40 Pounds Lighter
by Teresa Wiltz
After a lifelong battle against fat, she transformed her body—and her community.
The look in the mirror
Health reader Ruth Lytle-Barnaby, 44, figured she’d been born with the fat gene. Puberty first packed on the pounds; a sedentary lifestyle sealed the deal. After years of grad school, marriage and kids, a full-time job, and a full-time diet of processed food, “one day you look in the mirror,” she muses, “and you say, ‘Oh. My. God.’”
The makeover trigger
In 2004, Lytle-Barnaby was asked to be the subject of a makeover by a local magazine publisher who knew her from her work as the executive director of Community and Foundation Development for Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado. She was paired with a nutritionist and trainer. And she was nervous: “I just knew I wasn’t capable of losing weight.”
How she dropped the pounds
Lytle-Barnaby’s savvy trainer kept boredom at bay by switching up her workouts, from the elliptical trainer to the stair machine to the weight room. After 6 months of healthier eating and daily workouts, she’d lost 40 pounds and four dress sizes. Today, Lytle-Barnaby’s never felt better. She’s cut way down on fast food and has embraced a new passion: rowing crew with her husband. And she even looks forward to working out—something she does nearly every day.
Slimming down her city
In 2005, Lytle-Barnaby and a group of colleagues founded the Coalition for Activity and Nutrition to Defeat Obesity (CAN-DO), which promotes health and fitness to local companies and the community. It flourished, and more than 800 hospital employees joined CAN-DO’s first lifestyle challenge. In just 3 months they logged a million exercise minutes and lost more than 1,500 pounds. Inspired, CAN-DO has started extending the challenge to other businesses around the city.
While Lytle-Barnaby’s biggest sense of accomplishment comes from watching the fitness spark catch fire, the admiring looks from old acquaintances don’t hurt, either. “I’m a work in progress,” she says. “And I like it.”
Xeno Muller, Olympic gold and silver medalist, indoor rowing, rowing technique.
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