WALK OFF 50 LBS! 60 LBS! 100 LBS!
Lose weight—even if obesity is “in your genes”!
She looks beautiful,” Hailey Hechtman murmured, scrolling through her cousin’s wedding photos. The bride was radiant in a sweeping gown. And everyone looked BEFORE so amazing—her beaming aunt, her sweet mom, her giggling sister, her . . . Hailey stopped cold when she came to an image of herself. There she was in a purple dress meant to flow gently over her figure; instead, it clung to roll after roll of fat. In the next photo, she had four chins. In the next, her belly protruded out of the frame. Hailey snapped her laptop closed and felt sick. Is that really me? she asked herself. It can’t be! She walked to the bathroom. For the first time in ages, she stepped on the scale. The number quickly flickered to 287—and hot tears began to spill down Hailey’s cheeks. She’d always been heavy, but when did she get so big? She was still on the scale when she vowed: “This is the heaviest I will ever be.”
A first step
Unsure what to do, Hailey noticed that outside the sun was shining, the sky blue. Put on your shoes and walk, she thought. Setting off too fast, her lungs began to burn; she slowed. Hailey’s feet soon hit the ground in a comforting rhythm. She let her mind drift. As a chubby kid, she’d cried in dressing rooms, convinced something was wrong with her body. Could that have been when she first learned to distract herself from painful feelings with pizza and ice cream? Her teen self had avoided mirrors, thrown herself into being a good daughter and a good friend— eating and eating all the while. Somehow she’d distracted herself until she weighed 287 pounds. Maybe there is something wrong with me. After all, her family had a history of weight issues. Yet Hailey saw flowers dotting the road ahead and her mood lifted. This week, I’ll eat
a little healthier, she vowed. And I’ll walk every day.
Hailey felt stronger with each 20-minute walk she took. On break from college, she also had time to experiment with healthy meals— smoothies, salads, chili. At first a bit hungry, she found drinking lots of water shrunk her appetite. Gradually, she extended her walks until one day, without even realizing, she hit what Harvard researchers have determined is the “magic zone”—an amount of walking proven to deactivate genes that trigger obesity, freeing Hailey’s body to speed off weight. (See box, right, for more.) After a month of walking 60 minutes a day, she’d lost 20 pounds!
The magic zone
“You look great, Hailey!” a friend said a couple months later. By then, she had a system: She’d have loaded oatmeal for breakfast, a healthy sandwich for lunch and a healthy homemade dinner. During her walks, she’d add a few 10-second stints of jogging; she was also doing toning moves. She was smaller, more energetic, her tendency toward blue moods fading away. I can do this, she thought, walking taller each day. Over the next year, she dropped 50 pounds, 60 pounds. “Can you tell me about your diet?” asked her mom, Rhonda, who’d long struggled with her weight. Hailey started recounting the simple changes she’d made. She’d once felt hopeless. Now she knew there was hope for herself—and for her mom, too.
Two years later, Hailey is down 107 pounds. She still walks an hour most days and sticks to healthy meals. “I was lucky to figure out what makes my body the best and healthiest it can be,” says Hailey, 27, who lives in Northern Canada. On May 19th, she went to another wedding—her own! “I met Greg after I’d lost some but not all of the weight. I’m so grateful for the way he supported me,” she recalls. Looking at photos of herself in her strapless size-10 dress, “all the shame I once felt has been replaced with joy.”