Shape-Up, Team Up contestants look back at challenge
The Shape-Up Challenge, Team Up Edition has come to a close, but the contestants joined together at the Y one last time to share their thoughts and feelings on the popular program.
The recap began with the contestants talking about all the different things they enjoyed the most.
“My favorite part was the competition,” Steve Leskinen said. “When I was younger, I used to play basketball, and the competition was what kept me in shape. It gives me a reason to get out and sweat.”
Steve’s wife Shanon said she particularly enjoyed the group scavenger hunt.
“It was a different kind of workout that doesn’t necessarily have to be on the treadmill or lifting weights,” she said.
Marianne Oppman most enjoyed the regular Monday night group meetings and workouts.
“Just meeting here and seeing the results of everyone was really motivating,” she said.
Relating to the group meetings, her brother and Shape-Up partner, Michael Oppman, said he also enjoyed the group meetings, but for a different reason.
“I liked trying the different forms of exercise we were exposed to,” he said. “There were a lot of things I’ve never tried before like the step aerobics class. Before, I would just go to the free weight room.”
Contestants Shanon Leskinen and Joyce Thornton agreed, saying they no longer feel intimidated to take a workout class.
“That’s true because we’ve been members at the Y for a couple of years, and I never did a class,” Shanon said. “I just never had the nerve to go to that side of the building.”
Contestant Darryle Thornton added that he also enjoyed all the group workouts and personal training, but he most enjoyed ending his workouts relaxing in the steam room or the jacuzzi.
The contestants also enjoyed the team aspect of the competition, and said results would have been different if they went through the program as individuals.
“If we were doing this by ourselves, instead of 59 pounds, it would have been 39 pounds,” Larry Kumor said. “It was just having somebody on your tail and knowing you couldn’t take it easy.”
The brother and sister duo, Michael and Marianne Oppman, said they didn’t feel like they were at a disadvantage not living together, and agreed that the team aspect helped motivate them.
Joyce Thornton added that not wanting to let her partner down added to her motivation.
Steve Leskinen said that having a partner also kept him on his toes constantly.
“Instead of being monitored once a week, your now monitored 24/7,” he said.
Some contestants also said having the competition public helped to encourage and keep them motivated.
The Leskinens said strangers would often recognize and congratulate them in public, while Larry Kumor had his coworkers were on his tail.
“I knew that if nobody else holds me accountable, the guys I work with would,” he said. “But after five or six weeks when your down 20-30 pounds, it’s ‘hey what are you doing?’ I’d say exercise is a lot of it, but it’s also just backing off the eating.”
Larry Kumor also said he was amazed to notice there were only two or three weigh-ins where someone either gained a pound or remained steady.
“You didn’t want to be the person that gained a pound, so it kept you working hard to see that drop each week,” Michael Oppman said.
Behind the scenes, the contestants also endured two one-on-one personal training sessions each week.
“I liked working out with the different trainers, like Pam. There was no ease in time with Pam. It was right off the bat,” Larry Kumor said. “Destiny was kind of quiet, but she was tough, too.”
Shanon Leskinen described the training sessions as a “necessity for the program.”
“Without them, we’d be stumbling around wondering what to do,” she said.
Joyce Thornton said she wouldn’t have lost as much weight as she did without the sessions.
“Without the training, I would have still came in here to workout, but I wouldn’t have had a clue what I was doing,” she said. “Now I know what I need to do and what works well for me.”
The contestants were also thankful for the dietitian and talked about nutritional changes they have made.
“The biggest thing for us was that we used to fry everything,” Joyce Thornton said. “Now we bake everything. It was a whole new way of cooking I had to learn.”
The Kumors said they have substituted meats in their diet to fish and turkey products while Michael Oppman said he cut out breads, and the Leskinen’s said they focus a great deal on portion control.
“We started making changes because of our kids,” Shanon Leskinen said. “Because we struggle so we don’t want our kids to grow up and have to struggle.”
Now that the competition is over, the contestants say they still use their MyFitnessPal app and/or a Fitbit for accountability.
Finally, the contestants were asked how they felt about not knowing their final weigh-ins.
“We were anxious to see what ours were because we were away that week. We were trying to make good choices,” Pam Kumor said. “We didn’t have the Y, and we had to eat out and figure out how to get our exercise in.”
Sure the Y has a digital scale in the locker rooms. And sure the contestants could have weighed themselves at home, but the contestants all knew which scale truly mattered for their weekly weigh-ins and, they were not pleased when they found out they had to wait until the live reveal.
The competition may now be over, but the journey will still continue for the eight contestants of the Team Up Edition. They will always have the Y for support and now they have each other. The group has already planned their own quarterly group weigh-ins to continue to encourage and motivate each other, and keep themselves accountable.
“Everybody was a big success in losing weight,” said Steve Leskinen. “But the real challenge starts now, which is to keep that weight off.”