Michele Payn-Knoper
FAVORITE AIRPORT SNACK:
Peanut M&M’s, 1.5 oz.
(about 16) = 180 calories
FITNESS DESTINATION:
Fit not fat
“I was overweight as an adolescent and that difficult lesson
has stayed with me for life,” shares Michele Payn-Knoper, “I
love to eat and I don’t want to gain a lot of weight.” Frantic
travel can make her weight-maintenance goal feel like mission impossible: odd hours lead to skipped meals that lead to
a “If I see it, I eat it” mentality at the airport (chocolate),
which leads to a downward spiral at client receptions (more
chocolate). In addition, after a day of being of service to others, Payn-Knoper admits to having an “I deserve a break”
attitude that is often an excuse for—you guessed it—more
chocolate.
Interestingly, fitting structured exercise into
her travel schedule comes easier to Payn-Knoper
than fitting it into her home life, which includes
balancing the hectic pace of a growing speaking
business with keeping up with her active four-
year-old daughter. “Sometimes the best I can do
is sit-ups while I’m on speaker phone,” says Payn-Knoper. As
a thirty-something, solo traveler Payn-Knoper feels most
comfortable staying indoors with her on-the-road workouts.
Recently in Myrtle Beach, she savored quiet hotel time by
popping her favorite fitness DVD into her computer, swing-
ing the hotel doors wide open and deeply
breathing in the sea-spun air as she performed
her Pilates routine, all while feeling the gentle
breezes blowing into her room off the ocean.
A self-proclaimed perfectionist, Payn-Knoper
is working on forgiving herself for not being
100 percent fastidious, 100 percent of the time. On occasion
she admits to having so much to cram into her day, exercise
resides on the back-burner. One fact she unabashedly accepts
is that she is not a morning person. “Raising your heart rate
before 9 am should be against the law.”
But make no mistake. Payn-Knoper is crystal clear on what matters most in her quest
for fitness. “If I can be a healthy role model
for my daughter, keep my body pain-free
and still squeeze into the size I wore in high
school, I’m good.”
Phillip Van Hooser,
CSP, CPAE
FAVORITE AIRPORT SNACK:
Cheetos, 1 oz. = 130 calories
FITNESS DESTINATION:
Fit not overfed
“Too much bread, too much sauce and well, too
much food in general . . . too late,” is Phil Van
Hooser’s challenge for staying fit while on the road.
He travels 125 days out of the year and tries to
make up for his travel sins through an at-home,
three-to-four-days-a-week commitment to getting up
at 4:45 am for brisk outdoor walks, even in “teeth-chattering
low temperatures of 10 degrees.”
Van Hooser prefers walking to running because walking
renders him the time to think about speech angles, story
development, marketing ideas and his daily schedule.
Whereas running makes him think only one thought, “Why
am I doing this?”
Sometimes, he admits, the best laid exercise
plans backfire. Like when he decided to climb
the steps to the top of the Statue of Liberty
instead of taking the elevator. He found himself
wedged in an extremely small uncomfortable
spiral staircase—people jammed above him and
below him. “For more than 30 minutes, as I
inched my way upward in that stifling, New
York August heat, I found my nose positioned much too close
to the posterior of the female stranger ahead of and above
me,” Van Hooser laments. “I was reminded of a sign that was
reported to have hung from the back of a wagon train leaving
St. Joe, Missouri, in the mid-1850s, headed west to California. It read, ‘Pick your rut wisely—you’re going to be in it for
a long time.’ Somehow, I could relate.”
Still Van Hooser perseveres; motivated by the fact that
being in his early 50s, well, he’s hit “middle age.” And while
he’s okay with his thinning pate, he’s not okay with his family history of heart trouble, diabetes and hypertension. He’s
further inspired to fitness by the feeling he gets when he fin-ishes his long walks or pushes himself away from the table.
“It’s as though I’ve won a small battle in the war that has
claimed far too many casualties already.”
