MOST IMPROVED MAN UNDER 50: ED BELOTE
A. ZAHNER CO., team 1

A year ago, Ed Belote picked up a copy of Ingram’s and started reading about five of his A. Zahner Co. colleagues who had been the Most Improved Team in the Fittest Execs and Fittest Companies Challenge. It gave a new perspective on a number that this sheet-metal journeyman was carrying around: 315—pounds.

He decided right then to follow their lead. He went to work on his health right away, and when the Challenge started in August, Belote got on board with one of two A. Zahner teams. Even before the Challenge test-in period, he was down 35 pounds. Today, he’s 80 pounds below that starting point, and still heading toward his goal, now within reach in just a few more weeks.

In a nation where excess weight is epidemic, Belote is a walking example of what it means to take ownership of the problem. After 136 days of the Challenge, he came away as the Most Improved Man Under 50, and had the biggest health score improvement among a field of 211 competitors—a 36-point bump.

What difference has all of that made in his life? “Oh, God,” he blurts out. “I have a lot more energy. I can do things when I get home after work, instead of going home after work and sleeping.” Even simple things like tying his shoes, he said, had become an ordeal. No longer.

How did he do it? By focusing on both diet and exercise. A zealous embrace of plant-based fare—vegetables, fruit, beans and brown rice—triggered the weight loss. “It meant getting away from stuff that’s processed,” Belote said of his rebuilt diet. “If it was processed in any way, shape or form, I didn’t eat it.” And he dialed way down on sugars, caffeine and fried foods. Belote says he also found support in two trusted self-help books: The Engine 2 Diet and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition.

MOST IMPROVED MAN OVER 50: LEONARD SEARCY
SHOOK HARDY & BACON

Some fitness regimens are born consistent, some have consistency thrust upon them. The latter proved true with Leonard Searcy. An attorney at Shook Hardy & Bacon, Searcy says that by mid-summer of 2011, “I had already started a workout regimen, but was irregular in my keeping up with it. Then, I received an invitation to participate in the Fittest Execs program and I thought it would help me establish a regular, consistent workout routine and help me set a target goal.”

Mission accomplished. With a 22-point improvement in his health score, Searcy is the Most Improved Man Over 50 in the 2011–12 Fittest Execs and Fittest Companies Challenge. “I was excited and surprised” at winning his category, he said. “I really wanted to help my team do well. I also wanted to get my health back in order and this program helped me do just that.”

In his case, personal success was grounded in the team dynamic he created with his three Shook colleagues. “In an informal way, we established a goal to see who could lose the most weight,” Searcy said. “But more importantly, we typically worked out at the same facility and usually around the same time during the day. It was mostly informal with us running into each other and keeping tabs on each other’s status.” Thus the consistency.

“The most important thing was for me to adhere to a regular fitness regimen,” Searcy said. “I would run on the treadmill at an incline, and gradually in-crease the incline and speed over time.” After getting his heart rate up, he said, he would move to the elliptical machine for more. Then came the stomach crunches, dips, and bench presses, and later in the day, sit-ups and push-ups.

Result? “My health is much better. I am more conscious of my eating habits,” he says. “I feel good about myself. I am also able to be even more active with my children. I go dancing with my wife.”

MOST IMPROVED WOMAN UNDER 50: ERICA SMITH
INDEPENDENCE SCHOOL DISTRICT

Erica Smith had her fitness goals. Heading into the 2011–12 Fittest Execs and Fittest Companies Challenge last August, she hoped to lose weight, eat healthier and be a role model for her two boys, ages 4 and 6. The thing was, they were the same goals she’d had in mind for years. “I just never had the resources to do it,” she said.

Well, she found them. The Challenge provided her with both team support and a competitive structure that offered additional motivation. Those elements not only helped advance her toward her goals, they earned her the title of Most Improved Woman Under 50. She used a combination of rigorous exercise and attention to diet detail to raise her personal health score by 22 points.

Abetting her in that cause was her employer, the Independence School District, where she serves as coordinator of before- and after-school programming. By happy coincidence, the district opened an employee fitness center almost concurrent with the start of the Challenge in August. Working with a wellness director who outlined a personal fitness program—and attending boot camps with her Challenge teammates—Smith learned a lot about fitness; just ask her about the day at camp devoted entirely to stairwork.

“I had never been on an elliptical machine before,” she says, “and I didn’t even know what a lunge was.” She does now, and the change has been life-altering. “I have so much more energy, and I can keep up with my boys,” she says. “My goal was not to start something with this that I couldn’t keep up. I’m continuing my regular exercise and eating better. I’m trying to keep it going.”

MOST IMPROVED WOMAN OVER 50: JO ANN MENDENHALL
A. ZAHNER CO., team 1

Her first go-round with the Fittest Execs and Fittest Companies Challenge taught Jo Ann Mendenhall a great deal about how to improve her health. Her second time at the dance taught her about the need for a long-term commitment to it. “I was really disappointed that I didn’t continue with the sit-ups, push-ups and lunges from last year” during the break between competitions, said the human resources manager for A. Zahner Co. “I am not going to make that mistake again.”

Thusly motivated, Mendenhall soared to a 28-point gain in her personal health score in the most recent Challenge, locking down the top spot for Most Improved Woman Over 50—for the second year in a row. It came atop last year’s 33-point gain, meaning the Jo Ann Mendenhall you see today is a very different person than the one who first tested in back in August 2010.

“My clothes fit much better and I have so much more energy,” she says of the changes. “Now I need to keep that up and add in eating food that supplements my physical work in a healthy way.”

This year, she says, she decided to concentrate more on building muscle and aerobic exercise: “I go to a nearby track and run laps in a funny way—backwards running, sideways, skipping. It makes it fun,” she says. She’s learned that little things make a difference—“I also rode my bike in place of driving my car for errands as often as I could,” she says—but perhaps her biggest take-away from participating in the program has been the need to simply make the commitment. It’s just too easy to let work, kids and family, and other activities jostle their way to the top of the priority list, so she sees the value in just doing it.

“I’m scheduling time for myself in the evenings three times during the work week and in the morning on both weekend days,” Mendenhall says. “I scheduled the time and just made it happen.”

Return to Ingram's February 2012