the moves I can do now that I'm expecting).3) Another residual effect of seeing results was the fact I began to feel in control of something. In recent years, my life was feeling as if it had gotten out of control (
it’s easy to feel that way when you have 2 teenagers, 1 'tween-ager, a toddler, a husband and an incurable disease). For the first time in as long as I could remember I felt like
I was in control of something: my body!4) As the Pilates began to change my shape, a few pounds here, a few inches there, I decided I wanted to contribute even more to the successful slimming I was achieving and that meant
committing to a diet that wouldn't counter-act the pilates progress. Why cancel out any success I was achieving by eating foods that would put the weight back on?!?! Pilates was toning my body better and more rapidly than anything else I’ve ever tried in my entire life; however,
Pilates alone wouldn’t help me lose weight. I also had to watch what I was eating.5)
Deciding to diet was the first step; actually DOING it was the next. 6)
Educating myself about food was a HUGE help for me and also helped me find my diet pitfalls. I didn't
follow Atkins or South Beach or any of those other common diets, but I did buy a pocket sized Atkins Carb Counting book and a South Beach Carb Guide book (around 5 bucks each at Kmart). Educating myself about carbs and their effect on my diet really opened my eyes to my weaknesses. I didn't count my carbs, but I was more aware of them and tried to really make healthy choices overall that would compliment the Pilates progress. I began to reexamine daily choices compared to what I was learning.
For example: if someone is trying to lose weight on an Atkins Diet (and have success) they begin with something called "an induction phase" for a minimum of 2 weeks. This initial phase, the most restrictive of carbs, jump-starts your weight loss. You eat no more than 20 grams of Net Carbs per day, which translates in to roughly 3 cups of salad greens and other non-starchy veggies. You can eat liberal amounts of protein (meat, fish, chicken, eggs) and healthy fats, but it's not a license to gorge. After the induction phase, you gradually increase your carb intake in the following manner: Week one 25 grams, week two 30 grams, and so forth until weight loss stalls. After ward, a typical daily carb intake should be around 90-120 depending upon your age, gender, activity level and genetics, to maintain a good weight. Believe it or not, the FDA recommends a daily carb intake around 300 grams a day! Unless you balance that with a lot of physical activity, I would think that would be a huge amount of carbs per day. And sadly most people don't recognize good carbs versus bad carbs and may be simply filling that daily allowance with the bad ones.
If I wanted weight loss success I would need to decrease my bad foods and increase my physical activity. 7) Mari also discussed some of this further in a Diet book that came with my initial tapes. She explained the importance of the right combination of complex carbohydrates, good fats vs. bad fats, keeping a proper hormonal balance by not going too long between meals, adding healthy snacks, avoiding juices and drinking tons of water and much, much more. It was a lot of information to swallow, but it really got me thinking.
I began reading food labels religiously for the first time in my life. For example, let’s take my old favorite breakfast of Pancakes soaked in syrup. There are 31 carbs in just one serving of pancakes. Add 52 grams of carbs when I pour ¼ cup of syrup on my pancakes. That's a total of 83 grams already, assuming I don't go for seconds, which I know I always did. I’m sure I would wash down those pancakes with a glass of orange juice, adding another 13 carbs, assuming I only had one glass.
That's 96 carbs and it's only my first meal of the day. Okay, so if I were in the induction phase of Atkins, trying to train my body to lose weight, I could only have 20 carbs per day, but I've already had nearly 100 carbs (or more) before 9am on a typical day with my old bad eating habits! Granted I’m not on an Atkins diet and don’t
ever plan on having only 20 carbs in a day, but I surely can’t expect to lose weight if I’m having nearly 5 full days of induction-phase carbs in my breakfast, alone. No wonder I was packing on the pounds. I finally understood my pitfalls, I learned what to avoid and discovered the secret to my success:
everything in moderation! Once I started reading labels I found myself choosing products with lower carbs (like eating Special K Low Carb mixed with Fiber One for breakfast, that I actually LOVE to eat now). And I found ways to avoid unnecessary carbs I may encounter while dining with non-dieters. By putting the topping from the pizza I was feeding my family over a bed of greens; I got the taste of that pizza I smelled and craved without adding the carbs of the crust to my daily intake. Crumbling up a hamburger patty over a salad satisfied my burger-fix without the bad bun carbs. Little steps like that made a huge difference.
8) Now, I wasn't going to go
All-Atkins on my body, but learning about carbs through those books and Mari’s advice helped me discover a little secret of success for myself: "
CHOOSE better carbs, rather than count them". Every little bit would help. Every pancake I passed on, every donut I denied...all of those would be a step in the right direction. Besides, I suck at math, so I didn't want to bother counting the carbs!
Eating more fruits and vegetables, drinking more water and watching those portions…much easier than trying to do the math9) the next thing I had to do was learn to
accept plateaus and minor set backs. It’s difficult not to get discouraged, but I had to realize that those temporary pauses in progress are inevitable and I needed to not let those moments contribute to a loss of momentum. And celebrate EVERY positive achievement, no matter how tiny.
10) and remember not to STOP just because you’ve reached your goal.
Maintain or you will regain! Continue to PYBO…As Aristotle once said: “We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”
STAY TUNED! I am switching from PYBO (pilates your butt off) to PYBO (pilates your baby-weight off) now that I'm expecting my 5th child in August 2006...
and a little PS: My 13 year old daughter, Miranda, became a Winsor Pilates addict like her mother and had amazing results doing daily Pilates. She's struggled with her weight for years. In July of 2005 she began doing Winsor workouts 20 minutes every single day and in 6 months she's lost over 30 pounds and has sculpted her body thin. It's wonderful that at such a vulnerable age she was able to discover such an important tool as Winsor Pilates to learn a healthy way to lose weight and keep it off. Here's an example of her success:
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