Health News. Lots of resources and information

Everyone in Regina Owens’s life understands that nothing interferes with her workouts. After all, it was this kind of passion and devotion that enabled her to lose 65 pounds and reduce her dress size from a 22 to a 10.

Each day, Regina rises at 4:30 A.M. for a 5-mile walk. In the evening, after work, she packs herself and her kids in the car and drives 30 miles to a gym. While she lifts weights for an hour, her kids do their homework.

“Yes, I’m obsessive. But at least the whole exercise thing is a healthy obsession for me. That hasn’t always been so,” says Regina, a 46-year-old housing director from Eustis, Florida.

Indeed, before Regina latched on to exercise, she was eating too much and abusing sleeping pills—her ways of coping with the emotional strain of a difficult marriage. Turning her life around required that she pursue health as obsessively as she once had those destructive behaviors. “I needed to do something positive, and I needed to do it wholeheartedly,” she says.

She began by taking long walks around a lake near her home. During those walks, she thought about her problems and her desire to change. Within a few months, she was averaging between 8 and 10 miles a day. She began eating better, too, by reducing her fat intake, restricting sweets, and learning to control her compulsive snacking. She took up weightlifting and studied to become a certified trainer, which she now does as a sideline.

“To succeed, I knew I had to go at it full force,” she says. “Later, my motivation came from seeing my body go through this incredible transformation. I got leaner and fitter.

“Once that started happening, my workouts became something I needed to do,” she says. “Now, if I don’t get my workout in, I don’t feel like my day is complete.”

WINNING ACTION

Work with your personality, not against it. Concentrate on turning negative obsessions and behaviors into healthy passions and choices. Be obsessive, but in a positive way, if that suits your personality. If you’re more laid-back, focus on making small changes. Find the style that works for you.

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