SUCCESS STORY
Beachbody coach’s 21 Day Fix does the trick, along with a little peer pressure and support
Melanie Spillman has dropped four dress sizes since joining the Beachbody 21 Day Fix three months ago.
Local art teacher Melanie Spillman has a thing for purchasing weight loss DVDs from infomercials.
She also has a track record of gaining back the weight she loses from using the DVDs.
“I saw a photo of myself three months ago, and it was something that wasn’t talked about,” Spillman, 42, of East Memphis, said.
Close to the same time of seeing t he unmentionable photo, a longtime friend and Beachbody coach posted a call on Facebook for people to join her 21 Day Fix, which suited Spillman.
“I liked the word ‘challenge,’ and knowing it was a group all doing it with me, I knew it would keep me accountable,” Spillman said.
She is now on her fourth challenge.
The group aspect of the challenge helped keep Spillman on board.
“I would be all gung-ho about my DVDs for a while, but I was by myself. With this, I would come home from being with kids for eight hours, and I would know that everybody else was doing the same exercises I had to do,” she said.
Spillman and other challengers support each other through social media groups, and after all starting the challenge on the same day, follow a set schedule of DVD workouts for the duration of the 21 days.
Her routine is to complete her workouts as soon as she walks in the door from work.
“I make myself do them immediately. I don’t make excuses. I don’t eat a snack. Snacks are for afterward. I don’t take phone calls,” she said.
The program also helped Spillman take charge of her eating habits.
When she joined she received a collection of colorcoded plastic food containers in various sizes, which correspond to the different food groups.
“Depending on your height and weight, you fit into a certain category. I can have 1,200 to 1,400 calories a day ... They (the containers) helped me see visually what I was doing wrong, especially with the yellow container,” Spillman said.
She fills the yellow container with carbs.
So far, she has dropped four dress sizes, from a 12 to an 8, “and they’re baggy,” she said.
Spillman has also become a Beachbody coach herself, getting her friends and colleagues to join new challenges.
Her main goal is to remain healthy as she ages. That and to have nice abs.
“I want to get a strong core, which is something I’ve never had,” she said. “I’m 42, and I’m going to be 50 and very fit.”