This week: 400 lbs.

Last week: 402 lbs.

Start (2/3/15): 413 lbs.

Total lost: 13 lbs.

—

Robin Miller recently closed her New To You consignment shop on Main Street, Lake Placid, and has one goal in mind for retirement.

“Taking care of me,” she said.

Her final day of operation was March 14. Since then, she’s auctioned off items, given some away, and she’s in the final stages of cleaning up. That long-awaited vacation can’t come soon enough.

This is just one milestone in a year that has seen major changes in Miller’s life. Another milestone began in March 2014 when she joined the second round of Fitness Revolution’s Take It Off weight-loss program, now called the “Fit Revolution” group. She’s currently in her third round of the program and continues to focus on improving her health: getting stronger and losing weight.

“I began last year in March because of your article in the paper,” Miller said of the Lake Placid Diet column featuring Take It Offers Adam and Jenn Friel.

Then she read all my previous columns about the Lake Placid Diet weight-loss journey, including the one that said I was joining the Fitness Revolution group.

“I said, ‘Oh my goodness, I’ve got to do this,'” Miller said.

Over the past year, I’ve worked side by side with Miller in the gym while the trainers clap and shout words of encouragement. Butt busters, burpees, squats, bench presses … it’s all there … sweat, aches, pains and pushing our bodies to the physical limit. But we survive, recover and come back for more. Why? Because it’s saving our lives, making us feel better, making us stronger, physically and mentally. We need it.

But Miller’s a special case, and I mean that in a good way. She’s truly one of my heroes. Once people know her story, I expect they’ll feel the way I do and say, “If she can do it, I can do it.”

Miller’s husband, Mike, has a saying, and I heard it firsthand when we all hiked Mount Baker last summer with Merry Barney.

“It’s only pain,” he said. That was followed up several minutes later by “Piece of cake.”

I’ll admit, I enjoy hearing the word “cake” while on a hike, but it’s the “pain” saying that’s important here. Several years ago, Robin was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and she suffers from migraines.

“With the fibromyalgia, I hurt all the time,” Robin said. “Before this program, just walking up a flight of stairs could put me in a chair for hours because I couldn’t move. I hurt so bad that it was physically impossible to do anything. Walking around the lake was virtually impossible. Anything was physically draining.”

Now in her 50s, Robin weighs more than she did in her younger days when she was a figure skater and then a skating coach. She realized that she needed to lose weight. In order to do that, she works through the everyday pain.

Robin’s long-term goal is to lose 100 pounds.

“That’s going to take a long time to do,” she said.

Robin’s short-term goal during her first round of the Fitness Revolution program was to lose 20 pounds and “to function.”

“It was getting to the point where I was working in the shop every day and I was going home and I couldn’t do anything,” she said. “I would literally go home, and if I sat down, that was the end.”

Robin lost 25 during the first 12 weeks but has struggled with her weight over the past nine months, mainly because of work and the stress it created.

“I was back to my stress eating and stuff like that, but I was still strong,” she said. “So the strength stayed, and it actually continued to improve.”

Since starting the program, Robin has found that activity helps with the fibromyalgia.

“Strength-wise, I’ve done so much better,” she said. “I’ve done the Biggest Loser race in Plattsburgh twice. I did the (Lake Placid Classic) 10k in September. I hiked two mountains of the Saranac Lake 6ers.”

Other than the exercise, Robin has found other key elements in the fitness program have helped improve her health, such as listing three positives every day, keeping track of food intake, the consistency, and the support and camaraderie of the group.

“Everybody is helping everybody else,” she said of the workout family.

During a recent workout, Robin had a huge headache, but the group kept her going.

“I thought, ‘I’m just going to give up and go home,'” she said. “I was watching everybody, and my head started to feel better. And I thought, ‘OK, I’m not going home. I’m just going to take it back a notch and do what I can.’ And I finished the workout.”

Robin has some advice for others who need an exercise program/support group to lose weight and improve their health but who are afraid to join the group or may be intimidated by a gym setting.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “Do it. It’s important. Just getting up and coming through the door, that’s the first step.”

Can Robin do all the exercises listed on the workout sheet? Not yet. The trainers adapt the exercises based on our physical limits, so if we can’t do a true burpee (picture a squat thrust), they’ll modify it so we’re at least doing something. For example, if we can’t do a true jump rope, we’ll do air jump ropes instead.

“You don’t have to come in and think, ‘Oh my goodness, I can’t lift 10 pounds,'” she said. “That’s OK. If you just move your arms. Don’t be afraid. You’ve got to just get up and move.”

As a skating coach, Robin’s philosophy was “anybody can learn to skate.”

“You just have to have the desire,” she said. “Anyone can come into this gym and do something. You have to have the desire and think, ‘Hey, I can do this.'”

The proof is in watching others overcome physical challenges. Robin continues to be inspired by the story of a former student, a German girl with cerebral palsy.

“When I saw this girl with cerebral palsy, she wanted to try skating,” she said. “We modified it for her, but she did it. And she had trouble walking, but she still skated.”

One high point of the program for Robin was jumping rope 100 times in a row.

“I’ve only done it twice, but I did it,” she said. “And I wasn’t able to do that since I was probably 12.”

Robin still has her bad days.

“I get really frustrated when I feel like there are some weeks when I’m really, really hurting and last week I was able to do a hundred jump ropes and this week I’m tripping myself up on five,” she said. “I know this is going to end. This is one blip. Then I see you do 30 and I say, ‘OK, I can do it.’ Everybody has a bad day once in a while. I may be having a really, really bad day today, but it’s just today.”

During this interview on Thursday, April 2, Robin was not looking forward to the dreaded “tire flips” that were planned for the evening workout. Over the past year, despite several attempts, she hadn’t been able to do one tire flip. But she kept trying.

This is what I love about Robin the most. She’s always in pain but continues to come back, week after week, giving it everything she can. She’s in the gym, working hard, trying to improve her life, not on the couch feeling sorry for herself and making excuses because she has fibromyalgia. I saw her determination when we hiked Haystack Mountain last summer, and I see it every week. Sometimes when I’m having a hard time in a workout, I look over and see her pushing through the pain, and it keeps me going.

It’s only pain, after all.

During the April 2 workout, Robin finally completed a tire flip, but she didn’t stop there. She did one, then two, then three in a row.

Piece of cake.