From fatter to fitter: Woman regains her youthful figure by running

Daily Press (Newport News, Va.) (MCT) - Watch Nina Stickles push herself through a 6-mile training session along Chesapeake Avenue in Hampton, Va., and it's hard to believe she was ever anything but a runner.

Ditto for the energy she shows on the job at Hampton's Sentara Center for Fitness & Health, where she routinely takes the stairs two at a time while going between the exercise floor and her office.

Hidden behind a framed picture on Stickles' desk, however, is a secret but regularly perused portrait that tells a far different story. Just six years ago, the 5-foot-1 Hampton woman weighed in at 180 pounds _ and cardiovascular exercise of any kind wasn't on her agenda.

"I couldn't even have completed the Presidential Fitness Test mile," Stickles says now, shaking her head in disbelief. "I wouldn't have run if someone was chasing me."

Not long after that picture was taken, however, the recently married Ferguson High School grad made a bold decision.

Stepping out her front door one January day, she started to walk down Chesapeake Avenue. Five minutes later, she says, she had to stop. But she returned the next day and walked farther almost every time she went out.

Soon her strolls included short sprints between the street signs. A couple of months later, she picked up the pace even more, she says. By June, she'd shed 50 pounds _ and that loss was followed by 10 more pounds over the summer.

Today, Stickles follows an even more demanding regime, running as much as 19 miles a week during the hard-earned time she's learned to carve out from a full work-week and the job of caring for her family.

But she still looks back on her first six months of running as a milestone challenge _ one that transformed not only her body but also her life.

"I had to get healthy _ not only for myself but because I wanted to start a family," the 30-year-old runner says.

"And I was afraid if I waited until after I was pregnant my 180 pounds would balloon into 230."

Stickles didn't start off life as a short fat person.

She took up gymnastics in elementary school and pursued it ardently for years, learning to look at herself an athlete. But the once-slim figure she gained from her workouts back then began to disappear not long after she entered college.

"When I came home after my first year, people looked at me and wondered what had happened," she recalls. "Instead of the freshman 10 pounds, I gained the freshman 25 _ and I just kept gaining weight in a slow, gradual process."

Bad eating habits may have contributed the most to her increasingly bulky body. "I thought you could eat a box of macaroni and cheese every night _ and I did," Stickles says.

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But even after graduating from college and packing on more than 50 pounds, she couldn't get a handle on an increasingly visible problem.

"I still exercised by lifting. But it was all strength stuff and no cardio," she confesses. "I was 180 pounds of strong fat."

Not until after Stickles married in 2002 did she really begin to feel the weight of the unfamiliar person she saw in her family pictures. Then her mom brought in a newspaper story about a middle-aged woman who had gone from fat to firm by taking up running.

"I told her, "If she can do it, you can do it,'" Cindy Kruziak says. "And she took it upon herself to make it happen."

That's when her daughter made the decision to walk until she could run -- and then keep on running after that.

"My husband's loved me heavy. And he's loved me thin. But I wasn't happy about all that weight," Stickles says. "When I looked at those pictures, it wasn't who I wanted to be."

As determined as the young woman felt, she couldn't have dropped so much weight without the dietary guidance she got from Weight Watchers and the encouragement she got from her friends and family.

Combined with her increasing mileage, that support helped Stickles see a difference nearly every time she stepped on a scale. By June, she had lost a weekly average of nearly 2 pounds.

But despite the excitement and pride she brought to many of her Weight Watchers meetings, she also ran into times when she felt so tired or lazy that she found herself looking for excuses to skip a workout.

"It's always harder to go back to square one than to go forward to square four or five," she says. "So you just have get out there and push."

After her daughter, Katelynn, was born in late 2005, it took the same kind of determination and persistence for Stickles to not only regain her form but also raise her ambitions as a runner.

Careful time management and her family's baby-sitting help became crucial after she joined Virginia's Peninsula Track Club and began to set her sights on races.

"The first time I met Nina, she got my attention immediately," says Fitness Center trainer Karen Stadler, who every year leads a group of about 20 Peninsula runners as they prepare for the Shamrock 8K-run and half-marathon held in March in Virginia Beach, Va.

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"She looked around the group and said, 'I have a jogger and a daughter. Who wants to meet with me to run?' She's the kind of person who's enthusiastic _ and who knows how to make things work."

Walking the dog was out of the question, in fact, when the family started talking about getting a pet. Stickles held out until they agreed on a breed that could go along on her training runs.

She still thanks her lucky stars, however, whenever she tallies up how many times her husband, mother, grandmother and mother-in-law have stepped up to take care of the baby so she can spend an hour or two working out. They get some valuable quality time with Katelynn, Stickles says, while she gets the chance to keep herself healthy and blow off a lot of pent-up energy and stress.

"Staying fit and being healthy isn't a simple thing. You have to work," Stadler says.

"And the important thing about Nina is that she's figured that out."

A SUCCESSFUL RUNNER'S ADVICE

If there's one thing that Nina Stickles has learned from her weight loss campaign over the past six years, it's that running off more than 50 pounds of fat isn't easy. Even when you have the will, you have to find the time _ and juggling the competing demands of her 50-hour work week and her family makes that job even harder.

"I thought I'd be able to jump on a treadmill now and then," says Stickles, who's the membership coordinator at Hampton's Sentara Health & Fitness Center. "But no! I don't have that kind of time during the week -- and I work a lot of week-ends."

In response, Stickles has become an expert at managing her time and carving out the hours she needs to run 16 to 19 miles on most weeks. Here's her advice on how to do it:

Mark your calendar. Stickles treats her runs like important appointments: She schedules them carefully _ then makes sure she keeps them.

Be prepared. Don't mess up a workout because you've forgotten your gear -- and don't miss out when you get an unexpected chance to run. "I always keep two bags full of my running stuff," Stickles says, "one by my desk and one in the trunk of the car."

Eat right, stay hydrated. Even when you don't think you can fit in a run, you should eat and drink water as if you could. That way when you do work out your training sessions will be more effective _ even if they're unexpected.

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Ask for help. Runners with families often need extra support from relatives and friends to keep up with their training schedules. But they don't always ask for something that might be gladly given and mutually beneficial. "I still get feelings of guilt sometimes. But everyone knows this is important to me _ and they love being with the baby," Stickles says. "I could not do what I do without with my husband or my family."

Accept compromise. "So many of us have to deal with the idea of being imperfect. But I've learned that if I can only get two loads of laundry done instead of three because of a run _ it's good enough," Stickles says. "When my child and husband were both sick last week, I had three runs on my calendar. Did I make them? No," she adds. "When life gets in the way, that's OK."

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© 2009, Daily Press (Newport News, Va.).