After losing about half her weight in the past year, 2013 Times Colonist Health Challenge participant Suzie Spitfyre is talking about becoming something she never thought possible — a mother.
Spitfyre has lost 143 pounds since last year’s 2013 Health Challenge, bringing her weight down to about 150 pounds. It’s likely she’s even a few pounds less than 150, but she doesn’t have her official weigh-in until later this week.
The 38-year-old, now a trim five-foot-two, is coming close to her goal of 137 pounds. (Her trainer, John Carpenter, suggested 140, but she likes odd numbers.) So Spitfyre and her husband of eight years are starting to talk about kids.
Read Suzie's blog HERE
“It’s actually become pretty interesting because before, I didn’t even think I would ever be able to have kids,” she said in an interview Monday after a workout at Crystal Pool.
“But now it’s one of those possibilities that have become pretty exciting.”
Spitfyre was one of five participants in last year’s Times Colonist Health Club Challenge. It’s a 12-week fitness and recreation plan that includes sessions with a physical trainer and a dietitian.
The challenge is overseen by the Pacific Institute for Sport Excellence. Each participant is assigned to a fitness centre: PISE, Juan de Fuca Recreation, Crystal Pool and Fitness, Panorama Recreation or Oak Bay Recreation.
But this year, at the request of the recreation centres, the six finalists will be four families and two individuals. The entry deadline is Wednesday.
Jason Scriven, Times Colonist retail advertising sales manager, said the Health Challenge is a good fit for families looking for activities to do together, but wonder how they can manage the time with the busy schedules of parents and kids.
Scriven said with each family assigned to a centre, they will have its wide spectrum of activities and facilities to choose from to suit their own schedules. It might be a pilates class, or spinning; whatever works for each family to get in shape and have fun.
“Fitness is a great thing for families,” Scriven said.
Scriven also expressed huge admiration for Spitfyre’s successes with the program.
Spitfyre was actually quite an athlete when she was younger. She played varsity-level field hockey at Simon Fraser University, where she studied archeology. Post-graduate studies took her to digs in Malta and Ireland and she enjoyed every minute. She ended up in Montreal, where she was born, and fell into that city’s lifestyle of good food and fun.
She said the weight was something that seemed to pile on gradually as she was enjoying her life, socializing, partying, eating and drinking. Whether it was a tray-sized plate of poutine, or french fries with everything.
“I don’t know why I was convinced it made me feel good, because it didn’t really,” she said.
Finally, it got to the point where her doctor told her the weight was beginning to affect her health. It came with a sprained ankle, a result of walking during a vacation in New Orleans while being well above a healthy weight.
“I knew I had to change because the doctors were telling me,” she said.
She counts herself blessed for being selected to the Health Challenge and for having an employer, Mac Cosmetics, that allowed her to take a medical leave to get her weight under control.
Now she never eats junk food, and adapts all the recipes of things she once loved to make them with healthy ingredients and taste great. She loves the outdoors and activities such as kayaking, and jokes she has “gone all British Columbian” when she thought she was a Quebecer for life.
“I’ll start hugging trees and grow dreadlocks,” Spitfyre said. “Not really.”