Port Hardy radio personality shows self-betterment doesn’t need to start in January
Most people wait until Jan. 1 to make New Year’s resolutions. However, Port Hardy’s Sandra (Sam) Boyd got a head start.
Boyd recently completed a three-month weight loss challenge under the personal coaching of First Choice Fitness Port Hardy owner Tara McCart, and as part of the 1240 Coast AM radio team, has been very open to the public about her efforts and the challenges she has faced.
On Nov. 1, the second official weigh-in of the three-month challenge, Boyd had her first weigh-in which demonstrated clearly that her hard work and dedication was paying off – she had lost 2.5 pounds and a remarkable seven inches off her body.
But this is just the latest phase of Boyd’s transformative journey. Boyd’s efforts to lead a healthier life started in 2015 when she managed to lose an incredible 50 pounds. Then everything stalled.
“I had hit a wall with my weight loss and was struggling with my health,” she says. “I was also challenged with finding the motivation to do it, so I decided to approach Tara with a proposal and see if she would take me on and we would go public through the radio and she gets the advertising, and I get the training and help that I need.”
Boyd committed to working with McCart between 45 minutes and an hour, five days a week with a program that includes weight training and cardio – a routine which is constantly changed to keep Boyd’s body guessing and adapting for maximum results.
Boyd is also required to do physical things on the weekend, including things like bike riding, walking, yoga and stretching exercises.
However, the 90-Day Challenge is not just about exercise. An integral component is a meal plan that includes portion control and a well-rounded diet, not sacrificing specific foods, although potato chips and pop are not on the diet.
“It’s about eating clean, and eating well.”
“It’s about eating clean, and eating well,” McCart says, adding that the ultimate goal is to create a lifestyle change that is manageable moving forward, instead of one that is so extreme people may fall back into old bad habits. It’s not an easy thing to do.
The portion control, especially, ”makes me eat more often throughout the day, which is something else I have struggled with,” she says.
But it’s more than that, too. For Boyd, a big part of this whole transformation is to prove something – to herself and others. Boyd had a series of back surgeries on her spine between 1997 and 2002 after a serious back injury.
“I was left with numbness in part of my left leg as well as chronic pain from a damaged sciatic nerve. At one time, doctors told me I wouldn’t walk again,” she says, but she refused to accept that, and, she says, “plowed through the years working on how to live with it.”
Through a chronic pain specialist, Boyd received a neuro-stimulator implant which does two things – helps her cope with the pain and tells her brain to move her leg.
“Through all of this time, I developed a bit of an eating disorder,” she says. “I simply didn’t eat. I would go up to 10 hours not eating and then when I did, it wasn’t healthy foods, it was snack foods, so a huge part of this process was to learn how to eat properly and often.”
Boyd says McCart’s dedication to her and her goals has been vital part of her success thus far. “She pushes me and she also encourages me to be better. I watched Tara in her own journey (McCart lost 48 pounds in eight months) and strive to be more like her,” Boyd says.
“Tara is not teaching weight loss, Tara is teaching a lifestyle and it is a lifestyle that I have always wanted and for the first time I feel like I am on the right track.”
So why would someone want this struggle to be a public one in front of their small community, where everyone knows everyone – and people talk.
First, she says, she felt it would make her more accountable. Like if more people know you’re doing it, you’re less likely to quit.
Second, she wanted people to know that living healthy is a choice they have to make in life. “The choice that no matter what life throws at you, choose yourself, and better, healthier living,” she says.
Boyd believes there is much more than weight loss happening during this process. “You become a better individual, stronger, clear-minded and, most importantly, happier. You function better at work and you make a better wife, mother, because you love yourself. I know it sounds corny, but (it’s) true.”
Which makes it no surprise that Boyd plans to keep the momentum going into 2017. “For me this is a life-long track, now,” she says. “My personal goals are to be fit and healthy and in a perfect world weighing in at 155 pounds,” she says.
“This 90-day promotion was to just show people that if you make a commitment to something, you can do it – no matter your hurdles.”