Blogger turns weight-loss success into springboard

By Jane Dunlap Norris
| 978-7249
First, she filled her prescription. Then she started filling out her favorite clothes.
Laura Brooke Allen always had a sweet tooth, but once she started taking a new medicine in 2002, she started craving sugary foods. The former equestrian competitor kept soothing her frustration by spooning up ice cream, and the pounds kept piling on.
In November, a doctor’s checkup turned into a shakeup. At 5 feet, 1 inch tall, she weighed 205 pounds, but “the fact that I weighed 205 pounds wasn’t the motivator,” the University of Virginia graduate said. The shocker was the lab report.
“I’m 28 years old and my cholesterol was horrendous.”
So Allen decided to get serious about weight loss. After a safe, gradual weight loss of a couple of pounds a week, Allen is 73 pounds lighter.
What she gained from the experience was a new zeal to use her writing talents and   a strong desire to help others. Effective tools and renewed confidence had helped her change her own life for the better, so she wanted to set other folks up for success.
Allen started blogging about her quest to lose weight, and now she has a large online following on Yahoo.com and a growing online radio presence with more than 1,200 listeners. She’s hard at work on her first book, “Lose Weight with Laura.”
And now her efforts have captured the attention of the folks at Martha Stewart’s Web site, http://www.marthastewart.com.
Allen was selected as a Doer of the Week on Stewart’s site on Sept. 2, and people can vote for her on the site to help her chances of winning the Dreamers into Doers contest.
The voting deadline for the People’s Choice contest is 5 p.m. Friday, and the winner gets $2,500.
In her blogs and podcasts, Allen emphasizes the usefulness of developing a food plan, learning how to handle the occasional high-calorie misstep and establishing good habits to replace bad ones.
Perhaps the biggest secret weapon, Allen said, is accountability.
Allen relies on an accountability partner, her friend Julie, to make sure she’s not talking the talk without walking the healthy-eating walk. Recruiting a friend, family member or co-worker to hold you to your promises and goals can help you stay focused in the valley of the shadow of double dips.
“We’re interdependent people. We’re not supposed to be so isolated in our struggles,” Allen said. The ease of establishing a sense of community online has helped many of her readers stay motivated, and the comfort level of Allen’s blog and show gives readers a safe place to share their own barriers to successful weight loss — including addictive tendencies, the difficulty of losing pregnancy weight, unhealthy relationships — and find out how other folks succeeded.
“I think I’m on to something with the weight-loss journey,” Allen said. “Really, the aim for me is to help somebody.”
Allen can look through photos now and see how slowly and gradually the weight had built up.
She said that pictures of her from 2001 show her at a healthy weight, but shots captured after she started her medicine told a different story.
“It was 2002 when I really gained a lot of weight,” she said.
“It was really shocking to me that I’d gained so much weight.”
In addition to her online support team, Allen also has a cheering section at home.
Husband Anwar Allen, a fellow UVa graduate whom his wife calls “the love of my life,” has been supportive throughout her quest.
Laura Allen said her husband encourages not only her creative endeavors, but also the dietary changes she’s made at home.
“He’s pretty motivated, too,” Allen said.
These days, she gets the sweetness she needs from daughter Samaria, 1 1/2.
“She bubbles over with laughter and long stories — that I can only partially decipher — all day long,” her mother said in an e-mail.
And Samaria’s growing up in an environment with an active mother and a healthy approach to food.
“I’m so much more confident as a mom,” Allen said.
“I can run around and play hide-and-seek with her. I don’t have the guilt anymore that I’m eating the worst things in front of her.
“She eats what I eat. She’s like the only kid who eats spinach and likes it.”
Samaria also is fond of collard greens, cauliflower and other vegetables.
Allen wants to keep it that way, so she keeps a close eye on the sweet stuff that comes into her kitchen.
“We don’t really have desserts in my house,” Allen said.
In recipes for baked goods, she’ll use whole-wheat flour and cut the amount of sugar in half. But that doesn’t mean friends or family members can’t indulge in front of her.
“I’ve spent enough time away from the high-sugar foods that I’m OK around them,” she said. “I honestly don’t have doughnuts, so I don’t want to eat the box.”
Sugar isn’t the only thing Allen’s craving less of these days.
The self-described former “super-overachiever UVa student” credits her journey with bringing a “value shift” that helped her make an entirely different set of goals for her life.
“This whole experience of walking through this and writing and having the love of my husband — it’s like I’m coming back to life,” Allen said.
These days, she embraces life as a homemaker and looks for opportunities to pursue her writing from home.
If her book succeeds and leads to ways to generate some income from home, she’s all for it, but she doesn’t have the appetite for a frenetic pace anymore.
“In the past, I would’ve only been able to write this book to get on the New York Times bestsellers list,” Allen said.
“I just have this desire for a quiet, simple life. I have a passion for creating a space for my husband and my daughter to have a really peaceful life. I just didn’t think I had permission to be a housewife and a mom.
“That just kind of set me free in a way.”

On the Web:
http://www.marthastewart.com
http://dreamers.marthastewart.com
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/LoseWeightWithLaura
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/LoseWeightWithLaura
http://twitter.com/LoseWeightLaura