By Connie Norman
We want to continue to share the great success stories from our Running Wolf members. So here is Sal”'s story!
Salvador Pacheco lives and works in the Phillips neighborhood and said that he heard we were re-opening the Running Wolf Fitness Center in the neighborhood. So in September he went to NACC and got his fitness exam for the free 6 month membership. He discovered through that he had high total cholesterol of 236. He was determined to set goals to improve that through dietary changes like not using butter and eating high fiber oatmeal and the toughest of all quitting a steady diet of Pepsi. He wanted to improve his overall health so after changing his diet and working with the NACC Dietician-Shannon and lowered his cholesterol by a whopping 100 points in about 6 -8 weeks!
He also started his membership at Running Wolf Fitness Center November 1st. Sal came every morning right at 10am when Running Wolf opened and set goals with the trainer-Q and when he started he stated that he could only do about 5 minutes tops on the Nustep (Recumbent bike). However, he was determined and starting working out on the other machines, treadmills and bike and then tried the Elliptical and felt because he had both knees replaced- one in 2004 and the other in 2007 that the Elliptical was less stress on his knees and yet let him get a good cardio workout. He worked with balancing the workouts with the food he was eating. He stated that he is frustrated with his idea he calls “conspiracy theory” to keep people unhealthy by making the healthy food more expensive and bad food cheap and easy to get. But he is eating healthier and truly seeing the benefit!
Page2- Sal continues to work on cardio and weight training to maintain muscle while losing weight. He now does a routine that he calls the “Conan” It is working at the highest setting on the Elliptical and does increments of 20 minutes or goes about 1 hour and also does the weight training. He burns about 1300 calories in that workout!
Today as we re-evaluated his baseline fitness numbers. We are excited to report that:
Sal”'s weight at the beginning was 235 and is now 183- total weight loss is 52 pounds since November 1st!
Body fat was 35.1 and now is 21. 5
BMI was 31.5 and now is 28.8
Waist circumference was 43 and now is 32
Blood pressure was in the hypertensive range at 152/77 and now runs about 130/68. He also reports his resting heart rate is now 51.
Sal also reports his cholesterol is better from the 236 to 185.
He says that it is important for him to set measurable and realistic goals. Such as his first goal was first weight loss from 235 to 208 and then by new years to be at 200 and final goal is to be 175 ”“his Marine Corp boot camp weight. He is at 183 only 8 pounds away from that! So his fitness numbers are all in a healthy range.
He reports that at age 52 he feels so much better then he has in a long time and the Running Wolf Staff is happy to say, Way to go Sal! So for more information on how to get healthier please come and join us at Running Wolf Fitness Center!
