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Beware the Mad Irish
Location: Wish I was on the N17...
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Another Dramatic Change...
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Kimberly Cantergiani: Taking Control
Kimberly Cantergiani, a single mother of six, had given up on living a healthy, rewarding life. But in just three months, she took back her strength, stamina and power and created a bright new future for her and her family.
“I didn’t believe that when you change your thinking everything falls into place,” says Kimberly Cantergiani, a 2001 Body-for-LIFE Grand Champion, speaking about the life she led before her complete transformation. Kimberly’s scattered life came together after she gave her body a makeover and overhauled her personal goals. “Everything changed when I took control of my body—control of me. I didn’t have control over the kids. I didn’t have control over my husband. The only thing I could work on was me, and there was so much work to do that it seemed impossible.”
At 34, Kimberly lives in a small town near the U.S./Mexico border with five of her six children, ranging in age from five to 18. Originally from California, Kimberly moved to Edinburgh, Texas, with her second husband. Under the overwhelming stress of raising a large family, her marriage to “a good man” was unhappily falling apart. Her teenage children were heading in the wrong direction and getting into trouble regularly. Her capacity to deal with them while tending to the younger children was diminishing because her undiagnosed hypothyroidism was going untreated. Kimberly says, “Everyone insisted that my physical problems were related to postpartum depression because I was overweight and too tired to deal with the kids. Finally, I had my blood tested and got the proper diagnosis.” Even though she’d taken a step in the right direction, her hypothyroid treatments could not solve the problems she had at home.
Throughout these personal ordeals, her weight steadily increased until her 5-feet 3-inch frame ballooned to a size 26. At 191 pounds, she was 37 percent body fat. To reduce her weight, she followed many of the popular starvation diets until she hit a plateau. Dieting alone became ineffective. Then, she discovered the Body-for-LIFE Challenge. When she officially began her first Challenge, she weighed 154 pounds and wore a size 14/16. “All I thought about in the beginning was losing fat. I simply wanted to be a size 8. I had this incorrect notion that if I looked good, I would be happy. What I learned was that to be successful, I needed to focus on the things that I could control, instead of what I couldn’t. So, I focused on my goals and aspirations. Looking good just ended up being icing on the cake.”
Kimberly needed to find a source of motivation to start exercising, so in a moment of inspiration, she turned to her past. She decided to organize a “Pound-A-Thon” to raise money for a local battered women’s shelter since she had been a victim of battering in her first marriage.
“I was trying to get to the heart of matters and this issue was close to home,” she says. She mailed letters to her friends, family and neighbors to pledge money for each pound she lost. The response to her campaign was positive and her successful fundraising effort bolstered her self-confidence. “One of the reasons I was so unhappy was because I didn’t know how to put myself first. Raising money for the shelter seemed like a good way to ease my feelings of selfishness.”
In 12 weeks, Kimberly’s body fat dropped from 30.3 percent to 16.4 percent, and her dress size dropped from 14/16 to 3/4. Within a few weeks, she started a second 12-week Challenge. After three months, she wore a size 0 and was 10.5 percent body fat. “I get bored easily, so I need to change my workout program significantly every 12 weeks. Every four weeks, I lower the scheduled weight for my workouts and increase the number of reps. One week of low weight, high reps seems to recharge me.”
Kimberly describes her twice-daily workouts as “luxurious.” After taking the kids to school, she heads to the gym for a cardio session done on an empty stomach. She fuels up during the day by eating small meals every two and a half hours, and then works out with weights in the early evening. “Waiting until the end of the day gives my muscles a chance to refuel properly.” In her new occupation as a personal trainer, Kimberly helps clients set goals and achieve new levels of fitness. “There is nothing quite like the feeling that comes from helping someone catch a true vision of themselves, to realize their goals and experience a positive life transformation.”
She manages both her household and her clients by sticking to her schedule and preparing herself in advance. “I keep water in the car and carry pre-made protein drinks. I also cook 10 pounds to 20 pounds of chicken breast at a time. When it’s cool, I cut it into 5-ounce portions and store them individually in the freezer. Then, one serving can be thawed and eaten at any time. Even though I’ve drastically changed my diet, there’s one thing that I refuse to give up—grinding my own wheat to make homemade bread. The kids and I really love the smell of the bread baking. It’s very comforting.”
“I never intended to change the kids’ diets because that would be a losing battle,” she says. Yet, Kimberly made some easy substitutions that no one noticed—olive oil instead of butter, and brown rice instead of white in stir-fries. “When the kids were small, they all wanted the same things to eat. Now, everybody wants something different. You can’t please everybody. After the first couple of weeks, changing my diet got easier because the younger kids wanted to eat whatever I was eating.”
As her attitude and sense of security improved, she found the strength to start tackling the bigger, more emotional issues in her life. In November, she filed for divorce. “For a long time, my husband and I were very unhappy. After I got my self-confidence back, I didn’t feel bad about being alone. I realized that I was teaching my kids that people have to settle. What I didn’t realize was that I was also teaching them to be unhappy. They had never seen me happy. The breakup was heartbreaking, but the sadness comes from not living up to pre-conceived ideals about what our lives should be about.” Kimberly’s life was, and always will be, about her children. “I went from being too physically and emotionally fatigued to accomplish anything, to having the energy to go outside and play with my kids. When we go to the beach, I run and swim with them; we dunk each other in the water. Now that I’m more active, I’m a much better mother, a better friend and a better person. And I’m very, very happy.”
Kimberly trains for three days and rests every fourth day. She performs the following exercises in sets of 10 to 12 reps.
Day one:
Morning workout: Cardio
Thirty minutes of high-intensity interval sprinting on the treadmill or three sessions of 10 minutes each on the bike, treadmill and stair machines.
Afternoon workout: Chest/Shoulders/Triceps
Dumbbell presses: Three sets at 25, 30 and 30 pounds per hand
Flat flyes: Three sets at 10, 15 and 15 pounds per hand
Cable crossovers: Three sets at 25, 30 and 30 pounds per hand
Side raises: Three sets at 10 pounds per hand
Front raises: Three sets at 10 pounds per hand
Dumbbell shoulder presses: Three sets at 10, 15 and 15 pounds per hand
Two-handed triceps press downs: Three sets at 50, 60 and 70 pounds
Triceps dips: Three sets of 10
Two-handed overhead extensions: Three sets at 20, 25 and 30 pounds
Day two: (no cardio)
Morning workout: Legs
Eight-minute warm-up on the treadmill
Leg presses: Three sets at 160, 210 and 230 pounds
Smith machine squats: Three sets at 50, 70 and 90 pounds
Dead lifts: Three sets at 20, 30 and 40 pounds
Single-leg hamstring curls: Three sets per leg at 20, 30 and 30 pounds
Abductor and adductor machines: Three sets of each at 70, 75 and 80 pounds
Seated calf raises: Three sets of 10 at 270 pounds
Day three:
Morning workout: Cardio
Forty minutes of brisk walking on the treadmill at a 6-percent incline.
Afternoon workout: Back/Biceps/Abdominals
Wide-grip pull-downs: Three sets at 40, 45 and 50 pounds
Close-grip pull-downs: Three sets at 40, 45 and 50 pounds
Serratus (straight arm press-down from shoulder height to thighs): 2 sets of 10 at 20 pounds
Low-back hyperextensions: One set of 10 with a 25-pound plate
Lying cable biceps: (Lying flat on the floor with a straight bar curling from thighs to shoulders) three sets at 40, 50 and 60 pounds
Hammer curls: Three sets at 10, 10 and 15 pounds per hand
Hanging abdominal knee raises: Three sets of 15
Obliques: (On the Hyperextension bench) three sets of 15
Lying leg raises: Three sets of 15
Day four: Rest!
Day five: Repeat the cycle starting at day one.
Kimberly’s Nutrition
A sample day of Kimberly’s nutrition and supplementation.
Before breakfast:
2 to 3 glasses of water
Breakfast:
6 to 8 egg whites
1.5 cups of oatmeal or cream of rice with stevia, cinnamon and no-calorie butter spray
2 glasses of water
Mid-morning:
A nutrition shake made with rice milk and added powered carbohydrate fuel
(for a total of 30 grams of protein and 25 grams of carbohydrates)
1 banana
2 glasses of water
Lunch:
1 chicken breast
1 cup of brown rice
1 serving of baby carrots
2 glasses of water
Mid-afternoon:
A nutrition shake made with rice milk and added carbohydrate fuel
1 serving of “juicy” fruit: tangelo, strawberries, kiwi or melon
Dinner:
1 serving lean steak or chicken
1 baked potato with salsa
2 glasses of water
Bedtime: (if hungry)
A nutrition bar
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What are you willing to give up in order to get what you want?
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