Mari Hermann’s story: 32 kilos lost and confidence won
Sparta member Mari Hermann knows from experience that one day of bad eating won’t make you fat, and one workout won’t make you slim. Over seven years, she has lost 32 kilos of body weight, and says that, at long last, she has become friends with herself.
2007 was a real turning point for Mari Hermann, a girl from Rapla. She shook the dust of her hometown off her shoes and headed for Tallinn, as high-school graduates traditionally do: off to university to diligently plow the fields of education.
Used since childhood to being on the heavy side – or chubby, as she calls it herself – Mari came face to face in the capital with a whole new set of tasty temptations.
She passed the driving exam, walked less, and started visiting burger joints more and more often. Fizzy soft drinks, greasy French fries and appetizing pizzas became the three main pillars of her daily menu.
Mari, who is 172 cm tall, still clearly remembers the moment the digital scale lit up with a sobering number – 89 kilograms. Her body weight had hit an absolute peak, while her self-confidence had dropped to a round zero. “I was genuinely worried – friends no longer invited me out and I developed complexes,” Mari recalls of those difficult times with a certain horror. “I was like a mothership,” is her painfully blunt assessment today.
Even so, deep down the headstrong young woman told herself she had no intention of living by other people’s opinions and that friends would have to like her just the way she was. In the hardest moments, she was ready to give up and accept the fact that perhaps she was simply made to be a stubborn chubby person.
Without the balm-like supportive words of her parents, enduring the whole situation would have been twice as hard.
“Well, just eat less pizza, then”
Mari held her head high and carried on with the same fatty lifestyle. Until suddenly she heard an inner alarm bell ringing and saw red warning lights flash before her eyes. “I felt a tightness in my chest and moving around became harder and harder.”
Something had to be done, something had to change.
As a first step on this road, Mari began searching for information about weight loss across the endless expanses of the internet. She didn’t dare go to any professional for help because – as she admits today – every snide, preachy remark in the vein of “well, just eat less pizza, then” would have knocked her hopelessly off the rails.
Mari started training on her own, and trying all sorts of miracle diets and programs indiscriminately and at random.
She tried pretty much everything that was being touted for weight loss at the time – the broth diet, the prune diet and the Atkins diet, and even a joyless water fast. She wandered through weight-loss forums online, all the while fearing that reading some negative snippet would deal a blow to her tender, newly blossomed motivation. “The peak of all that flailing around was when a friend and I ordered fat burner pills from a foreign online shop,” she says.
In the midst of great anguish, Mari walked through the door of the Sparta sports club. “It might have been early 2009, Sparta had been open for about four months, and I weighed 86 kilos,” she says, piecing together the numbers etched in memory.
The start was like drinking tar. “Beautiful, fit people all around, and there I was, overweight. I really had to force myself.”
Janika Koch-Mäe sparked an explosion of motivation
Slogging away at random in the Sparta gym, a bit like a cornered wild animal, Mari managed to drop twenty-odd kilograms in seven months, ending up somewhere between 65 and 70 kilos. “My body weight no longer bothered me, but I wasn’t proud of what I’d achieved either,” says Mari, adding that this was nevertheless when she felt the first sweet touch of the charms that come with slimming down.
“When I had been big and bulky, people looked right through me; after the bigger weight loss, I was invited to the cinema more and more often. Even my eyes, which according to one person had been small, suddenly became big in that person’s eyes after I lost the weight,” Mari recalls, and the avalanche of emotions that gripped her back then comes flooding back. “It was so cool! I had been through a crazy inner battle – whether to go to training, what to eat, what not to – and now when I walked past a mirror, I really liked what I saw.”
Sparta had gradually become a second home for Mari. Besides slogging away in the gym, she started working as a babysitter in a children’s play room outside school hours, and gathered the courage to take a new, important and decisive step in her weight loss.
In the summer of 2012, Mari happened to attend the Summer Shape outdoor training session led by Janika Koch-Mäe, where new training tips were shared in the fresh air. The lovely fellow participants and the cool atmosphere were inspiring, and when Janika suddenly offered a helping hand, Mari didn’t hesitate for a moment to grab it.
Mari says it was Janika’s spirited, engaging ideas that sparked a real burst of motivation in her. “Janika answered all my questions,” Mari recalls, adding that as a true cola fan, drinking, say, two liters of that sweet stuff in one go was no problem at all for her. “Janika gave real-life examples, and something just clicked – there’s no point sitting, figuratively speaking, in front of a sugar bowl and shoveling those white crystals into yourself by the spoonful.”
She has now gone more than nine months without drinking carbonated soft drinks.
The dream goal achieved – 57 kilograms!
Mari says she told Janika about her wish to reach a point where she could confidently put on a bikini and head to the beach in summer. Their partnership was ready to begin – Janika became Mari’s personal trainer and started supporting her, figuratively speaking, in rain and shine. It was this heartfelt help and, in the best sense, the push from behind that took Mari’s weight loss to a new level of quality. She came to realize that even if one day on this training path goes wrong, what matters is pulling yourself together and carrying on. “That’s exactly where Janika’s gift as a coach shows – the ability to motivate. Janika drops a single sentence almost offhandedly, and it starts to haunt and inspire you.”
Following Janika’s plans, Mari expanded the range of training she does in the gym to include Power Plate and crosscore exercises, as well as group training. Today she is also a regular at PumpFX classes.
Her body weight has dropped right down to the ideal level, and the scale in the Sparta locker room now tells her a truly happy story – Mari currently weighs 57 kilograms. The memories from seven years ago of a young woman of nearly 90 kilos – still like a bad dream today – have sunk, as it were, into the sand dunes of history. The biggest change is in how Mari feels and in her confidence. “I feel much lighter, I’ve become friends with myself, and my clothes fit like they were made for me.”
According to Janika Koch-Mäe, Mari is the perfect student, who does everything exactly as recommended and prescribed. “In addition to losing weight, she has built up better aerobic endurance,” Janika says, praising the determined trainee.
For a new challenge, Mari has turned her eyes to running. She plans to run a marathon in the fall and will certainly draw on Janika’s tips for it.
Forget false shame and take action!
Today Mari encourages everyone who is overweight and struggling with the same worries to forget false shame and take the bull by the horns themselves. After all, health is not something to play with, and indifference toward your body weight can end in a very tragic way. “Don’t count on miracle diets,” she advises, drawing on her own experience, and urges everyone who is overweight to take action. “Start with something as simple as walking in the evenings, after dusk. Remember that you can’t get rid of excess kilos quickly – it takes self-discipline and an iron will.”
Mari was ready to talk about her amazing transformation above all because, when wandering around the internet seven years ago, she herself felt the lack of motivating success stories. Of those humanly inspiring accounts of the fight against excess kilos.
Today Mari knows from experience that moments of weakness are a normal part of the long road to slimming down. “One day of bad eating doesn’t make you fat, and one workout doesn’t make you slim,” says the plucky young woman, repeating an evergreen truth of life that Janika has spoken: “Keeping your weight stable is harder than losing it.”
Words to make you think, aren’t they?
Mari is now certain that losing more than 30 kilos, this daily battle with oneself, has also made her a better person. “When I was big, I was critical of every overweight person – it was like a subconscious attack on myself. Today I look at overweight people and think – they could also get their body weight under control and slim down if they really wanted to. I never say, good Lord, look how fat someone is. I just know how hard it is to live like that.”
According to Mari, the foundation of success is a burning, uncompromising desire to help yourself and the knowledge that you have to rely first and foremost on yourself. “A pro trainer can motivate and spur you on, but you have to have such a strong will that you’d burst for it,” Mari says, and with a smile adds one more sunny nugget of wisdom: “Don’t be afraid of critical looks – just go boldly about your business.”
Over these seven years, Mari has been through a true school of discipline. She has fought devastating inner battles and endured remarks about her appearance that were at times painful.
One look at her radiant presence and feminine, slim figure is proof that the game for a higher-quality, healthier life was worth the candle. All those tears, all that suffering, all those moments of overcoming oneself.
A true Cinderella story, isn’t it?
Author: Sparta Sports Club
Source: Turg.Fitness.ee
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