- What is your essential question? What is your best answer and why?
My essential question is "What is the most important factor in healthy weight loss?" My answers are changing your diet, changing your activity level, and changing your environment. My best answer is changing your diet. This answer is the foundation of weight loss. I can actually say from my experience that I lost most of my weight from adopting a healthy diet. In my research, I have found that diet is usually the most important part of healthy weight loss.
- What process did you take to arrive at this answer?
Changing my diet was the first step that I took towards weight loss. Changing my diet instantly helped me drop 12 pounds in around two weeks. I couldn't believe that by just cutting back a little bit (I was on vacation in bar-b-que land so I did the best that I could) helped me lose such a substantial amount. I added in exercise just around a month ago, and it has helped me get past a sudden halt in weight loss, but it hasn't had as much of an impact as changing my diet has. Also, I changed my environment through my family and friends and I also educated myself and I would say that changing my environment was probably as effective as changing my activity level.
- What problems did you face? How did you resolve them?
One problem that I ran into was my mentor becoming a mom. Around Christmas time, my mentor told me that she was pregnant. I did not want to intrude on her time so I told her that she didn't have to be my mentor anymore, she was reluctant to let me go on my own but I convinced her that I could find something else. Well, I did for a bout two weeks. I joined a gym and was mentoring a personal trainer, but the sessions were way to expensive. There was no way else to go. I had tried asking to mentor for free and they told me no and then I tried Weight Watchers, but I could not make it to the meetings on a weekly basis. Eventually, Erin reached out to me after a few months because my sister told her that I was having a tough time getting another free mentorship opportunity. Erin said that she could still mentor me and it would be no problem. I felt really bad about it, but she understood how important mentorship was for my grade and she was more than happy to start working with me again.
Another problem that I faced was finding credible resources. I mean, yes I found them when I needed them, but at the beginning of research checks I had a really hard time finding good articles. Every article that I found was titled, "How to lose weight in 10 easy steps," or, "How to get rid of the holiday five pounds fast!" As you can see, these articles are basically the worst of the worst. They were hardly ever over the 750 the word count that was required and they were never very helpful at all. In the end, I just had to learn how to conduct a credible search. Instead of typing in weight loss or obesity, I started typing in more specific terms that had to do with metabolism and exercise.
- What are your two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?
My two most significant sources would have to be my first interview with Erin Apregan and "Winning by Losing" by Jillian Michaels. Erin was such an amazing interviewee because she was so knowledgable and she had so much personal experience to speak from. I don't think we addressed it in the interview, but Erin used to battle with eating disorders for her teenage years. She changed her entire lifestyle from really un-healthy to one of the best diets that I have ever seen. She talked about how she motivates her clients and how she eats and exercises. She talked about how she got into physical training and she gave me so much advice that I could use in my own weight loss journey. She talked and talked and never held back which in the end helped my word/page count and the over-all quality of my interview.
"Winning by Losing" by Jillian Michaels was the first book that I looked at for my topic. It is my bible and I have read it at least three times. Jillian is one of my favorite personal trainers because she approaches her clients from not only a trainer point of view but a psychologist point of view. She goes into a session with the expectations of her clients' walls and with the intentions of breaking those walls down. She knows that a client will never lose weight if they are not ready for it and if they aren't ready, then she prepares them for the long road ahead. In this book she addresses the diet portion of weight loss and the exercise portion. She covers all of the important parts of any weight loss journey in a small and easy to read book. She knew that beginners would read this book as their first step and I think it gives the best layout of weight loss out of every other weight loss book that I have found.
- What is your product and why?
When I look back in ten years at my senior year of high school, I will say, "I lost 60 pounds, and I am proud of that." I can't believe that I have done what so many, including myself, have tried to do. I feel so thankful for senior year, because without senior year, I would probably still be 235 pounds and not confident at all. In just one school year, I have gained self confidence, a healthy lifestyle, and the assurance that I won't gain this weight back. My product from my senior year isn't just what I lost, but also what I gained.
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