After Julie Murdock, 30, of Tigard, Ore., lost her job in the mortgage business in September, she could have hibernated in her apartment, eating junk food all day and undermining her weight-loss efforts while she searched for a job on the Internet.
"I could have gotten really upset and been a victim of the situation, but I've fought to not let that happen," she says. Instead, Murdock decided to "use that time to make my life better and take control of the things that were in my control, like what I was eating, my budget and my exercise program."
In all, she has lost 35 pounds over the past few years, including shedding about seven pounds in recent months.
Murdock's story was selected by a panel of experts to be featured in the sixth annual USATODAY Weight-Loss Challenge in the newspaper and online at dietchallenge.usatoday.com. This year's series, which runs every Monday through mid-May, focuses on how to lose weight on a budget.
She traces her weight gain to her college years. She was an athlete in high school, but her exercise routine slowed down in college. She wasn't watching calories, although she did try to control her fat intake.
"That was back when it was all about fat-free," she says. "You didn't worry about calories. I would eat a whole box of Hot Tamales (candy) thinking it had no fat, and didn't even worry about the calories."
Before she knew it, she weighed too much. Then a few years ago, Murdock started trying to turn her lifestyle around, eating four or five small meals a day and making sure most included some protein. She limited her calories to 1,500 or fewer a day and started doing a wider variety of exercises.
Murdock says she saw the economic meltdown coming. "Being in the mortgage industry, I could see the writing on the wall and the way things were headed."
So the month before she got laid off, she paid off her car and cut back on the amount she spent on food. "Having discipline in one area helped me have discipline in others."
While she was looking for a new job, she had an excuse for not going out to eat or to happy hour with friends. "I have to watch the dollars I spend and calories I spend."
She recently got hired as a legal assistant, but she says she is still applying some of the lessons she learned when she was unemployed.
"One of my tricks is to think about calories the same way I do dollar bills," Murdock says. "In other words, how much is this piece of pizza going to cut into my daily budget of calories? Can I afford it?"
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