Active Champions

Deb Clavelle

What Activities Keep You Fit and Active?
I'm an avid power walker and hiker. I am also lucky to have activity built into my work in the fitness industry at the South Slope Family YMCA. I regularly teach class and am able to get a workout in on my own schedule!

What Motivated You to Become Active?
I was an overweight teen through the difficult years of high school. My self-esteem was low and I always felt less than the other girls. One day I decided I'd had enough and started making some changes in the way I ate and exercised. It took a long 20 years of practice (and Weight Watchers) before I could say that I finally had my weight at a desired goal and was able to maintain it.

How Do You Motivate Yourself to Stay Fit?
The alternative to being fit makes me very unhappy. The difference in my lifestyle is 360 degrees and I wouldn't have it any other way. It may have taken 20 years, but fitness is part of my daily routine. You get to a point where you feel worse if you don't exercise.

What Are the Benefits of Being Fit for You?
Being fit means feeling good about myself. I feel strong and confident to push myself to do more than I ever have. It also means being a bit of a role model which keeps me even more motivated. Finally, being fit means that every year I don't dread the arrival of summer and having to pull out the shorts and t-shirts.

Who Are/Were Your Role Models?
Now my role models are all the members who struggle to keep activity and healthy habits consistent and keep through challenges and low motivation. Most of us learned our unhealthy habits as youngsters and it can take many tries to learn new and healthy ones. Those who persist, are realistic and make lifestyle changes are the real models of healthy living.

Hobbies/Interests?
I am completing a diploma in Nutritional Counselling. The amount of information is staggering but fascinating.

Thrills?
The first time I got up on a surfboard in Hawaii.
My first triathlon at UBC.

Favourite Things?
Active holidays and annual Hawaiian trips.

Favourite Quotes?
"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."