Coaching transformation
Obenour goes from guiding Great Bridge boys basketball team to helping people lose weight
If you’re like me, you’ve probably come up with some New Year’s resolutions for 2023, whether it’s saving more money, eating healthier, exercising more or losing weight.
Unfortunately, most don’t keep their New Year’s resolution. One study showed that of the 41% of Americans who made a New Year’s resolution, only 9% were successful in keeping them at year’s end.
In 2017, former Great Bridge High School boys basketball coach Gary Obenour made a resolution and he stuck to it, thanks to his daughter, Mallory.
In December of 2016, she was concerned because his weight had ballooned to more than 300 pounds. She was getting ready to move to Florida and confronted him about his weight with her impending wedding coming up in June.
“I basically told him I was worried about him,” Mallory said recently. “And I told him, ‘I don’t know if you’re going to be around to even walk me down the aisle.’ ”
Obenour, 58, was floored by her words.
“When your kid tells you something like that, I had to take an inventory and take a long look at myself,” he said. “She told me things I didn’t want to hear, but that I knew. I thought I can either keep going down this path or I can make a decision to change.”
Ironically, the next week, Obenour’s wife, Michele, heard a health presentation at her job at Virginia Wesleyan. The speaker was Charlotte Montgomery, a certified health and wellness coach for Optavia, which is one of the fastest-growing health and wellness communities, with more than 2 million lives impacted.
After hearing Montgomery’s talk, Michele approached her and gave her Gary’s phone number and said, “Call my husband. He needs this,” Obenour remembers his wife saying.
Not only did Obenour hear from Michele and Mallory, but also from his son, Austin.
“He said, ‘Dad, you have to do something,’ ” Gary said. “I decided to do [Optavia] without any reservation.”
Obenour lost 13 pounds the first week and never looked back. For five years, he’s kept between 100 and 120 pounds off. He’s also gotten off high blood pressure and cholesterol medicines, and his self-esteem has improved.
What Obenour learned was that eating healthier was all about education and nutrition.
“It’s knowing what you’re putting in your mouth,” he said. “That’s the whole crux of it.”
No one was more excited for Obenour than his daughter, who was surprised when she came home four months later to see her father’s weight loss.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, you’re doing it. It’s working,’ ” she said. “I was ecstatic.”
A few months later he, indeed, walked his daughter down the aisle.
“Usually the bride is glowing, but he was glowing,” Mallory said about her father’s 50-pound weight loss in six months. “He looked so good. And he just looked so much happier.”
It was then that Montgomery approached Obenour about becoming a health and wellness coach.
She thought he’d be perfect because of his dramatic results and because he was a former coach. He accepted.
“He’s got the discipline, and he expects that from his students that he coaches,” she said. “His loyalty is key. He’s so determined in making sure that he shows people that he’s successful, that he’s not going to let anything slide. That accountability is what sets him apart. It’s hard for you to slip back when you’re helping somebody else move forward.”
In October of 2017, Obenour stepped down as Great Bridge boys basketball coach. At the time, he told me it was to “pursue other options.”
He had spent 30 years with the program at the junior-varsity and varsity levels, including 18 as head coach. He led the Wildcats to four Southeastern District titles, and his teams qualified for eight region playoff berths, including a region title in 2013. The Wildcats that year also clinched the program’s first state tournament appearance since 1958.
Mallory wondered if her father would be OK without basketball.
“When he finally took a step back from coaching basketball, I was kind of worried about him because I wondered what was he going to do with all of his spare time,” she said. “But when he became a wellness coach, I thought it was an awesome idea and he would be good at it.
“It was a lateral move,” she said. “Now he’s able to help so many people, and I think it holds him accountable, too. I’m so proud of him. And he continues to inspire a lot of people, including me.”
Obenour has helped many since becoming a health and wellness coach, including former Deep Creek High track coach Chris Brumm.
Brumm, whose weight had gotten up to as high as 315 pounds in 2016, heard from another coach about Obenour’s weight loss. He decided to reach out and received a message from Obenour the next day that said, “Life changing. Reach out to me if you want to talk.”
Brumm did, and after talking with Obenour, he joined the program and lost more than
100 pounds.
“I just really didn’t have good habits,” Brumm said. “I guess I just wasn’t in the right mindset. I was just looking for some structure, but I couldn’t find anything.”
Brumm is now a health and wellness coach. He, like Obenour, thought it would be a great transition from coaching athletes.
“We’ve coached young people for so long in athletics, trying to help them reach their goals and help them strive to be the best that they can be,” said Brumm, who retired in 2018 after he coached track and football for 28 years, including at Crestwood Middle, Oscar Smith High and Deep Creek. “This is working with adults and trying to get them to reach their goals. It’s just a different type of goal.”
Obenour is enjoying it, too. Now instead of wins on the court, he’s helping people win in life off the court.
“Seeing people have success after you’ve talked to them and taught them and worked with their mindset, it’s very fulfilling,” he said. “It’s very satisfying to help someone get healthy. And then to see the excitement in their face when they want you to talk to their friends, it’s nice. “