GET YOUR BODY MOVING: SHE GOT IN TOUCH WITH HER THINNER CHILD
Many of us talk about recapturing our youth. Kirie Pedersen actually did it. And it helped her get rid of 40 unwanted pounds.
Kirie, a 48-year-old freelance writer from Brinnon, Washington, prided herself on leading a healthy lifestyle. Her diet consisted primarily of grains and vegetables—little meat, little sugar, no junk food. And she walked for a half-hour to an hour every day.
So when the scale showed that her weight had crept up to 159 pounds, Kirie could come up with only one explanation. “Almost every day for 6 years, my job had me sitting for 8 to 9 hours at a stretch,” she says. “Even though I was eating well and exercising regularly, most of the time I was glued to a chair.”
Kirie became convinced that if she could reclaim some of the nervous energy that she had as a child, she could burn a few more calories over the course of a day. So she found ways to incorporate playful, childlike movements into her life. Every morning, she woke with a big stretch. She swung her arms vigorously when she walked. “I’d act childish in the privacy of my home office,” she says. “I’d set a
timer to go off every hour. That was my cue to get up and move. For 15 minutes, I’d squat, skip, wiggle, dance, whatever I felt like doing.”
One year after she began incorporating childlike movements into her daily routine, Kirie went shopping for clothes with her daughter. “I was comfortable with my wardrobe of baggy clothes, but my daughter persuaded me to try on a pair of jeans, something that I don’t usually wear,” Kirie recalls. “I figured that I’d need a size 12 or 14. My daughter looked at me and said, ‘I don’t think you realize how much weight you’ve lost!’
Her daughter was right. Kirie had taken off 40 pounds—and slimmed down to a size 6—simply by acting like a kid again.
WINNING ACTION
Fidget, stretch, squirm. As it turns out, Kirie is on to something. That something is known as non-exercise thermogenesis, which, in plain English, means that you can burn calories without actually working out. A study at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, found that folks who fidgeted, changed posture, or otherwise moved around a lot during the normal activities of daily living burned many more calories than those who didn’t. As a result, the fidgeters were able to eat more without gaining weight. So go ahead and fidget!
*95\89\8*
Related Posts:
Tags: Weight Loss
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.