It’s that time of year again when boldly declared New Year’s resolutions begin to falter.
While Candice Blum made a promise to herself in the spring of 2010 to lose weight and become a healthy role model for her two young sons, she knows what it feels like to set goals and fail miserably.
Blum, 30, had been overweight all her life. At 1.65 metres (five feet, five inches) she was a size 16 and weighed 93 kilograms (205 pounds). Blum said she tried every fad diet in the book but nothing did the trick.
Her “get serious” wake up call came after the birth of her second son. Blum couldn’t fit into her favourite regular size jeans without moving into the plus sizes.
“It was crushing,” said Blum, who lives in east Red Deer with her husband, Darcy, and two sons, Aiden, 4, and Austin, 2. “Because I grew up overweight, I didn’t want my children to grow up overweight.”
Blum said she didn’t want her children to endure the same kind of taunting and teasing she faced in her childhood.
Today Blum is a healthy 59 kilograms (130 pounds) and wears a size 4. Blum said she owes her success to finding an exercise regime that she was passionate about and making the right food choices. Blum said she wants to motivate people because she has been there and knows about the difficulties of losing weight.
Blum said her biggest challenge was letting go of her bad food habits. But once she started seeing results and hearing the positive feedback it became easier for stay motivated.
“You have to stick with it,” said Blum. “You have to evaluate what you are doing. That one cheat night could be blowing the progress you made the rest of the week.”
There’s no processed food in her kitchen and her refrigerator is filled with fruits, vegetables and lean meat. She eliminated “cheat nights” because Blum felt she would go overboard.
Her new passion is running and Cardio Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) classes at Kensei MMA and Fitness studio. Blum completed the Woody’s RV World Half Marathon in 2010 in under two hours.
“Start small with your goals,” said Blum. “If I had to walk in and say I want to be 130 pounds (59 kilograms), I would never have made it. I would have been disappointed with how long it took me to get here. My original goal was 180 pounds (82 kilograms) and I changed it to 20-pound (9 kilograms) increments each time. I think it helped me because it didn’t seem that long to reach those goals.”
crhyno@www.reddeeradvocate.com