October 2011 Fitness Success Story

New Wave Fitness October 2011 Clients of the Month are: Wendy & Lou! Click below to watch their inspiring video interview and see how they have been able to lose a total of 91 pounds together! They are both in smaller clothing sizes, eating healthy–and can now keep up with all of the kids in their lives! (Read the transcript of their interview below the video.)

New Wave Fitness:
Wendy and Lou, what was your life like before you began your training program with New Wave Fitness?

Wendy Paschen:
Pretty much sedentary. I didn’t do much, and all I heard from my parents was, “When are you going to lose weight? When are you going to lose weight? Don’t you want to do something about that?” No. My doctor—“You really need to lose weight. You’re a diabetic, it would help. Get it off.” And I’m like, “I’m going to do it someday. I’m really going to do it.”

Lou Brazeal:
I think I just wanted to feel better. I was tired of being fat. We did our own little diets here and there, but we would always fall off the wagon and, you know, you get right back to where you were, plus some.

Wendy Paschen:
We have had so many pieces of exercise equipment in and out of this house that we could probably outfit our own gym.

Lou Brazeal:
My basic problem was, I didn’t know if we could stick with it. In my mind, I was going, “That’s a lot of money to spend. Am I going to be able to stick with it and see it through?” That was my main concern.

Wendy Paschen:
I take four different medications for diabetes and one for cholesterol and one for high blood pressure, and that is a huge motivation for me to do this, see it through, and get of those medicines. The savings from my medicine will pay for this two or three times.

New Wave Fitness:
What specific results have you achieved with our program?

Wendy Paschen:
Well, I’ve dropped two top sizes and two pant sizes, and I know this sounds goofy, but my feet are even smaller. I’ve lost 52 pounds, and I just feel so much better. When we do our walking, five months ago, I was like two blocks behind everybody else, and it was like, “Are you coming?” And I’d be, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m coming,” and now I keep up.

Lou Brazeal:
I just had a complete knee replacement and I needed to lose weight in order to make it work better, because it was not doing what it needed to do. I’ve lost 39 pounds. I’ve lost about 9 inches in the hips and about 13 inches in the bicep and 5 inches in my waist. I still have about 50 pounds to go, but I know Jeremy is going to get me there.

This has been a real challenge for me because in my lifetime, I’ve had 45 surgeries and I started getting pretty heavy about the age of 25. So this is really a good thing for me. I would say we ate really bad before we started this program. We ate a lot of carbs, a lot of sugar. Now we really watch what we eat. I grill every weekend, fix fresh vegetables, fruit, for the whole week, so all we have to do is come home and warm it up. We have stuff for our lunches all week so we don’t have to worry about it.

Wendy Paschen:
We do go out and we do eat the things that we like; we just don’t eat as much of it as we used to. We have a better understanding of how many calories are in things. I don’t like to keep books, I’m not a detail person, but since we have to do that, I was amazed at how many calories are in the foods you eat.

I’ve always said to myself, “I’m going to start tomorrow,” so this has made me start, made me see that it works, that if you stick with it, it works. I won’t say I don’t fall off the wagon or sit here some nights going, “I really don’t want to do this,” but it’s great having somebody come here. I can’t dodge it. I can’t not go. So it makes me do what I need to do.

Lou Brazeal:
My ultimate goal is to be 50 pounds lighter than I am now, and to keep it off. I want to be 100 years old someday!

Wendy Paschen:
I want to be around to watch Emma get married and she’s 3.

New Wave Fitness:
Excellent. That’s a great goal.

Wendy Paschen:
We thought about it, and we were going, “I don’t know if we can afford to do this for this length of time. How are we going to make this work?” and you just decide. You just decide that your health is more important. Between the two of us, we have 11 great-nieces and nephews, and we have 11 nieces and nephews, and all of them have kids.

They all like to come over, they all like to play in the pool. They all like us to be at their soccer games or their football games, or whatever is going on, and we just didn’t have the energy to go. We would drag ourselves there, but we weren’t overly thrilled about it and we’d drag ourselves home. Now we have the energy to do that plus everything else we need to do, so I just think it’s made a huge difference in how we view life and how we can handle life.

Lou Brazeal:
I agree. Get off the couch and get going!

Wendy Paschen:
Quit watching TV!

New Wave Fitness:
Exactly. Thank you very much for sharing your story. Your story means a whole lot to us because we love to see success in our program, and you guys are a great success. Good luck, and continue on.