STIMULATE YOUR DETERMINATION: SHE HAS A PLAN FOR STAYING SLIM
Sharon Duke leaves nothing to chance.
The San Jose, California, resident meticulously plans out every detail of every day—from when and what she eats to where and how she exercises, from trips to the grocery store to trips out of town.
That may seem like a lot of work. But Sharon, 51, doesn’t want to leave anything to chance, especially in terms of maintaining a healthy weight.
What spurred this painstaking attention to detail? As her fiftieth birthday approached, Sharon noticed that her weight had crept up to 161 pounds—too much for her 5-foot-3 frame. She had been gaining a couple of pounds every year since her mid-forties. Because she ate healthfully and exercised regularly, she didn’t think that her lifestyle was to blame for the 35 extra pounds. Instead, she suspected that the combination of advancing age and menopause were stalling her metabolism.
Sharon decided that she’d have to be even more vigilant about her healthy lifestyle if she wanted to bring back her slim and shapely figure. “At the time, my health club was offering a 6-week nutrition-awareness class, so I signed up,” Sharon recalls. “I discovered that even though I was making good food choices, I was eating far too much. That’s what got me started on planning ahead.”
If she had a business lunch with colleagues, she found out in advance where they intended to eat and chose her meal beforehand. “I’d call the restaurant and ask if they offered a chef’s salad with grilled chicken, or a fruit salad,” she says. “If they didn’t have what I wanted, I’d eat before we went out, then just order a side salad at the restaurant.”
When her job required her to travel out of town, she called restaurants near where she was staying and inquire about their menus. “If I couldn’t find one with suitable menu items, I’d go to a grocery store and pick up some food to take back to my room,” she says.
Sharon applied her plan-ahead strategy to her exercise pro-•£ I gram, too. Before she traveled, she called the hotel to find out whether it had exercise equipment or if there was a gym nearby. If ^ \ not, during her hotel stay she got up early to take a 2-mile walk or she climbed stairs at the hotel.
Once she started mapping out her daily routine, Sharon lost the extra 35 pounds within 6 months. She has maintained her weight at 126 pounds since 1998.
WINNING ACTION
Prepare a daily plan. If you find yourself struggling to stick with your weight-loss program, Sharon’s strategy may work for you, too. You may even want to keep a daily planner, which you can buy in any office-supply store. Then each night, spend 15 minutes or so mapping out the next day. Include as much detail as you can, especially in terms of mealtimes ajid workout time. Of course, you can’t always anticipate what will happen every moment of every day. But a daily plan gives you a better chance of keeping your weight-loss efforts on track.
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