Sports

Ellen Clark’s healthful revolution

Ellen crosses the starting line of this year’s 5K. She finished first in her age division.


Ellen Clark’s road to a thinner body, a stronger heart and a healthier life all started with a belt that wouldn’t buckle.

While preparing for a Halloween party in 2006, Ms. Clark was rummaging through her closet to find clothes for a pirate costume, complete with a belt that went around the outside of her clothing. She tried on a few pirate-looking belts with large, shiny buckles, but they didn’t fit. She soon realized that none of her belts fit and had to borrow one from her husband, Denny. Even in his wardrobe, she said, there were few options.

It wasn’t just the shock of going from swashbuckling to barely-buckled that told her she needed a change. She read a book about heart health called “Take a Load Off Your Heart” by Joe Piscatella and Barry Franklin, as well as some articles describing the increased rates of mortality associated with what she called “belly fat.”

She came to the conclusion that some major shifts in both her workout routine and diet would not just improve her life, but perhaps save it. In addition to losing 22 pounds and reaching her ideal weight in seven months, she drastically reduced her cholesterol, improved her immune system (she hasn’t been sick in years) and wakes up feeling great every day.

The first step was running. In the beginning it was just short distances, but she gradually increased her route to three to four miles. She had a little bit of joint pain at the start, but attributed that primarily to her extra pounds. “It was just too much weight for my body.” Now she sometimes carries two 10-pound weights up and down the stairs a few times as part of her exercise and finds it exhausting. She’s still astonished to think, “That’s what I was carrying every day.”

She usually gets up before the sun to start her workout routine. She continues to attend a two-day swimming program in East Hampton, as she has for many years, but now also runs three days a week — on Saturday she does the Shelter Island 10K route, a race in which she participated last year. She’s run the 5K three times, and “Ellen’s Run” in Southampton twice.

After her runs, she heads to a room on the second floor that she’s converted to a gym where she works out with weights and does crunches, lunges and Pilates, among other exercises. She also exercises on a rowing machine once a week in lieu of running or swimming.

The room used to belong to her daughter, Olympic sailor Amanda Clark, who now lives with her husband, Greg Nissen, at the Quinipet Methodist Camp. The rowing machine was Amanda’s suggestion, who says many Olympic athletes use them to maintain their fitness.

After six days of these varied exercises, Sunday is her rest day. “I believe in mixing things up,” she said, adding, “you have to let some muscles rest.” She documents it all in an exercise log that helps her keep track of what she’s done and how much her times have improved.

Dietary changes have helped her shed weight, too. “I was eating relatively well,” she said, “but I was just eating much too large portions.” So she purchased a calorie scale that determines how many calories are in a given food by its weight (it has hundreds of presets for different types of food), and began to keep a “food diary,” in which she kept track of every calorie she consumed.

Ms. Clark aimed for a daily intake of about 1,300 to 1,400 calories. She realized, “Writing it down, seeing it in black and white, really makes a difference. You become so aware of what you eat.” After about a year, she developed a good sense of how many calories were in her food and stopped using the scale.

Aside from portion control, her dietary changes included minor substitutions. Instead of baked potatoes, which she used to drench in butter, Ellen will eat sweet potatoes, which she can enjoy plain. She didn’t like white rice without some kind of topping, so she switched to healthier brown rice, cooked in chicken broth for flavor. Instead of butter on her popcorn, she slathers it with olive oil.

She’s also replaced many beef or chicken dinners with fish. “You shouldn’t eat that much meat,” she cautioned, although she admits “I love meat, I can’t be a vegetarian.” So she makes compromises. “On a day when I know I’m going to have steak for dinner, I don’t eat much protein for lunch that day.” She notes that despite these changes, “I was never really hungry. I’m eating a little all the time” in the form of healthy snacks, like almonds or fruit.

After dropping 22 pounds, Ms. Clark has maintained her high school weight since May 2007. Staying with her diet and exercise plan takes self-discipline, and it took her a while to figure out what works for her, but she loves it. “You have to find what you enjoy or you won’t keep with it,” she said. The rewards help, too: “You look good in your clothes, people compliment you, you go to the doctor and he says glowing things … My doctor says I have the heart of a teenager.”

But what really drives her is her commitment to staying active. “There’re two groups of old people,” she says. “There’re the ones that are always complaining: ‘I’m too old for that, this hurts, I’m tired.’ Then there’re the physically active ones.” She mentioned her father-in-law, Albertus “Toots” Clark, who is now 94: “right up through his 80s, all day long he was working, scalloping, doing things. He never complained about his health and doesn’t take any medication … That’s the way I want to be.”