“How’s the Zumba going, Paige?” a stranger asks.
It’s been that way since Paige Charron’s public participation in the Kin’s Green Fighter contest.
Her pictures and stories in the paper and online were seen by a lot of people, and her fearless and funny self-assessments in her blogging made Charron known around town.
A month after the 13-week competition, Charron is still living healthy, and is optimistic that she has made lasting lifestyle changes.
“I think I will stick with it. It [the competition] has reminded me how much I love exercising and being able to move.”
The self-styled “change junky” has a new fitness regimen. She heard about a woman who twirls a weighted hula hoop for an hour while reading, and gotten great fitness results. Charon does it while watching the morning news, and is up to about 11 minutes.
“But it’s bruising my side,” she groused.
Throughout the contest, she was given $25 per week to spend on produce at Kin’s Market, which was enough to keep her in fruits and vegetables for a week as a single person. The diet transition is simply that half of her dinner plate is now vegetables. Salads with blueberries and nuts and now a staple, while toast, pasta and white flour are no longer on the menu.
“It has been easy to cut out white flour,” she said. “I just eat more protein.”
Charron can’t resist a burger if she’s at the Billy Miner Pub, but when 90 per cent of what she’s consuming is healthy, she feels she can afford it.
She is replacing the spin classes with riding her bike to and from work.
Last weekend she went hiking at Elk Mountain in Chilliwack, and this weekend it will be Manning Park.
She has joined the dragon boating team with the Pitt Meadows Paddling Club.
“I’m back to where I was in my early 30s, when I wanted to exercise all the time.”
Through the competition she lost 17 pounds, including a pound of muscle, despite some grueling resistance training.
A month later, the weight is still off. She feels better in the mornings, and has much more energy throughout the day. She wants to be active, even while working at the Hospice Society Thrift Store.
“I help everyone lift their couches – I want to be moving.”
A 3.4 per cent increase in bone density was another significant gain, and she was advised that continued resistance training will keep her fracture free as she ages.
As for Zumba, the dance fitness craze, a weekly session has stayed part of her new healthy lifestyle.
“I love it.”
The Kin’s Green Fighters challenge was won by Vancouver’s Kristen Macgregor, who lost 26 pounds and increased her bone density. She won a cruise for two, a year’s worth of produce from Kin’s and three months at the Live Well exercise clinic.
Between the 13 contestants, they raised $7,600 for the Canadian Cancer Society.