This story will speak for itself. Thank you Diane Hansum…You are a ROCKSTAR among ROCKSTARS!!!

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I was never an athlete growing up, I loved to swim and ride bike, but never anything competitive. During my 20’s I started adding weight and was working at a job where I traveled quite a bit. So finding time to eat right and work out was never very easy. So I did what everyone said to do, eating less, and skipping meals. Some days I would only eat one meal, and usually only because I was with a client or at a business function. The weight still kept coming on. So I did what “they” say and changed all of what I ate to “low fat” which tended to be high in carbs.

I moved back to Sioux Falls to go back to school. But thought I would quickly take a few pounds off before the semester started….well that turned into a year with no weight loss results. My Doctor found a thyroid problem which we fixed with medication. Thinking this was the solution, I started back to school part-time at nights. In mid 2002 I found out that I was diagnosed with diabetes. We found that all of my years of not eating regular meals put my body in a starvation mode and was killing my metabolism. So everything “they” had been saying was wrong. I needed to eat, and cut out most of the carbs. I changed my eating habits and watched my blood sugars for the next few years. This was hard since I still traveled for work and was working fulltime and going to school part time. Eating every two hours was sometimes difficult. I maintained A1C (a three month blood sugar averaging test used by doctors) levels that were in the 6.0 to 7.1 range. This was really acceptable since I wasn’t on other medication.
In August of 2008, I had been out of school for a few months and decided to start swimming again and to finally lose weight. I worked my way up to swimming a mile a night two or three times a week. I had lost around 10 pounds and thought everything was fine. Then in May 2009, at a work place health fair, we found my blood sugar was pushing 300! Almost triple where I thought I would be! I was doing everything “they” said to do and I almost put myself in the hospital.

My doctor immediately put me on blood sugar lowering meds for the first time in nearly 7 years. I was devastated when in one visit we tripled by thyroid meds and doubled by blood sugar meds. I knew there had to be a way to finally lose weight and get back to healthy lifestyle.
I had been working out three or more times a week, watching what I ate and still was close to 200 pounds. During the final episode of the Biggest Loser I saw my first ad for CrossFit. Realizing the current path wasn’t working for me, I decided to check out the website, and then I drove by one day. Still a little unsure, one day after a high blood sugar reading, I decided to send an email to the contact on the website. A few days later Chris called to set up the appointment. My initial thought was, ‘if I keep doing the same thing, I will always get the same result’. I needed to try something different. What “they” were telling me wasn’t working.

The week before I started Crossfit I had just climbed Crazy Horse Monument with my 76 year old mother. My legs were sore. I don’t think they stopped being sore for two months! I loved it! I finally felt like there was something happening. After my first month I redid the baseline work out, I shaved a 1:40 off my time. I couldn’t believe the difference only a month had made.
When I started Crossfit I was close to 200 pounds, I was wearing size 18 pants, my blood sugar was pushing 300- with an A1C over 9, and I was just starting a medication regiment. By my third month I had dropped two pants sizes, and was noticing an even greater difference. The day after a workout my blood sugar levels were 10-15 points lower than non-workout days. The scale kept getting lighter and the sizes kept getting smaller, and the blood sugar was getting lower.

Today I’ve celebrated my first year at Crossfit. I am now is a size 8, which is the size I wore in high school. One of the goals has been to get back off medication. I want to re-train my body to function without the use of drugs. In August of 2009, just a few months of being at Crossfit my A1C was 5.7 (one of my lowest since being diagnosed). When I retested in March of 2010, my A1C was 5.1!! My doctor gave me permission to drop the medication down one level and test in a few months. My daily numbers are really good. I rarely have a day with a number over 100. I’m scheduled to retest in a few weeks.

The week after the A1C test results (I was still on top of the world), the nurse who found my high levels called to check how I was doing. When I told her my results and how I was doing it, she was thrilled. In fact, she was so thrilled that she and her husband are now Crossfit members.

Who cares what “they” say….

As of my one year anniversary at CrossFit I’ve gone from

A size 18 to size 8
-Lost close to 50 pounds
-A1C of 9.9 to 5.1
-2000 mg of one med to 1500mg (down 500 mg, and hoping for another 500 soon)
-Weekly average blood sugar levels between 90.0 and 95.0