Health Matters: Fight to End Stroke
in four women will die of
The number one killer of American women is heart disease! Each issue, Exhale Lifestyle will provide our readers with important information that you need to know to help you avoid heart disease. There are lifestyle changes that you can make to help reduce your risks. ° Maintain a healthy weight ° Eat a heart-healthy diet ° Get screened ° Stop smoking ° Exercise For more information on heart health, visit the following websites: American Heart Association www.heart.org Sister to Sister Organization www.sistertosister.org Brigham and Women’s Hospital www.brighamandwomens.org/ cvwellness
18
Exhale • Spring 2011
Joyce Merkel Billerica, MA Employer: USDA/ National Institutes of Health
Before
J
oyce Merkel has enacted a huge transformation in her life in the last two years. She looked at herself just after her 50th birthday and decided she needed to change. Merkel is a registered dietitian, was a professor of food and nutrition in the past and currently works for USDA and the National Institutes of Health on food and health related issues. For all the knowledge she had about having a healthy lifestyle, she realized she wasn’t living one. Merkel increased the amount of activity she was getting to between one and three hours a day. Finding group classes to be more motivating than individual activities, she typically gets in three class sessions most days. These include Zumba, step, yoga, pilates, circuit aerobics, spinning, total body weights and kickboxing. She also started training in karate at the dojo with her nephews and brother. Outside of the gym she bikes, walks and even hula hoops, in addition to chasing her nephews around the playground. The variety in her activities has been vital to keeping her motivated to continue this ambitious schedule. Paired with the increase of activity, Merkel lowered her caloric intake per day by tracking each food item in an Excel sheet using the simple formula of “calories in, calories out” and making small changes. The majority of her food
After consists of fruits and vegetables, as they are the most filling for their calories. She tries to limit meat and sweets to small amounts. She still loves bread, and has employed various tricks to help keep her on track, such as when she buys a fresh loaf of French bread, she eats just a bit of it before feeding the rest to the pigeons in the grocery store parking lot. The result of this is that Merkel is literally half the person she used to be. When she started on her plan, the scale said just over 300 pounds. The lowest number she saw on the scale last summer was 148, though she has settled around 160 as she has been adding muscle lately. She has a tremendous amount of energy and does not suffer from any of the aches and pains she used to have in the past. Her current aches are just the ones that come from sparring in karate. Merkel used to be on two medications for diagnosed hypertension. Even on those medications she used to have periods where her heart would beat uncontrollably and she wouldn’t be able to sleep because of it. As her weight dropped, so did her blood pressure and her need to control it with medications. She is off both medications now with no diagnosed hypertension. Her cholesterol has also improved over the course of her loss, falling from the 220s into the 180s.=