weight loss secrets

Photo: Courtesy of Kelly Gause

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4. Find the Right Workout

Kelly Gause
Weight lost: 35 pounds
For how long: 9 years

We know that regular exercise helps to keep the pounds away. But there's one main factor affecting whether you'll actually work out: exercise enjoyment. Kelly Gause, 59, can vouch for that. When she joined a gym for the first time nine years ago, she hated all of her workouts, which included walking and jogging on the treadmill and lifting dumbbells a few days a week. "Every 15 minutes felt like an hour," she says.

Then she tried a group exercise class. "It took me six months to work up the courage to venture into the group-fitness studio, but I immediately loved the energy and had fun with the workouts," she says. "My whole life changed with that class." Gause began taking strength, cardio and dance classes five to six days per week and dropped 35 pounds. Nine years later, she is certified to teach four Les Mills group exercise classes, and gets her sweat on while instructing roughly six hours per week.

Now, she doesn't do her workouts because they helped her to lose weight or to keep it off, she says, but because she really loves doing them. They also just happen to keep the weight off.