It’s hard to imagine yoga instructor Megan Hunter, a 22-year-old triathlete who teaches sports nutrition at Saint Francis University, as anything but fit.
But when I was talking to her for a recent story on office yoga, Hunter told me she was once an overweight teen with a family history of obesity, diabetes and heart problems.
During a visit to the doctor’s office just before entering high school, she was horrified to learn she was “borderline for something – I don’t remember now if it was blood pressure or what.”
At that moment she decided to do everything she could to avoid a genetic time bomb. She took up jogging, joined the swim team, gave up soda and junk food and started eating oatmeal because she heard it was good for your heart.
“I was eating like three bowls a day” – breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack — along with whatever her mom made for dinner. She lost 40 pounds that year.
There are two morals to this story: There are many paths to weight loss, given enough motivation. And you should never assume that fit people have it easier than you do, because you never know how much toil was involved in them getting to where they are today.
For more information on an oatmeal diet, check out this post on livestrong.com.
The morals are right on… Don’t compare your insides to someone else’s outsides. Great post Tisch.
That’s an interesting way of putting it. Thanks.