“Rebounding gave me my life back!”
Stress, high blood pressure and 100 extra pounds had Heidi Mettier, 57, hiding from those around her—until she found a fun solution that helped her feel revitalized
Oh no, she saw me…now I have to say hello, Heidi Mettier thought as one of her customers walked toward her in a parking lot. Heidi pasted a weak smile on her face. “Cute top, Heidi! It hides a lot, doesn’t it?” the woman said carelessly. Heidi’s cheeks burned. “I had purposely gone to a store in another town yet the jabs still found me,” she recalls. “People thought that because I worked in a public position with the city’s finance department, my weight was somehow open for public discussion. The snarky comments felt inescapable.”
Feeling hopeless
“I’d been a stay-at-home mom for 17 years, and when I went back to a desk job with the city, it was hard. I was so stressed during the day and so exhausted by the time I got home. Within a couple of years, I’d put on 100 pounds. My blood pressure climbed to 180/100 and my doctor prescribed medication. I was scared that I was going to have a heart attack and not be here for my kids and grandkids.
“I started eating healthier, but the weight wasn’t coming off. I knew that if I wanted to change, I had to exercise. But I didn’t want to go to one of the gyms in town—years of public service have made me very recognizable. I couldn’t bear hearing people whisper, Oh, there’s Heidi, and I was terrified of the brutal body shaming I saw happening to others on social media. I’d become very introverted,
unwilling to even go for a walk outside. So instead, I looked up exercise classes on YouTube, but I didn’t find anything that was right for me. I had plantar fasciitis and back issues…I couldn’t do even a single jumping jack. Honestly, I felt like I couldn’t do anything.
A joyful fix
“Then one morning I was watching my local news program, when a trainer came in with 10 rebounders and began showing the news team how fun and easy getting in shape could be. As I watched those women jump up and down to music, I remembered that my aunt had a rebounder and jumped well into her 90s. I knew in that moment that rebounding was what I needed to do. It wouldn’t be a drag to exercise and I could do it in the privacy of my home, free from the prying eyes of neighbors and customers.
“I was so overweight that I was nervous about getting on the rebounder because I wasn’t sure if it could hold me. I did some research and discovered the Bellicon brand, which seemed sturdy and was well-reviewed online. I selected a model that had a balancing handle called a T-bar attached, which I could hold on to if I felt unstable.
“My first rebounding session, I was like a kid in a candy store. I was so excited. I was jumping up and down, doing jumping jacks and twists—and amazingly, there was no back or foot pain because the rebounder took all the pressure off my joints. My husband leaves early for work, so every morning I would get up with him, put on my workout clothes, and as soon as the door closed behind him, I’d hop on and jump my heart out.
“I lost 10 pounds that first month, and after 10 months, I was down
100 pounds. When I went for my annual check-up and my doctor saw my weight loss, he was floored. I had logged my blood pressure for two weeks prior to show him, and when he saw my numbers—113/77—he told me I could stop taking my meds.
“It’s been two years and I feel like my true self again. My stress and migraines went away, I sleep better and my foot and back pain vanished. I used to have nosebleeds from high blood pressure, but those are gone too.
“Joy and happiness have come back into my heart because I know I got my life back and my husband got his wife back. I’m ready to get involved in my community again—the prospect of running into a neighbor no longer makes my stress levels spike. When you’re overweight, some people treat you differently, but they don’t know who you are on the inside. Now everywhere I go, people see the real me!” —as told to Alyssa Rosenthal
“My stress and migraines went away, I sleep better and my foot and back pain vanished.”
—Heidi Mettier