Copyright © 2014 Kim Dolan Leto
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.
Fedd Books
PO Box 341973
Austin TX 78734
www.thefeddagency.com
Editing by Layce Smith
Interior design by Layce Smith and Lauren Hall
Cover by Connie Gabbert
Photographs by Eva Simon
ISBN: 978-0-9907044-0-9
eISBN: 978-0-9907044-3-0
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014921040
First Edition 14 13 12 11 10 / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
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To my one and only Bill, the love of my life and my best friend. With all my heart I thank you for believing in me and pushing me to be my best. Without you, this book would not be.
To my daughter, Giavella. May you always see yourself through the Word and not the world and know that you are fearfully and wonderfully made and unconditionally loved.
To every woman who has struggled with her weight and body image: I pray the message in this book shows you there is another road to health and it’s the only one that lasts.
Introduction
Step 1: Stop Dieting
Step 2: Renew Your Mind
Step 3: Commit to the F.I.T. Power Hour
Step 4: Dress Yourself with Strength
Step 5: Set F.A.I.T.H. Goals
Step 6: Eat God-made, Not Man-made Foods
Step 7: Choose Self-Control
Step 8: Change Your Perspective
Step 9: Overcome Setbacks
Step 10: Celebrate Every Victory
Notes
INTRODUCTION
Put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
—Colossians 3:10 ESV
I tried to keep smiling under the glaring lights and cameras as the suspension built in the room. The anticipation was nerve-racking. Surrounded by twenty-something girls in the best shape of their lives, I wasn’t sure I stood a chance at winning. The competition had been tough, and all of these women were extremely beautiful and talented.
It had been two and a half years since my father had suffered a stroke and I had begun my fitness journey. Perhaps becoming a fitness model and working my way toward entering the ESPN Fitness America competition was slight overkill. I mean, just losing the weight would have been a great reward, but something in me wanted to make up for lost time. Whatever the case, I had learned so much about what my body was capable of, and fitness had truly become my passion in the process.
Standing on that stage, a thirty-three-year-old woman who had painstakingly dedicated herself to losing weight and becoming an athlete for this competition—learning gymnastics, dance, and acquiring the strength and flexibility necessary to take on girls over a decade younger—I had never felt more powerful or accomplished. For this reason, it didn’t matter if I won or not.
And then...”Kim Dolan Leto is our ESPN Fitness America Champion!”
It took me a moment to come out of my fog and make my way to the front of the stage. Winning was beyond my wildest dreams, but it quickly became a reality I was happy to accept. At this point in my life, fitness was everything. I worked hard to make my body good enough for magazine covers and fitness competitions, and now it seemed to be paying off.
My life leading up to modeling and competing looked similar to many other women’s lives, which is unfortunate in some respects. For instance, I had a difficult childhood with alcoholism and abuse in my family and experienced self-image issues and insecurity in my teen years. Eventually I went to college and took the corporate job route in my twenties and thirties thinking becoming a successful businesswoman would make me happy. I struggled with my weight throughout it all and tried diet after diet into my adult years, but nothing ever seemed to keep the extra pounds off.
Even after I won the ESPN Fitness America competition, I struggled with a perpetual cycle of weight gain and loss. At this point, I began to travel down a very dangerous and unhealthy road of extreme dieting, and I found all of my self-worth in whether or not I made the cover of a publication or made it to the final round of a contest.
This lifestyle continued until I had a baby at age thirty-eight. Having my child so late in life made me reconsider my reasons for being fit, and I realized the methods by which I had been trying to maintain a certain look were not necessarily the ones that would ensure a long, healthy lifestyle. So, I started praying for God to intervene in the raging battle over my weight. I didn’t want to have any idols in my life, and I especially didn’t want my own body to be one. Turning to Him was my last resort, but it should have been the first place I went.
Ultimately, inviting God on my journey has been the game changer. He has shown me that staying healthy for my children and taking care of my body to avoid diseases that run in my family are better motivators than wanting to look good for a fleeting occasion. This is the answer to losing weight and keeping it off. And, in doing so, I have found that growing closer to God is an even greater reward than maintaining a certain weight. Focusing my healthy lifestyle on Him rather than on my body gives me the lasting motivation and the sufficient strength I need to continue on.
I wrote F.I.T. for the countless women who, like me, are tired of the short-term effects that come with fad diets. This book is not about working out for an hour a day in order to get a six-pack. It doesn’t require you eat only 500 calories or avoid a certain type of food. There is no magic pill F.I.T. offers that will instantly make you drop thirty pounds. No, the goal of the Faith Inspired Transformation is to help women like you and me bring our bodies under our control and change our mindsets from temporary dieting to understanding good health as a godly lifestyle.
There are ten steps to F.I.T., and each one will introduce various methods to help us stay spiritually, mentally, and physically fit. At the end of each step, there is a “Get F.I.T.” section with a general overview of the information covered along with reflection questions and a number of strategies or charts that will help with daily application. F.I.T. may be read from cover to cover, or you may reference individual steps if you need help during any part of your health journey.
The 10 steps of F.I.T. are broken up as follows:
I believe you picked this book up for a reason, whether it be to lose weight, gain perspective, or experience God in a whole new way through health and fitness. And my prayer is that you will find encouragement and hope and the exact words you need to hear within the pages of this book. You have more potential and more strength and more beauty than you realize, and I think it’s time to see it for yourself. So, let’s get to work and become healthy, happy, and fit in Him.
Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.
—Ephesians 3:20 NLT
You have more potential and more strength and more beauty than you realize, and I think it’s time to see it for yourself.
Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men….
—Colossians 3:23 ESV
Why is it so hard to make healthy living a habit? Armed with our greatest determination and countless diet and training plans, it should be easy; but many of us find that it’s not. Somewhere between setting our goals and facing reality, we trade healthy habits for quick-fix gimmicks and temporary results. All the while our only motivation is too often found in pictures of actresses or models whom we want to emulate.
Growing up I dreamed of being on a magazine cover. My walls were plastered with pictures of models from the pages of Glamour and Sports Illustrated. I wanted to be like them, but it was clear to me that I couldn’t compete. In comparison to these women, it seemed the list of what I wasn’t far outweighed the list of what I was. I wasn’t born with their build; they were taller and thinner, whereas I was much shorter and thicker. However, the images inspired me. So I began to place an unhealthy importance on my appearance and losing weight. And, by age thirteen, dieting became a regular part of my life.
Eventually, I became a cover model for health magazines such as Fitness and Oxygen. I achieved the thing I had dreamed of for so long, but I made mistakes along the way—the biggest mistake being my motivation for it all.
Since witnessing the effects a stroke had on my father, giving birth to my daughter, and inviting God to become the focus of my health and fitness journey, I have realized just how skewed my view was back then. Dieting was a means to an end—an end that left me feeling empty, exhausted, and ready to overindulge in all the foods I had missed and gain back every pound I had lost. It’s clear to me now that the way I felt about myself needed to change before my body needed to change. But to get to that point, I had to stop dieting. Only then could I get healthy for good.
THE WORLD’S VIEW OF HEALTH
Let’s be honest, we’ve all tried a quick-fix diet or two in hopes of “getting healthy.” But often we find ourselves trapped in a vicious cycle of self-defeat. We question why we’re not able to get that body on a magazine cover or television screen, and we feel defeated in our efforts to meet the same standard of perfection these images boast.
The media does an incredible job of showing us what beauty is supposed to look like, but the media doesn’t always get the story right. From my own experience, those images we aspire to look like are impossible even for models or actresses to live up to. In reality, we’re only seeing pieces of those women, on one day of their lives, captured at just the right moments, and then edited to perfection.
From photo shoots I’ve done, I know there is a strenuous process of preparation. I have to eat five to six small, healthy meals a day and never miss a workout for my body to be in peak physical condition, and I also have to go about my normal life leading up to the shoot: I still have to work, take care of my daughter, and keep my house in order. Therefore, I prep each week’s worth of meals well in advance and get up early to train hard five days a week for the entire month prior.
On the day of the shoot there is a make-up artist, great lighting, and a photographer who directs poses and angles to produce the most flattering images. Once the best photo is selected, it’s further perfected with editing software. By the time I see the final image, my initial thoughts are not, Wow! I look so good! I know better, so I think, Wow! I wish I looked like that all the time. Photo editing is absolutely amazing.
I am not offended by the photo-shopped images I see on magazines—I know how the process works. However, I don’t want women to compare themselves to an inaccurate depiction of the way others look in everyday life. And while it’s fun to dress up and take pictures that help sell products, I don’t want to perpetuate any lies of an industry that might make women believe they are “less than.”
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying women shouldn’t want to look their best or lose weight. However, just as I did, many women make an ideal look they want to achieve the basis for health and fitness; and, as we’ll discuss further in Step 7, this is a motivation that cannot last. An even bigger problem is that the ideal look often comes with an ideal number on the scale and an ideal diet that will quickly get them there.
Consider these numbers:
You can’t turn on the TV or open a magazine without seeing a dieting product. We are so inundated with infomercials and ads, but if these products work, where are the lasting results? If 20 billion dollars are being spent on diet aids, and 108 million of us use them, how is it that nearly 70 percent of adults are overweight or obese?2 The answer is that we’re trained in quick fixes that don’t last.
QUICK-FIX FAILURES
My painful battle with losing weight and keeping it off led me to dark, desperate places where I tried diet pills and every fad diet I could find, and the end result was weight gain, frustration, and further self-loathing. Weighing myself daily, the number on the scale would determine my mood until God showed me how incredibly unhealthy this was and how to stop the vicious cycle.
Just as I did, I want to help you redefine yourself as a fearfully and wonderfully made woman of God and stop judging yourself according to the number you see on the scale both before and after you lose the weight. You and I are so much more than our bodies, and this transformational journey is about more than going down a jean size or two.
When I first made a commitment to get fit at age thirty, just after my father suffered a stroke, I was very unhealthy, overweight, and admittedly lazy. Making the right decisions about food and exercise seemed like a job. But, with a family history of heart disease, obesity, and cancer, I new I had to make a change. The desire was there, however, my understanding of health had not changed: I would still step on the scale after a week of eating right and exercising a little bit and expect it to tell me that I lost ten pounds.
Looking back on those days, I laugh at myself. I wanted something for nothing. I wanted results without change. I was hoping somehow, magically, I could do the bare minimum and get the best results. I tried every diet, and my weight would sometimes drop, but it always came back. I had to realize I wasn’t the exception. I was just like everyone else, and health needed to become a lifestyle for me, not a race to get ready for bikini season.
There isn’t a permanent answer in a temporary solution.
Dissatisfaction with our bodies and quick-fix promises make us easy prey to negative views of ourselves and the belief that “healthy” is only something we have to be until our weight-loss goals are met. We turn to quick-fix diets to lose weight, but when it doesn’t immediately happen we quickly give up.
We see quick-fix makeovers on TV shows and infomercials, and we buy into the belief that the system can be cheated—that we can keep doing what we’ve done all along (maybe eating one less cookie here or there) and see drastic results instantly. On a regular basis my email is full of women asking if I can help them get a great bathing-suit body in two weeks. I understand this desperation because I’ve lived it, but I also know the reality of the work it takes to get that fit body. We can’t undo ten years of not taking care of ourselves in two weeks. It’s impossible and, on top of that, there’s a difference between losing weight and getting healthy. The two may go hand in hand, but our first reason for losing weight should always be to get healthy, not lose weight.
Fad diets promise quick results, but they often leave out the education, exercise, and how-tos of maintaining those results once the program is over. And, let’s be real, there’s only one thing worse than restricting what you eat to lose weight, and that’s gaining back every pound you lost. These so-called diets fuel the yo-yo cycle of weight loss and gain and only ask you to consider your outward appearance. What’s worse, they make you rely on their product. Believe it or not, any effects aren’t long lasting.
FIND BALANCE
People spend countless hours trying to find the “right plan” in magazines, Online articles, and diet books as if it’s a secret hiding away in one of these mediums. But there are so many options and there is so much to consider. Should I eat carbs or not? What is polyunsaturated fat and high fructose corn syrup? Are artificial sweeteners bad for my health? What does “paleo” even mean? Between the varying opinions on what’s healthy and what isn’t, we are continually bombarded with the latest diet crazes, the newest schemes, and endless weight-loss supplements.
After thirteen years as a fitness expert, the truth I keep coming back to is that living a consistently healthy and balanced lifestyle is the only way to achieve and maintain weight loss. Personally, I don’t like calorie counting, rigid diets, or any approach that feels restrictive. I find such methods to be overwhelming and confining. Additionally, we are all unique with varying tastes and body types, so we need the freedom to mix and match meals we enjoy without being locked into a diet simply because it promises to make us thinner. We weren’t created to think about what we look like all the time anyway. Our motivation needs to run deeper than that. And, while it’s undeniable that our happiness can be affected by how we look, we are so much more than our physical bodies. In order to achieve our health and happiness potential, we need to find balance.
With that said, I believe there’s a constant struggle between what the world wants us to be and what God wants us to be. Extreme diets are a great example of how we allow ourselves to be defined by one limiting factor. We need to find balance amidst the chaos of dieting as we change our lifestyle and shrink our waist size. One of the ways in which we might do so is by changing the way we view food.
A New Way to View Food
F.I.T. eating is simple. Choose God-made foods instead of man-made foods. Picture the perimeter of the grocery store. This is where we find God-made foods—veggies, fruits, and meat—in comparison to the man-made, processed, boxed, and bagged food items that line the aisles.
F.I.T. eating is simple. Choose God-made food instead of man-made foods.
Our bodies need the right foods to function properly just as a car needs the right type of fuel to run. If you put unleaded gas into a diesel truck, chances are it won’t go anywhere. Similarly, our foods need to nourish us, not just fill us up. Therefore, being selective in our grocery purchases and shopping only around the perimeter of the store ensures that the food we bring home will not be overly processed and will contain the vitamins and nutrients our bodies need.
Macronutrients are the major players in the world of nutrition. They consist of protein, carbohydrates, and fats (words I’m sure you’re very familiar with), and many diets are based on altering macronutrient percentages or cutting out certain ones altogether. We will cover macronutrient balance and God-made meal plans more in Step 6; but, for now, it’s important to note that completely cutting out any one of these key players, while it might bring results, may not bring us any closer to lasting health.