Health & Fitness Challenge
As our Healthy & Fit Challenge 2008 draws to a close, we find two of our participants, Jon Basden and Deborah Miller, struggling yet continuing with their resolutions.
Their lives are full. Very full. So finding time to accomplish their goals has been hard.
Basden, 32, of Highland, is a husband, father, softball coach, school board member, full-time instructional technologies manager for Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and doctoral candidate. Whew!
He was a first-time father in 2000 when he enrolled in the Educational Technology doctoral program at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. A member of the interview panel warned him then that he might be biting off more than he could chew.
Basden was incensed by such lack of faith.
Fast forward to January 2008. Basden, now a father of three, joins our Healthy & Fit Challenge. His resolution: Finish that darn dissertation.
For the past six months, he's worked on it in fits and starts. He's turned in a rough draft of the first two chapters to his adviser, who made recommendations. He hopes to submit the final version to his committee by mid-July, for approval, then start collecting data and analyzing it for the final three chapters.
He won't graduate this calendar year as hoped. But if he gets a chunk of the analysis done this fall, he says it'll be "a 1,000 percent more progress" than he made the last three years. "And that's fine and dandy, but I should have been here years ago," he says.
He sees his window for working on the dissertation closing. His kids, Caitlin, 8, Lia, 6, and Cole, 3, will soon be at ages where he'll want to spend more time with them. Basden described a day last week that began with waking at 4:45 a.m., picking up a co-worker in Highland and driving 45 minutes to Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis. It ended about 1 a.m. the following morning when the monthly school board meeting he attends came to a close. Several other meetings and his daughter's softball game were crammed in between.
Basden refuses to use this whirlwind schedule as an excuse though.
"That's just how he is," his wife, Liza Basden, says. "He doesn't make excuses for anything. If there's something that needs to be done, he gets it done."
Basden points out how we all must make choices. A lot of his colleagues at UMSL chose to pay their dues differently, he says. "They chose to put themselves through financial hardships early on. I elected not to do that."
A FAST START FOR DEBORAH MILLER
Miller, 52, of Florissant, spent 10 years raising two sons, getting a bachelor's degree and caring for her mother, who has dementia. She was busy, stressed out and had gained more than 100 pounds.
But in January, she thought she'd have more time because her sons had flown the coop and her mom had moved away to live with Miller's sister.
So she resolved to lose some of that weight by limiting her sugar intake, eating less junk food and taking up rollerskating.
Her plan began with a bang. She skated weekly, bought an elliptical trainer (pictured below) that she worked out on several times a week and dropped 13 pounds quickly.
Then her mom moved back to St. Louis, requiring Miller's time and attention again.
She faltered by regaining three pounds but got back on track and has lost five pounds again, for a total of 15 pounds.
Recently her cousin Pam, who lost 113 pounds, came to town and Miller couldn't stop staring at her. She marveled at Pam's diet, which included taking sack lunches everywhere, even parties. The sacks contained low-fat meals with 6-ounce portions of meat, whole grain foods, fresh fruits and vegetables.
"She won't eat sugar or white flour," Miller says, admitting that the idea of life without eating the things she wants is depressing.
"I have learned to eat portions that fit in the palm of my hand though," Miller says. "It's just that people look at me and are expecting to see a smaller Deborah Miller."
Miller definitely feels better than she has in years and that for the first time in more than a decade, she said the scale at her doctor's office didn't show a larger number than the last time.
"So I'm committed," she says.
By Cynthia Billhartz Gregorian
cbillhartz@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8114
| 
