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Mark Wires Battle
Lose the junk food and sweat like hell
By Michael Forest
Mark Wire is a fighter. A strong, determined one. He is a weight-loss champion in a field that often has more losers than winners.
In the past three years, the 52 year-old Royal Bank executive has sweated off 120 pounds from his six-foot frame down from 364 pounds.
Sweat he says, holding up his drenched T-shirt, and eating properly is what its all about.
It all seems so simple, but any executive who has tried to lose even five pounds knows that is not. Time behind a desk can eat up the day, and family responsibilities see the kids get the activity while adults can be overlooked, especially when arriving home by 6 or later is a time blocker.
Wires success is founded upon his dedication to purpose and ensuring that his physical needs are met for health. His physical fitness regime has him working out six times a week at the downtown YMCA gymnasium. He works his body systematically on a Stairmaster and a routine consisting of various high-intensity weightlifting exercises and cardio workouts.
My objective this year is 300 workouts, he says.
He is as dedicated to his fitness plan as he was once dedicated to eating.
Id eat a couple of chocolate bars on the way home from the office and then eat dinner. I was a chronic eater, he says.
Losing weight has become like a business plan that never lets him off the hook.
I have a very systematic approach. I set targets each month for both the number of pounds I want to lose and the number of workouts I intend to complete. I weigh myself every second Saturday to measure my progress, says Wire.
Being healthy is his mantra. So much so that he want his kids to be smart about what they eat.
You see so many kids today that are overweight. Its because there is so much snack food around.
Mark knows about fast food and fast food.
Back in October of 1981, he weighed 360 pounds, had a 54-inch waistline, and a size-56 chest.
The only place I was able to get my clothes was the Big and Tall store, he says. I was shopping at the end of the rack, which means that had I gotten any bigger, they would no longer have been able to fit me.
Another reason things had to change was that he did not want to live the rest of his life alone as an overweight person.
During the following 18 months, Wire, who was a bachelor at the time, managed to starve off 160 pounds to bring himself down to 200 pounds by April of 1983. He also starting exercising, walking and gradually adding more strenuous activities to his regimen, including weights, racquetball, and running, which burned away the calories and the pounds.
By the spring of 1983, after his dramatic weight loss, he met his future wife. They were engaged in 1984 and married a year later.
Mark was eating 700 to 800 calories a day, which over an extended period is unsustainable for an adult male of normal weight and height.
By the summer of that year, Mark had regained 40 pounds. Within the next year, he was back to his initial weight of 360.
I simply got tired of starving myself. Gaining back all that weight was very disheartening, Mark says. Id been battling with my weight my entire adult life, and now I was back to square one.
In the next 20 years, there were numerous, fitful starts and stops in his ongoing battle to lose weight.
I was always wishing and dreaming, but was unable to get anything significant going, he recalls. I was no longer sure that I even believed it could be done. I was in denial, no doubt about it. So I withdrew into my two hobbies: cars and food.
It got to the point where food became such an important part of his life he built entire weekends around the hunt for specific items to add to the household menu. Going for burgers and fries or donuts on Saturday morning were outings with a purpose. Every day, for the next several years, Mark would promise himself that he would start dieting tomorrow.
In January 2003, Mark was among a select group of RBC employees chosen to go on a bank-sponsored Caribbean cruise and convention for top performers. When the time came to don his suit for the requisite corporate group photo, his dress shirt and his pants barely fit.
I was sweating so profusely from rushing to get dressed for the occasion, sweat showed through my shirt in the photograph, he says.
Most people would have been proud to display this photo because of the prestige, but he was ashamed of the way he looked. The whole thing had cast a pall over the rest of his shipboard functions.
That was the start of round two of his battle with weight and, exhibiting the determination that would drive him forward during the next three and a half years, there was no doubt this time the game was on.
He immediately cut back on unhealthy foods and returned to the gym to stare down his old demons.
I also started partnering with a friend who wanted to lose weight. I cant say enough about the role my partner has played in my success. I wouldnt be where I am without my partners encouragement and support and the motivation I gain from witnessing their personal success, he says.
He started logging each exercise session to gauge his level of fitness. At the beginning, it was not very high. He would walk on a treadmill at a pace of 2.8 miles an hour for fifteen minutes. It wasnt much, but he told himself that it was a start.
About the same time, he entered a contest being held by the Winnipeg Free Press.
Winners of The New You in the New Year received free exercise and diet counseling from a health and fitness professional. Wire did not win (there were four winners, as he recalls).
He was more than ever determined to forge ahead as he read the newspaper updates on how the winners of the contest fared in their own personal fitness makeovers by the professional hired for the contest.
I liked what this guy was doing with the contestants, Mark says, so I called him up and asked him to help me do the same.
Enter Mark Surzyshyn.
Psychologically, it had taken 20 years for Mark to make another attempt at losing weight, and the help he received from Surzyshyn was crucial to the success of his new endeavour. At first, Mark had a hard time letting go of his pre-conceived notions of how to lose weight, says Surzyshyn, who holds a degree in human nutritional sciences and is a certified fitness trainer. Based on Marks caloric intake, I figured he must have been in dire straits to perform at work.
He put Mark on a massing program to stimulate lean muscle and a diet of approximately 2,100 calories per day, which was about as low as he wanted to see him go at the time.
The exercise program included many heavy weights at a low intensity with long rests between sets. The diet took his desk job into account, since a persons daily environment dictates their daily calorie requirements.
Mark progressed during the months and years until, at his last visit with his trainer in March of this year, he was down to a healthy 278 pound. The goal from the outset was to get down to a safe weight of 240, which is where Wire is at the time of this interview.
According to Surzyshyn, Wire has met all the expectations that they both held at the beginning of their collaborative effort three years ago. When asked if he considers Wire to be a success story, he is unequivocal. We never gave up on him. And 2006 was the year in which he finally made that great leap, where he stepped over that last barrier and became personally accountable for his own success.
Mark says he will not accept that there is no time in his life for exercise, despite working long hours in an intense, stressful, corporate environment. He has never missed a meeting, still travels for work, but has stayed focused on his goals. Its all about what I really want in life, he says. I like how I feel after my workouts and by eating healthy. I have tons of energy and feel better than I have in over 20 years. Its just a great feeling and a huge boost to my self esteem and self confidence
He is changing jobs within the bank and says his personal success over his weight has given him the confidence to learn new things.
I intend to reach my goal of a 36-inch waist by December 31, which will see me end up around 200 pounds, the same weight I managed to achieve 23 years ago. But this time I intend to stay there forever. I have learned from my failure back in the 80s and will never put myself through that agony again he says.
I intend to apply this same mantra to other aspects of my life as well, because I now believe in myself and, just like Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, nothing can stop me now.
Armstrong is a huge role model and inspiration to Mark.
I cant overstate his impact on me, he says. Its been huge.
Armstrong was given only a 40 per cent likelihood of surviving testicular cancer. He could have easily given up or resigned himself to a life of leisure instead of driving himself to win the Tour de France for seven consecutive years.
Mark thrives on Armstrongs example of determination. A poster of on the wall of his office shows the cyclist riding alone on a cold, wet, grey day on a mountain road in the Pyrenees.
Under the picture are the words: I rode, and I rode, and I rode. I rode like I had never ridden, punishing my body up and down every hill I could find...I rode when no one else would ride. (Michael Forest is a freelance writer)
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