Finding the motivation: Local woman drops 302 pounds through diet, exercise | Health

Like many women, Wendy McConkey has seen her weight go up and down over the years.

But at nearly 450 pounds in January 2006, she hit a point where she knew something had to change. McConkey joined Weight Watchers and made the decision to alter her lifestyle forever.

“Finally something switched and I thought ‘This isn’t why you’re here,’” she said. “I knew when I walked through the doors that day that I was going to have to do this for the rest of my life.”

Nearly five and a half years later, McConkey has dropped more than 300 pounds, hit her goal weight, and departs Tuesday to attend a taping of the Oprah Show celebrating people who have achieved extreme weight loss.

McConkey, a kindergarten teacher, says it was a series of events in 2005 that brought everything into focus and made her realize just how difficult life had become.

“At that weight your life is just 10 times more difficult,” she said. “You’re worried about am I going to break the chair; is there going to be a place for me to sit. Am I – I knew I was going to be the biggest person in the room, what are other people going to think of me?’

That January, McConkey made herself a promise that the changes she was making would be for life and began a five-year fight to hit her goal weight.

She began with diet change and dropped eight pounds in the first week.

The next week she was back up three-and-a-half pounds, nearly in tears at her weekly weigh-in. But she’d promised herself that she wouldn’t quit, and by her second month on the program began to see regular losses.

“Motivation comes and goes. Usually in the very beginning everybody’s highly motivated during that honeymoon period,” she said.

The key is sticking to it even when motivation is low.

“You just go and you do it,” she said. “I learned from doing this for so long that you just have to keep going.”

At first McConkey couldn’t exercise. Standing up brought on severe back pain after just five or 10 minutes.

But after about a month she began taking short walks around a park near her home in Fircrest. She started with a half mile, taking breaks along the way. It began to get easier and McConkey set small, attainable goals for herself. 

“Next time I’m going to be able to do it without stopping,” she’d tell herself.

By summer, she could do a flat mile and kept adding new challenges.

McConkey joined the YMCA in 2007, a year and a half after starting Weight Watchers. She started using weight machines and in October took her first Zumba class – a dance fitness workout set to world music.

“That opened a whole new realm of, ‘I’m not just going to be someone who’s working out, but who is physically fit,’” she said.

Now she teaches Zumba classes three days a week, and does a combination of Zumba and toning two days a week. She says it’s easy to get burned out, which is why she sets reasonable exercise goals for herself.

“Don’t do anything to lose the weight that you don’t plan doing to keep it off,” she said.

McConkey is just a few weeks into the “keep it off” side of things, but is fully committed to doing so. She hit her goal weight – losing 302 pounds – two Sundays ago.

“It’s been weird this past week to not be thinking about losing anymore; it’s just about maintaining,” she said.

Despite McConkey’s dramatic physical changes, she says her personality is just the same – if not a little bolder.

“I’m not afraid to try new things anymore … now it’s like what the heck, what’s going to happen,” she said. “I definitely am more bold that way, just trying new things that I wouldn’t have tried before.”

McConkey says she used to suppress her personality, hiding behind the weight, and is now able to let it show.

“I’ve always loved to dance, I just didn’t do it,” she said.

In Zumba class, she shimmies and dances between routines, sings along with the music and offers advice to classmates who approach her afterward.

“So cliché [but] anybody can do it,” she says. “It’s so true. I’m not unique. It’s not like I had some magic formula or anything like that. Just find your goal and set your goal.”

“If you’re being faithful to whatever plan you’re doing, it will come off. If you’re doing healthy, balanced, it will come off.”