Todd P.: Sure thing, Coach!

Todd P. played football in high school, so when he decided to do something about his weight, he realized that to succeed he needed a player-coach relationship.

“I knew I hadn’t done anything about it before because no one was making me do it,” he says.

So, in 2005 Todd told his wife he didn’t want a tie or another shirt for Father's Day—he wanted a coach. “Help me find somebody who can help me lose weight,” he asked.

Although he was sincere, Todd, a salesman who works for an agent of a moving company, knew that he hadn’t entirely bought into the deal. “I asked my wife to do it for me because I was lazy,” he says. “And, I thought, ‘Now it’s off my back and she can’t blame me if it doesn’t work out… oh, and hand me another hamburger.’”

Todd’s wife presented him with a list of three personal trainers and he chose Derek Curtice, the founder of SimpleFit in Memphis. Even then, Todd wasn’t fully on board.

“I weighed about 280 lbs. Derek asked what my goal weight was, and I said I didn’t have one. I thought I could buy into losing maybe 25 or 30 pounds,” Todd recalls. “So Derek said, ‘Great, 200 pounds it is. Let's lose 80.’ And I’m thinking to myself, ‘This guy is crazy.’

Yet when Derek knocked on his door at 5 a.m. a few days later, Todd let him in. Todd says that at that moment he became committed to his weight loss “hook, line and sinker.”

The two worked out together for an hour three days a week, starting with simple squats and crunches and gradually adding in resistance bands and weights. Even after Derek left, Todd says he would work out another 20 to 30 minutes. On alternate days, Todd worked out on his own, following a 45-minute routine Derek created for him.

At the same time, Todd changed his eating habits. Making these changes was hard. “I traveled a lot in my job and I never ate breakfast,” Todd says. “By lunchtime, I’d be starving, so I’d really pound that all-you-can-eat buffet. If I was home, I’d have a bag of Cheetos before dinner, fall asleep watching TV and wake up at 10:30 for a glass of whole milk and chocolate chip cookies.”

It was also while traveling that Todd observed the habits of his co-workers and bosses and felt the stirrings of a desire to help himself.

“My bosses and I would plan to meet up at breakfast, and they’d get up early to work out. Meanwhile, I’m just wanting to sleep in,” Todd recalls. “But sometimes I’d go try out the treadmill—when no one was there—but after five minutes, I’d be thinking, ‘Forget this!’”

These habits and half-hearted attempts had their predictable effect. Todd gradually found maneuvering through life more difficult. Climbing two or three flights of stairs to meet with a client, Todd says he would have to walk around in the hallway for a few minutes so he wasn’t huffing and puffing when the client answered the door.

But now, Todd buckled down and gave it his all. Incredibly, in just a little over 10 months, Todd battled his weight down to 172 pounds—a loss of 105 pounds.

Today, at age 38 and maintaining at 175 pounds, Todd considers himself fortunate. He’s pleased that his life insurance carrier no longer considers him a high risk but has moved him into the “extremely preferred” category. But more importantly, he has a new outlook on the future.

“I want to be here to play with my son, and my son’s children. Derek and I would talk about family and he’d always say, ‘Do you know what a tremendous gift you’re giving to your wife and son? You’re going to be around for them,’” Todd says. “Derek more than gave me back my life. He gave me a new life.”

Daniel Greenlees: His ship came in

From the time he was 12, Daniel Greenlees’s family lived on a 65-foot sailboat. In November 2006, the boat was damaged in a storm and the family was forced to dock in Norfolk, Va.

The family rented an apartment in nearby Virginia Beach while they waited out the repairs. One day, Daniel took off his shirt, and his stepfather looked at him in alarm—ugly stretch marks sprawled across the boy’s chest. “We’ve got to do something about that,” he told Daniel. At 5-foot, 7 inches, Daniel weighed 236 pounds.

Daniel had always struggled with his weight. As a home-schooled teen, he would sit at the computer 14 or 15 hours a day, studying, eating, surfing and playing games. Not attending a traditional school and moving every few years, he had little contact with others. He didn’t mind that so much, though. When he was younger and attended public schools, he often found his interactions with other children painful.

“I had no trouble at a small school I attended, where no one picked on me,” Daniel says. “But at one large school, kids were not nice to me at all. They acted like a mob.”

A few times, Daniel and his mom tried to do something about the extra pounds. But good intentions can backfire.

“One time, my mom decided we were going to eat healthier food,” he says. “But instead of just buying some good things, that night for dinner she made her own pasta from scratch… from eggplant! It was awful.”

In Norfolk, the family’s apartment was just steps away from Jim White Fitness Studios. Daniel and his mother went over to check it out. He liked what he saw, and he knew it was time to act. “I knew this was the best opportunity I’d ever have to lose weight, and so I took it,” Daniel says.

Jim paired Daniel with personal trainer Eric McGlaughlin. The first thing he had the family do was clean out their pantry and refrigerator. “We threw out pancakes, waffles, toaster strudels, Hot Pockets, Poptarts, a lot of different things,” Daniel says. He and his mom went shopping for fruits, vegetables, lean meats and other healthy foods and began cooking low-fat, low-calorie meals.

Daniel worked two days a week with Eric and three days by himself, each time for 45 minutes to an hour and a half, splitting his time between cardio workouts and weight training. Although he was self-motivated, he credits Eric with much of his success. “I worked out as hard as I could, and Eric wouldn’t let me slack off,” Daniel says. “He could tell when I was getting bored, and he’d change things around to keep me motivated.”

Now 70 pounds lighter, Daniel loves being outdoors and he participates in sports. He says with wonder, but a little shyly, that girls are interested in him. He’s still amazed at how much he’s changed, when not so long ago his future looked hopeless.

“I used to see people jogging or playing games outdoors and I’d think, ‘Why do people want to do that?’” he remembers. “I was always tired before and I’d think to myself, ‘Why bother?’”

Today, Daniel has joined the Army, where fitness is a must, and he is stationed overseas.

“It’s nice fitting into decent clothes now. I’m able to get places—I can run up stairs—instead of moving at a waddling pace,” he says. “I can’t sit still all the time, like I used to. There are people out there I want to meet.”

And, judging from his newly found optimism for life, I bet those people want to meet Daniel, too.

Pastor Robert Hartwell: The Skinny on Sacrifice

Most people make weight loss resolutions only after the annual holiday binge. But it was on New Year’s Eve 2007 that the Rev. Robert Hartwell’s weight-loss odyssey came to a dramatic close. That morning, he stepped on a scale on NBC’s Today Show in front of 10 million people.

Just how the pastor of Village Lutheran Church in Bronxville, NY, got to this point began two years earlier. Pastor Hartwell's church had started a campaign to pay down an $8 million mortgage the church had assumed for a building project.

One day, Pastor Hartwell got a baffling call. A former parishioner, someone who kept close ties with the church, offered to make a substantial donation. But there was a catch. “This donor said that he wanted me to commit to losing 70 pounds, and if I did so, he would donate $5,000 for each pound I lost,” he says.

It was both an intriguing and a heartbreaking offer. “I was crushed—mortified—that someone had discovered that I was overweight, although of course everyone saw it when I stepped into the pulpit each week,” Pastor Hartwell says. “But this donor said he wanted to know that I was as committed to the project as he was.”

So was born “The Skinny on Sacrifice” campaign. Although up this point Pastor Hartwell hadn’t acknowledged his weight problem, he certainly understood how it had happened.

“My life is so hectic. I was always eating on the run. I’d grab a muffin between hospital visits, get home from council meetings at 10:30 at night, exhausted and ravenous, and grab a couple of sandwiches and chips,” he says. “And I was a volume eater—I could eat a half a pizza by myself, or eight White Castle burgers at a time.”

By the time the sly donor came into the picture, the six-foot-tall pastor weighed about 270 pounds. After consulting with his parish nurse practitioner, Pastor Hartwell took up the challenge, choosing NutriSystem for his meals.

On a food plan of about 1,500 calories a day, Pastor Hartwell lost 10 pounds almost immediately, and he continued to lose two to three pounds a week. He and his wife, Sue, had always walked for pleasure, and he made sure he got in two to three miles a day. After six months, he started going to the gym at next-door Concordia College, where he is an adjunct professor. A congregant who is a personal trainer showed him how to use the machines. He found the college atmosphere stimulating. “I was there with the 19- and 20-year old baseball players, and they motivated me to keep going,” he says.

Meanwhile, an employee at the church’s school who happened to be a lighting director for the Today Show brought the pastor’s challenge to the attention of a producer. The producer asked whether Pastor Hartwell would be willing to weigh in on the show the morning of December 31, 2007.

“I had already told the donor that I wouldn’t weigh in during a church service, and here I was agreeing to do it in front of a live audience on national television,” he laughs. “Barring Jesus projecting it in the sky over the earth, it couldn’t get any bigger than that!"

Just before Pastor Hartwell stepped out onto the stage, someone clipped a microphone to the back of his shirt. “This thing must weigh five pounds!” he protested. No matter. Robert made the donor’s 70-pound limit, with 8 extra pounds in the bargain. The donor wrote a check for $390,000, which church members augmented for an even $400,000.

Since then, Pastor Hartwell has lost 18 more pounds, bringing his total to 96. And, while he originally targeted 200 as his goal weight, he now wants to see 170—a total loss of 100 pounds. He still uses NutriSystem, and intends to continue even after reaching his goal.

In 2008, Pastor Hartwell challenged his congregation and the church's school to join the Skinny on Sacrifice II challenge. Over 200 people took it on and by last year had lost over 3,000 pounds. Many participants reported improved blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels, allowing many to reduce or eliminate medications to treat those conditions.

Pastor Hartwell says he now believes that weight loss is not only an individual pursuit yielding personal satisfaction, but a goal with wide-ranging possibilities for strengthening family and community ties. “Food is a short cut. Food is really a substitute for spending time with each other. I just decided we weren't going to do that anymore," he says.

Jimmy Moore: Livin' La Vida Low-Carb

Jimmy Moore is Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb. That’s the name of his book, and it’s the theme of his life.

At age 32, Jimmy weighed 410 pounds. He was being treated for high cholesterol, high blood pressure and labored breathing. He had no hope for his life.

“I believed that was just the way I was supposed to be,” he says. “My family was fat, and I had been fat my whole life. My mom was a single mom who had to feed three growing kids, so she bought what she could afford, which was pretty much junk food.”

Over the years, Jimmy tried many diets, all of them low-fat. But even when he dieted, he piled on the sugar. “I was addicted to Twizzlers—a naturally fat-free food!” he says.

In 1999, he lost 170 pounds on a zero-fat diet. But he was grumpy and "psychologically messed up,” he says. And, ultimately, he couldn't stick with it. After one slip-up with a McDonald's meal, he quickly gained back all 170 pounds.

In the fall of 2003, Jimmy attended a church festival that featured a climbing wall. He thought that at 6-feet, 3-inches tall, getting to the top would be a breeze.

“I started up and on the first step, my foot slipped and I fell,” he says. “I tried again, and again I fell. On the third try, I slipped again and this time, I sprained my ankle.”

At that moment, the defeated climber thought to himself: “Jimmy, you are out of control!”

Jimmy knew two people who had succeeded on the Atkins diet. On January 4, 2004, he began. Right off, he ran into trouble. “That first day, I thought I was going to die. I had the worst headache, my body ached. I pleaded with my wife to just kill me,” he says.

Within a few days the symptoms subsided, and in two months, Jimmy lost 70 pounds. Some of the loss was undoubtedly because Jimmy started using a treadmill, but obviously, he was thriving on a diet comprising about 60-70 percent fat, but just 20 grams of carbohydrates a day, including two cups of low-carb vegetables.

In a little over a year, Jimmy lost 180 pounds. Today, he continues with Atkins, limits carbs to 30-35 grams a day, engages in aerobic exercise and works out with weights.

Succeeding at the Atkins diet has literally changed Jimmy Moore’s life. In 2005, he self-published Livin' La Vida Low-Carb: My Journey from Flabby Fat to Sensationally Skinny in One Year. He is at work on his second book, 21 Life Lessons From Livin' La Vida Low-Carb: How the Healthy Low-Carb Lifestyle Changed Everything I Thought I Knew. He blogs, writes for nutrition and health-related websites, and creates podcasts and YouTube videos for the low-carb cause. Read Jimmy's blog here and tune into his podcasts here.

Jimmy pleads with others to take control of their lives, no matter what weight loss plan you choose.

“Do it like you’ve never done anything before,” he urges. “It’s not about will power; it’s about steadfast resolve. Commit to it, even when it hurts. It is so worth it.”

Why did I wait so long?

When I think about why I waited so long to do something about my weight, I can come up with a lot of reasons. I had my own business. I was caring for our son, volunteering at his school, all while trying to remain viable in my profession. To keep up, I reasoned, I needed to read widely and write every day, not be checking in at the front desk for a spin class.

But, to be honest, my biggest hindrance was myself. I denied the truth; I didn’t want to admit I looked and felt as bad as I did. For the longest time, the mirror lied to me. It lies to most of us, in fact. Very few people see themselves as others do. One Pew Research Center study found that while nine in 10 people believe that most of their fellow Americans are overweight, only four in 10 see themselves as overweight.

Even when faced with the truth, I firmly believed that I could take care of the situation, if and when I wanted to. After all, I was my own boss. Nobody was going to tell me what to do. Ultimately, though, I was humbled to realize that I was guilty of one of those old-fashioned, outdated Seven Deadly Sins. No, not Gluttony, but Pride.

I didn’t want anyone’s help, even though it was obvious I wasn’t helping myself. I was doing just fine by myself, thank you very much. It’s nonsensical that just when I was feeling the worst about myself, I was the most prideful, but there it is. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” the Lord observes in the book of Jeremiah.

I thought people who paid money for gyms were frivolous, that people who bought prepared meals from weight loss programs were lazy. That these morally defective people were just going to give up anyway, so why were they even bothering? Inwardly, I scoffed at those hyper people who ran, biked, walked, or worked out at home. Surely, I make better use of my time, I crowed to myself.

When my day of reckoning came, it was a huge hurdle to admit that I needed help. For me, the solution was to join a gym. Still, I’m pretty much anonymous there. I go in, swim my laps and leave. I like to go during the day with all the seniors, when all is calm and they haven’t cranked up the music yet for the after-work muscle crowd.

Anyone who decides to act will face the same question: How much personal attention do I want—-or need—-from others to succeed? It helps to know yourself: Are you a person who will exercise only in a class setting? Or are you a private person who would rather die than show up in spandex at a jock gym? Could meeting one-on-one with a personal trainer keep you motivated? Or would you thrive with the encouragement of a support group? You're in this for the long term, so it pays to make a good decision upfront. Or, to change direction quickly when you find something isn't working for you. So, what's holding you back, and how do you think can you overcome it and get going?