Sure, everyone is busy. But some folks have crazier schedules than others. Doctors on call, maybe. Police working a big case. A caterer during the holidays.
And news people.
Butch Hughes, general manager of The Commercial Appeal, and WREG- TV Channel 3 weathermen Jim Jaggers, Todd Demers and Austen Onek know a thing or two about a busy lifestyle.
But they also know more than they want to about extra pounds, and they’re taking the Healthy Memphis Challenge along with the other participants you’ve been reading about for the past few months.
Like our other challengers, each of our celebrities started their quest for fitness in April. Now it’s time for you to get to know them.
Our general manager
Butch Hughes weighed 210 pounds and stood 6-foot-3 when he played football in high school. The weight crept on over the years, and on Dec. 4, 2003, he got a jolt.
“That was a bellwether day for me,” he said. “I got on the scales and I weighed more than 320 pounds.”
Sound impossible for more than 100 pounds to sneak up? Think of it this way: It was less than four pounds a year.
A third of a pound a month.
He went on the Atkins diet and when he moved to Memphis from Knoxville last August, he’d lost 55 pounds.
But there’s good food in Memphis, and Hughes, the married father of one, was eating out frequently.
“I think I went through every barbecue place in Memphis,” he said.
“I gained 25 pounds of the 55 I lost after just eight months in Memphis.”
He recently joined the Weight Watchers group that meets on Thursdays at The Commercial Appeal.
He knows that exercise is a key element in successful weight loss and he’s trying to carve out time despite the long days he puts in at the office. Already busy as general manager, he assumed additional duties when the newspaper’s former president and publisher John Wilcox left last month.
Hughes plays golf when he can and he walks at the track at Evangelical Christian School near his Cordova home. Even though he knows the gym is good for him and regular exercise is his primary fitness goal right now, he’s not convinced that a treadmill or an elliptical machine is going to hold his interest.
“The gym to me is boring,” Hughes, 49, said. “My personality is such that I want to be out and doing something. I’ve got to see that I’m going from Point A to Point B.”
The weather team
Talk about really crazy schedules. Demers is out of bed at 2:30 a.m. to get to the Channel 3 studio by 3:30. Jaggers starts his day at 4 a.m. Onek works 30 of his 40 hours on Saturday and Sunday – and when bad weather comes our way, these guys can be in the studio for hours on end. But they’re doing their best to squeeze in fitness.
Jaggers, 49, is working out twice weekly with a personal trainer at the Fogelman Downtown YMCA, but he’s got a schedule he’s sticking to on his own, too.
He’s up so early because he does radio broadcasts in the morning, but he carves out time in those early hours for exercise. Around 4:30 a.m., after he’s prepared for the first live broadcast at 5 a.m., he exercises at home, maybe some crunches, leg lifts – whatever he feels like doing. After the broadcast, he manages a two- mile bike ride around his Bartlett neighborhood before the later broadcast.
Like all the weather guys, he’s cutting back on what he eats but isn’t following a formal plan. The biggest change in his diet is that he usually eats fruit and yogurt for lunch and has consequently dramatically increased his fruit intake. Otherwise, he’s just watching portion size.
He’s not weighing, but he’s gone down a notch in his belt.
“I’m not as concerned with the weight loss as in what I see on camera or in photos,” said Jaggers, who is married and has two young children at home and two grown and gone.
Although he’s done some sort of exercise for years, really committing to a serious fitness routine was tough at first.
“But I started thinking that it’s the Healthy Memphis program, it’s my station’s program, and I want to support them so I’ll do it,” he said. “Then it became a routine.”
Like Jaggers, Demers, 43, isn’t weighing – and it’s deliberate.
“My goal has been to not really look at the scale, because that just hasn’t worked for me for the past 10 or 15 years,” he said.
He’s the father of five and three of them are at home – and under the age of 7. Since his day is well under way before they’re even out of bed, spending time with them before he has to tuck in early at night is important.
So he tries to get to the Y twice a week before he goes home for the day. He does 20 minutes of weight training, 20 minutes on cardio equipment and swims laps for 20 minutes.
And he’s got a great trick for making the time pass quickly on the treadmill: He takes the crossword puzzle from The Commercial Appeal with him and completes it.
In his head.
“It makes it a little more challenging if you don’t use a pen,” he said. “I love it.”
While Demers, who lives in Bartlett, admits he still relies on fast food for some of his meals, he selects grilled chicken or even grilled fish, and he’s said goodbye for now to fries.
Onek, 37, is a single parent to his 7-year-old son.
“I think the stress might’ve helped contribute to my weight gain over the past few years,” he said.
Not that he’s complaining; he’s just stating what single moms already know. Juggling parenting, career and housework can be exhausting.
But knowing that someone is depending on you can be inspiring, too.
“The one thing that got me motivated is that I’ve got to lose weight for health reasons,” he said. “I’ve got to be here for my son.”
He tries to get to the East Memphis YMCA, which is close to his home, to swim laps for about an hour once or twice a week.
He walks around his neighborhood, parks his car so he’ll have to walk farther, takes the stairs and makes his housework routine more energetic to help burn calories.
“I’ve never been a couch potato,” he said. “It’s just that with my schedule and parenting being what it is, my approach is you get it when you can.”
So far, he’s dropped 27 pounds on his scales at home, but says they’re iffy, “subject to the earth’s magnetic forces or something.”
He’s cooking healthier meals, cutting back portions, and sticking with diet drinks instead of sugary sodas – but not entirely.
“I will not drink a diet root beer,” he said. “I’m a root beer connoisseur. Can’t do it.”
Healthy Memphis is a joint effort by The Commercial Appeal, WREG- TV Channel 3 and the Healthy Memphis Common Table aimed at encouraging and helping Memphians to become more fit and healthy. To find out more about Healthy Memphis, go to commercialappeal.com and click on the Healthy Memphis link under Lifestyle. You can access information about getting fit and and eating better, participate in our Healthy Memphis blog and link to our partner sites.
– Jennifer Biggs: 529-5223
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