‘I feel like I’m 10 years younger’
Burnaby’s Diana Radosevic, whose weight hovered above 200 pounds for most of her life, tried numerous fad diets to no avail.
The 36-year-old Burnaby mom, who’s five feet, five inches, tried juice cleanses, restricting calories, skipping meals, cutting carbs and “fat burners” (diet pills that contain ephedrine), but she always regained the weight and then some.
“You’re always looking for those quick fixes,” Radosevic said. “I’ve done it all and it just doesn’t work.”
By April 2013, weighing 205 pounds, she decided she had to approach weight loss “the right way” — with proper diet and exercise — and that it was going to be a long process.
She joined Burnaby’s Capitol Hill Athletics Studio, enlisted the help of a personal trainer, and within two years lost 70 pounds and cut her percentage of body fat in half.
“The long run — it’s benefiting me. I’m winning,” said Radosevic, who’s now a certified personal trainer. “I feel like I’m 10 years younger. I feel at peace.”
She attributes her success to proper nutrition, tracking her food intake, weight training and a support system of trainers.
She used the iPhone app My Fitness Pal to track her food and was shocked to see how much sugar, carbohydrates and sodium she was consuming.
“We don’t realize how much sugars are in fruit, there’s sugar in vegetables,” she said.
While she wasn’t counting macronutrients (protein, carbs and fats), she monitored them, aiming for a better balance.
She stopped eating out and cut out chocolate, breads and pastas. She increased her protein intake and learned to better pair foods.
At breakfast she now includes a protein, healthy carb and fat (a typical breakfast consists of egg whites, oatmeal and peanut butter) and increases her carb intake on weighttraining days.
She also includes more meals throughout the day, eating every two to three hours. She preps meals at least two days ahead by cooking five chicken breasts at a time, boiling a big pot of broccoli and cutting up veggies, for example.
She also revamped her workouts, which used to consist of hours on the treadmill.
“We think we can do boundless rounds of cardio. Unfortunately, cardio depletes a lot of your muscles,” said Radosevic. “Weight training is key.”
She emphasized the importance of working the back of the body as well as the front: “If you’re not building strong glutes and hams, and have a strong back, it actually prevents you from building a stronger front as well.”
Now her workouts consist of a fiveminute warm-up on the bike, followed by weight training — either a full-body workout or focusing on upper body one day and lower the next — and cardio at the end, when the body is in the fat-burning zone.
She spends only about 20 minutes on cardio because she does intervals, such as sprinting for one minute on the treadmill, followed by two minutes of walking.