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Saturday, September 2 |
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Duluth woman wins fitness center’s weight loss challenge
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Margaretta Barley of Duluth is a real loser and proud of it.
Barley’s 29-pound loss placed her in the top 10 losers in Liberty Fitness Center’s national weight loss challenge. The competition ran from January through May, and it inspired Barley to slim down from 179 pounds to a healthy 150 that complements her 5-foot, 5-inch frame. Barley’s efforts — she trimmed 36 inches and 3.6 percent of her body fat — earned her first place at her local Liberty Fitness Center location in Duluth.
Barley, 43, is former nonprofessional athlete who once won a badminton championship when she was nine months pregnant. Like many women, an office job and a single-parent lifestyle caused Barley to shift her priorities. The pounds piled on almost too slowly to notice.
“I didn’t just start gaining weight right away,” Barley said. “By the time you get home, cook, take care of the kids, take care of the honey, there’s no energy left. I felt like I was getting a workout already, and I saw no reason to pay to go somewhere and sweat.”
But a failed advertising campaign from Liberty Fitness changed Barley’s mind. Employees from the fitness center had affixed coupons and a carnation to the cars in the parking lot where Barley works, but a security guard quickly gathered all the flowers and coupons up, said Marianne Byron, owner of the Liberty Fitness on Medlock Bridge Road in Duluth.
All but one. When Barley, a project manger, went to lunch, she found a carnation and coupon on the ground by her car.
“I put it in a vase on my desk and said, ‘This is my sign to change my life. I’ve got to go,’” Barley said. “I wanted Angela Bassett arms, Tina Turner legs and a Janet Jackson stomach.”
Liberty Fitness is a women-only center that focuses on total body wellness, exercise and nutrition in a spa-like environment. The comprehensive approach helped Barley improve her well-being — besides building muscle mass, she now sleeps deeply and restfully and she’s off her hypertension medicine.
The core of the exercise routine is a circuit of 11 pieces of adjustable workout equipment and 11 recovery stations, where exercisers can raise or lower their heart rate. After 40 seconds at each station, a vocal prompt sends Barley to the next piece of equipment. Twice around the circuit adds up to only a 30-minute workout, and Barley’s 29-pound weight loss.
Barley also learned better nutrition, and she soon started to replace her beloved potatoes and corn with lean meats and salads.
“I’ve never eaten so much turkey in my life,” said Freddy Gurley, Barley’s boyfriend. “Every day, she came in and talked about going around the circuit. I doubted her continuing to do it because she works so much and she’s always tired, but she proved me wrong. When I saw her start to drop those inches, I was really proud of her.”
Barley’s job requires regular overseas travel, and that caused her to miss a total of two weeks’ exercise during the weight loss challenge.
“She’s very competitive,” Byron said. “Contest rules stipulated that contestants had to work out three times per week. So, one day she came in twice, because she was flying out of town.”
Rewards, such as buying new workout clothes and spending time in the center’s on-site sauna after exercising, kept her motivated.
“The hardest thing was making up my mind to do it,” Barley said. “Thirty minutes three times a week doesn’t seem like much, but carving out that time is the hardest part for me.”
It turns out that Georgia women are great losers. Patti Covert, who attends the Alpharetta center, won Liberty Fitness’ national award, losing 441/2 pounds, 331/2 inches and 6.4 percent of her body weight. Covert was flown to the Liberty Fitness Center in Austin, Texas, for spa treatments, workout sessions and shopping sprees and will appear in Liberty Fitness Centers’ up coming advertising campaigns. |
posted by ^%&^
@ 8:28 PM
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Wow thanks for sharing this article . i am software engg and really happy to see it. Really helping me.
You also may find fitness and dance classes at zumba classes.
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Wow thanks for sharing this article . i am software engg and really happy to see it. Really helping me.
You also may find fitness and dance classes at zumba classes.