Today’s post is guest-written by my wife, Debra Mischel.

My health had been going downhill for several years. With a high stress office job that kept me chained to a desk most of the day and no motivation to get up and move, I was packing on weight. The doctor put me on high blood pressure medication in 2009, and by 2012 I was feeling old, fat, and awful.

There is a history of heart disease and type 2 diabetes in my family, both conditions that are primarily triggered by obesity, and I was heading right down that path. At 5’3″ and 160 pounds, I wasn’t “obese” according to the Body Mass Index, but was close. I didn’t look very good, and I felt terrible.

Like many people, I had had a gym membership for several years, but good intentions don’t take you very far. It seems one has to actually go to the gym in order for the membership to do any good. But doing something requires motivation, and the heavier I got the less motivated I became.

I turned 49 on February 22, 2012, and I knew that I didn’t want to feel this bad when my 50th birthday rolled around. I also knew that I couldn’t make the transformation on my own, so I went to the gym and asked for some help. They set me up with a personal trainer, and we got to work. They gave me diet recommendations that I followed (nothing terrible, mostly just portion control and avoiding the really high-fat, high-sugar foods), and a training schedule.

My training schedule consisted of one hour weight training with a trainer three days per week, and an hour or two of cardio (treadmill, stationary bike, stair climber, or classes) twice per week. On weight training days, I would do a 30 minute warmup on the treadmill.

By July of 2012, I had lost more than 30 pounds and was off the blood pressure medication.

I had met my original goal of getting my weight down to 125 pounds and I felt better than I had in years. But by now I was hooked. I still had some excess fat, and I wanted to build some more muscle. So I kept working with my trainer, stayed with the diet, and kept up the schedule. On my 50th birthday, almost exactly a year after I started my exercise program, I did a five hour weight training workout. I weighed 115 pounds, was stronger than I’d ever been, and felt better than at any time since I was in high school.

At that point I decided to enter the Figure competition at the Naturally Fit show in July. In order to compete, I would have to lose all my excess fat, and build a bit more muscle. I stepped up my workouts so that I was working out twice per day four days per week, heavier on the weight training and a little light on the cardio. The other three days were rest days to let my body recover. I also went on a 20-week “contest prep” diet that consisted of approximately 50% protein, 30% carbs, and 20% fat.

Getting up on that stage in front of hundreds of people, wearing the smallest and most expensive bikini I had ever owned was scary. But I did it. I placed third in the Novice category against six other women, all younger than I, and first in the Masters 50 and Over category.

It’s about taking control of your life and responsibility for your own health. I spent years making all the excuses: no time, too expensive, too old, too busy, body hurts, too fat. This transformation cost me, on average, about an hour per day for a year, and then about two hours per day for five months. It cost me some TV time during the week and a few hours of couch potato time on the weekends during contest prep to get my meals ready for the next week. I didn’t even miss it!

You can change your life. It takes hard work, sure. But the benefits are well worth the effort.