A 28-year-old woman has lost 130lbs after her weight began affecting her family life. Adrianna from New Jersey, USA has struggled with her weight since she was a child, but it wasn’t until she had her son that the pounds really started to pile on.
She told Truly: “I was held back from a lot. Walking up the steps was a challenge for me, doing laundry was a challenge for me."
Her fiancé Duane added: “I was worried about her weight gain, mainly for her health. It really triggered when she had our son." At her heaviest Adrianna weighed 298lbs, and she even considered weight loss surgery.
She said: “I did consider weight loss surgery, I made an appointment. I left and I was like ‘okay no, this is not for me’."
Adrianna decided to lose the weight naturally and began working out with her partner three days a week. She noticed the weight coming off straight away and in just under two years she lost 130lbs.
Losing the weight so quickly has left Adrianna with excess skin around her stomach and thighs. She said: “I would choose my excess skin one hundred times over being 300lbs. It’s hard, but when it’s hard - you have to push through it.”
As far as exercise, I started small," said Adrianna, "doing more and being more active and building up over time." This is key to any sustainable weight loss plan: starting small, and building up. If you begin doing extremely intense workouts and a restrictive diet right away, you're more likely to give it up according to Harvard University (opens in new tab). But building up slowly and sustainably is the key to success.
Starting small could mean walking round the block a few times. Walking to lose weight is easy to fit into your daily life, low-intensity and great for you. Walking for half an hour can burn 100 calories, but it can also decrease the production of the stress hormone cortisol, a "fight or flight" hormone which encourages your body to cling onto fat.
In addition, it gets your body used to regular exercise, improving your muscle strength and mobility in preparation for light jogging or other forms of training.
During the video, we see Adrianna doing loads of resistance training, using equipment such as the best adjustable dumbbells and being taught how to do sit-ups. While cardiovascular exercise is great for weight loss, resistance training also improves "body composition", or your ratio of muscle-to-fat. The more lean muscle you build, the more fat you burn in the long term, as your muscles demand oxygen, causing your body to work harder and increasing your metabolism.
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