Paper staff loses third of person
Twelve weeks after starting the Upper Hutt Leader Lifestyle Challenge, our three participants have had their final weigh ins. Have they kept the exercise and weight loss up?
We did it — we survived three months of dieting, exercise and even worse, scrutiny from our colleagues and the public.
In the process we hopefully inspired a few others to take steps like we did to change lifestyles, improve diets and trim waistlines.
For Sam McArthur, Nicholas Boyack and Blake CraytonBrown, the Upper Hutt Leader Lifestyle Challenge wasn’t always easy. All three had setbacks and weeks where they put on weight rather than losing it.
But between the three, they lost a total of nearly 25kg over the course of the challenge.
McArthur lost 6.3kg. She said she was happy with the result and planned to keep up the good habits she had developed.
‘‘ I had lost a few kilograms before we even started, so I’m stoked I kept it up,’’ she said.
McArthur attributed her weight loss to a sustained CrossFit routine as well as a better diet.
One of the good things she had discovered was that as long as you were disciplined most of the time, you could still ‘‘treat yo’self’’.
‘‘I’ve still had a few treats and glasses of wine over the last few months, not going to lie.’’
For Boyack, a mad-keen tramper, his goal had been to get back into shape so he could return to the Himalayas.
‘‘I said at the start I would cut out the spuds and the booze and I have.’’
The end result was being 10kg lighter.
‘‘I guess it shows that you can make quite a bit of difference without completely changing how you live,’’ he said.
Health reporter Blake CraytonBrown tipped the scales 8.9kg lighter than he was when the challenge began in January.
This was despite the odd jug or two of beer, occasional take-out curry and a fair few forays to Courtenay Place.
‘‘I had hoped we would show people you can make positive changes to your lifestyle and still have a good social life.
‘‘I don’t think any of us missed out on much, and we’re all feeling better than at the start.’’
Crayton-Brown said his body mass index was within the healthy range for the first time in years.
‘‘ I’ve been ‘ overweight’ since half-way through uni. It’s a bit strange to suddenly be ‘normal’.’’
So after 12 weeks of Monday morning weigh-ins and sporadic updates in the Hutt News and Upper Hutt Leader the scales are going back under the bed.
But for McArthur, Boyack and Crayton-Brown, the challenge isn’t really over – they now have to keep the weight off. We’ll give them a couple of weeks to recover from Easter.