Peter Engwall: Fatherhood Spurs 140-pound loss
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Peter’s Best Life Stats |
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Starting date/weight |
January 2, 2007 at 332 pounds |
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Pounds lost |
140 |
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Goal weight |
185 (7 pounds to go!) |
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Best Life Status |
Phase 3/Activity Level 4* |
Like many Best Life members, Peter Engwall, 35, signed up for the program shortly after the introduction of Bob Greene’s book on Oprah in January 2007. After watching, he was inspired to buy the book, and he read it cover to cover in one day.
At about the same time, he and his wife were looking for activities to do with their four-year-old son, Auggie, during the winter months and decided to tour the local YMCA. “When we walked by the Cardio room, I asked my wife, ‘Are there any fat people in there?’ and she said, ‘Yes, but they’re getting skinny.’ That’s when I realized it was time to change my less-than-active lifestyle.” The six-foot, 332-pound IT project manager vowed to drop nearly 150 pounds. One of his main motivators: His son; he wanted to be able to do more, play more, be more involved with him.
Since joining the plan, Peter has literally become a new man. He has dropped an astounding 140 pounds, leaving him just seven pounds shy of his goal weight. What clicked for Peter? Check out some of his pointers below.
It’s not a diet...it’s a lifestyle change. “I didn’t like the stigma that goes along with being on a diet, and have heard that diets don’t work. So I thought to myself, if I don’t go on a diet but instead make a few changes in my life, it should work,” he says. “I’d been ‘husky’ all of my life and never really tried to understand why I was overweight. Basically, I was overweight because I was lazy and I liked to eat.”
You have to burn more than you take in. “I learned that if I just move a little more each day and be careful about what I eat, the weight would come off. And whenever I ate something, I said, ‘Does it taste good, or am I hungry?” If the answer was ‘it tastes good,’ then I wouldn’t eat it; if I was hungry, then I had one serving,” he says. “This also helped me realize how calories impact weight loss and how much work I had to do in order to burn just one calorie.”
Just start moving. “We joined the YMCA, which is only a couple of blocks from my office, and I decided to go there during lunch one day. I got on the treadmill and walked. The next thing I knew, 30 minutes had gone by and I was completely wiped out,” Peter says. “But it felt good. So, I went back a couple of days later. Before I knew it, I needed to go; it was just feeling too good.”
As time went by, Peter started to use the stationary bike and upped his treadmill pace. He took advantage of the Y’s free consultation with a fitness coach to figure out the weight machines, and began to lift weights as part of his regular routine. With a tracking program called FitLinxx, he determined how much weight to lift as well as how many reps and sets to do. “When you finish your workout, it tells you your stats for the day. Imagine my surprise when it said I’d lifted 42,000 pounds in one workout!” he says. “You can also go online and see how you compare to others at your location or within your age group. I liked seeing where I stood against others and had fun watching myself climb the ladder.”
Shop smart. Although Peter doesn’t follow the meal plans, he does look for the Best Life seal on products, and finds that grocery shopping has become much easier now. “I knew that if I saw Best Life on a product, I could eat it, and it would be good for me," he says. And now that he has a kitchen stocked with nutritious foods, it's easy to eat right. "Instead of having a can of Mountain Dew to wake me up, as was my habit for the past seven years, I have a real breakfast of yogurt, a hard-boiled egg or cereal. I also take my vitamin and an omega-3 supplement.”
Logging leads to losing. Once Peter started keeping track of his food intake and exercise, he noticed a difference almost immediately. “I was seeing results, and most importantly I was having fun," Peter says. "With my wife's loving support and encouragement, the results I was seeing, and people asking me, ‘Are you shrinking?!’ it just became easy to keep moving.”
An outstanding outcome: From fat to fun Daddy
“I used to tell my son that ‘someday’ we would go to Disney Land, when in reality I knew that we wouldn't go until I could fit into the roller-coaster, and I really didn't know when that day would come. This summer, we went to a small festival when we were on vacation, and I could have ridden the rides all day with my son. It was like being a kid again. My son now calls me ‘fun daddy.' I'm also learning to wake board, and having the time of my life. In short, I've found that life is too short to waste being fat."
*People following the Best Life plan progress through three separate phases on their weight-loss journey. They also learn to identify their activity level and are encouraged to move up the activity scale. The phases and activity scale are explained in the book and the website.
From time to time, Bob Greene checks in on www.TheBestLife.com members with a phone call to offer encouragement and advice. Bob recently called Peter to congratulate him on his success and offer suggestions on how to overcome some of his obstacles. |
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