When my mom notices the peanut-butter-and-jelly supply is low or hears the waterfall of milk entering my fourth bowl of cereal, she sometimes loses her cool and questions my possibly excessive eating habits, to which I now always reply, "When I start getting fat, then you can yell at me for eating too much."
The reason I eat the way I do is because I'm a still growing young man with an active lifestyle. Fifty four year-old Teena Henson of Texas was neither young nor a growing man when she discovered than an active lifestyle was a better way to lose weight than careful dieting, CNN reported.
Henson used a new gym in town that she'd been to before (at another location) and liked as the impetus for a plan that would help her drop 160 pounds.
"Then there was an ad in the local paper that Anytime Fitness was opening," she told CNN. "It was like, 'Here it is; it's in your hands. Now, what are you going to do with it?'"
Before Anytime moved in, Henson was 5-foot-4, 332 pounds. She'd tried all sorts of diets -- some that were a fad and others that could have been sustainable had she stuck with them; none worked.
"For me, 'diet' is a four-letter word for failure," she said.
As Hensen upped her physical activity to between 30 and 60 minutes every day, she gained better control of her diet. She cut out soda while eating less fast food and more fruits/vegetables, according to CNN.
Not that physical exercise is always the immediate answer to losing weight, but perhaps Henson's story is a sign that it's better to try dieting or exercise separately before attempting to incorporate both. Then, one might fuel the other, as it did with Henson.
"The smallest of changes one can make in their present lifestyle can garner big changes," Henson said, "not only in the physical body, but in the mind."
