Health, Finance, and Inspiration
How a Single Mom Reversed Her Obesity and Built up a Unicorn Business
Health, finance, and life lessons from a 71-year-old wealthy female
Introduction to Maggie’s Inspiring Life
Maggie was born in a financially low-income family who migrated from Eastern Europe to Australia. She grew up in poverty and scarcity. Her father used to work in construction and later in the Ford Motor Company, and her mother was busy looking after her five siblings.
When she was in her early thirties, her husband, a construction worker, left Maggie when her kids (a boy and a girl) were 3 and 7. She believed her changing body to an obese state was the leading cause for her husband losing attraction.
Nevertheless, they were in love initially. Then, unfortunately, her husband had an affair that broke Maggie’s heart.
Maggie gained her self-esteem and self-confidence using her spiritual power, which she believed was deeply embedded in her psyche. Even though she was poor, she had an abundance mentality. The more she gave, the more she got, as I mentioned in the subsequent two sections of this story.
Believing in the law of attraction without being a cult of philosophy, Maggie learned how to attract good things to her life through her goodwill, good deeds, principles, care, and consistent actions.
Her beliefs were not blind; instead, they were self-empowering. She learned to create meaningful relationships with others and attract angels to her life.
My friend, Maggie, is a 71-year successful businesswoman. I see her as a healthy, wealthy, and wise person. As a long-term philanthropist, she has been helping poor people and several charities as part of her business chain, a good-sized profit-making organization.
She supports local schools and helps kids facing poverty. In addition, she talks with homeless people and inspires them to go into the workforce.
In this story, I introduce two remarkable aspects of her life: good health and financial freedom.
How Maggie Reversed Her Obesity
Obesity is a significant problem adversely affecting the health of millions of people globally. Maggie was one of them at the age of 30.
Having 45 inches of waistline, Maggie was experiencing the signs of metabolic syndrome and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Her hormonal system was in a mess, and her metabolism was dented.
The root cause of her obesity spanned to her childhood traumas which she glossed over during conversations. However, she was vocal about the hardships she experienced in her twenties and thirties.
Maggie is one of my sauna friends like Algor (105-year-old centenarian) that I introduced in a story before. Maggie does not like cold showers like Algor and me, but she loves swimming and a dry sauna as part of our fitness friends circle.
Maggie shared many sad stories that caused her to overeat using food as a coping mechanism. She believed emotional eating was the primary culprit, coupled with several unfortunate events in her life. She couldn’t afford nutritious food and survived with cheap canned food for many years.
Rather than focusing on her many problems, I want to share some tips that helped Maggie deal with her obesity and successfully got rid of it before her 40s. Fortunately, she lost substantial body fat and did not gain it over the last three decades.
In her 70s, Maggie looks like a woman in her thirties. Charming, attractive, and inspiring. She is full of life lessons that she articulates with confidence and generosity.
Effectively dealing with emotional stress was an essential factor for Maggie to lose substantial fat. From my experience, emotional stress forms the more significant part of the iceberg in the fat loss journey.
As I suspected, Maggie did not count calories and did not do fad diets. Her friends recommended diet schemes like Jenny Craig and others to lose weight, but she couldn’t afford them as a non-working single mum. She fed herself and her children with the bit of single-parent funds she got from the government unemployment scheme.
Instead, she changed her lifestyle. She was fortunate enough to meet a community volunteer who was a qualified nutritionist. They clicked and became close friends, and she learned how to eat healthy foods from this person she characterized as an angel in her life.
The nutritionist volunteered to coach her as she did many other obese people in the community. They became terrific friends and had early morning walks every day. The nutritionist encouraged her not to eat during the 90-minute daily walks for a year. Maggie completed at least 10,000 steps with a cup of coffee in the morning which she brewed for herself and her friend every day.
Maggie’s story reminds me of Eliza’s inspiring story as another single mum. Sometimes, I imagine angels come in human forms to earth and touch on the heart and souls of people who need their help the most. So, this nutritionist for Maggie and Adrian for Eliza look like typical angel examples in my metaphoric thoughts.
Maggie lost substantial fat within a year, and her waistline dropped from 45 inches to 37 inches. This tangible progress motivated her to continue. Another notable recommendation from the angel was cutting snacks.
This unusual recommendation was interesting to me as when I was struggling with excessive fat, my nutritionist recommended frequent meals, including three snacks, which worsened my situation. I wish I had an angel like hers in my desperate times. However, I found my angel in my inner wisdom hidden in my sufferings.
Apart from long morning walks, Maggie did not do a strenuous workout. She has never been to a gym in her life. However, her angel introduced her planks. She started doing one minute plank, and she told me that she had done 15 minutes of plank every day since the age of 31. Her posture is still remarkable and admired by many friends.
A few years later, another friend of Maggie recommended swimming. Incidentally, the swimming pool was part of the health center where we met in its sauna section. So then, we swam together and had hundreds of sauna and spa sessions together. Her stories inspire many of us to put smiles on our faces and sometimes bring tears to our eyes.
Regular use of a dry sauna helped Maggie to detoxify her body. In addition, swimming helped her to keep lean muscle mass and prevented her from gaining fat.
By skipping breakfast, reducing her emotional stress, and doing moderate exercises such as walking, swimming, and planks, Maggie got rid of insulin resistance, the leading cause of her obesity and fatty liver.
Maggie’s children are grown up, one is a medical doctor, and another is a ballerina. Interestingly, her children haven’t tasted lollies and never demanded ones. She always fed them home-cooked food. She still cooks healthy food and does not eat out.
With simple lifestyle changes, Maggie transformed into a new body and kept it functional for several decades. According to her words, she didn’t do anything extraordinary. But in my view, she created a wonderful life for herself, her children, and many community members.
In her second-hand shop, Maggie met many poor people who could only afford second-hand materials. She had lovely conversations with them and built deep relationships. In addition, she helped hundreds of obese people (male and female) to transform their bodies. Maggie found her purpose in life.
She inspired many other poor and obese people by being a role model for them. She believed that meaningful relationships with her clients helped her heal from emotional suffering and improved her emotional maturity.
How Maggie Beat Poverty and Created a Billion Dollar Business
Maggie started her business with zero funds in desperation after her husband left her with two little children in her thirties. She never borrowed money from the government and never asked for anything from financial institutes.
Maggie owns several secondhand shops and has been running them for forty years. She started the business by making garage sales when her little kids were sleeping. She was breastfeeding at times in her garage when customers were visiting her small home business. She collected small items from other garage sales and preloved toys from kids in her neighborhood. Some of those kids became her business partners at later stages.
When her kids became teenagers and self-sufficient, she decided to open a second-hand shop selling clothes, kitchen utensils, books, videotapes, and souvenirs. She collected them from garage sales by paying a few dollars and sold them by adding small profit margins.
Her aim was not to become rich but to be financially independent and help others along the way. She balanced these desires with persistence and gradual growth. While she was growing her business, she also allowed others to grow and succeed. She took several poor people under her wings. Wealth was a by-product of her meaningful engagements.
Inspiringly, she created a thriving business from zero funds, now over a billion dollars. We tease Maggie nicknaming her a “unicorn”, which means having a company valued at over a billion dollars.
Maggie is grateful for what she has earned so far, but she does not want to be a billionaire. Instead, she wants to savor the excellent taste of valuable things in her life. She is a philanthropist helping local kids gain good education, obese people transform into healthy lifestyles, and chronically ill people heal.
The secret to Maggie’s wealth can be summarized in a few points, such as starting small, choosing a niche market suiting her lifestyle, being persistent, building good relationships with clients by being herself, walking her talk, and giving without expecting returns.
Conclusions
I find Maggie’s story inspirational because she created a life she desired and deserved. In addition, she took personal responsibility rather than blaming her childhood traumas, her husband, and her economic conditions.
Maggie prioritized her health and earning money to support herself, her children, and others who needed it. Her optimism, superior social and emotional intelligence, and determination helped her become healthy, fit, loving, and financially independent.
We may be born poor and disadvantaged and face many setbacks. However, we can change our circumstances and become better versions of ourselves with the right mindset, goodwill, and determination. Maggie was another inspiring person who proved these theories that I have been studying for decades.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
Many thanks to Michele Thill for introducing this story in a YouTube video. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.
I share important life lessons from people in my professional and social circles, compiled in the attached collection.
As a new reader, you might check my holistic health and well-being stories reflecting on my reviews, observations, and decades of sensible experiments. I write about health as it matters. I believe health is all about homeostasis.
I write about various hormones and neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, GABA, acetylcholine, norepinephrine, adrenaline, glutamate, and histamine.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
As a new reader, please check my holistic health and well-being stories reflecting my reviews, observations, and decades of experiments optimizing my hormones and neurotransmitters. I write about health as it matters. I believe health is all about homeostasis.
Petechiae, ALS, Metabolic Syndrome, Type II Diabetes, Fatty Liver Disease, Heart Disease, Strokes, Obesity, Liver Cancer, Autoimmune Disorders, Homocysteine, Lungs Health, Pancreas Health, Kidneys Health, NCDs, Infectious Diseases, Brain Health, Dementia, Depression, Brain Atrophy, Neonatal Disorders, Skin Health, Dental Health, Bone Health, Leaky Gut, Leaky Brain, Brain Fog, Chronic Inflammation, Insulin Resistance, Elevated Cortisol, Leptin Resistance, Anabolic Resistance, Cholesterol, High Triglycerides, Metabolic Disorders, Gastrointestinal Disorders, Thyroid Disorders, Anemia, Dysautonomia, cardiac output, and urinary track disorders.
I also wrote about valuable nutrients. Here are the links for easy access:
Lutein/Zeaxanthin, Phosphatidylserine, Boron, Urolithin, taurine, citrulline malate, biotin, lithium orotate, alpha-lipoic acid, n-acetyl-cysteine, acetyl-l-carnitine, CoQ10, PQQ, NADH, TMG, creatine, choline, digestive enzymes, magnesium, zinc, hydrolyzed collagen, nootropics, pure nicotine, activated charcoal, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B1, Vitamin D, Vitamin K2, Omega-3 Fatty Acids, N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine, and other nutrients.
Disclaimer: My posts do not include professional or health advice. I only document my reviews, observations, experience, and perspectives to provide information and create awareness.
As part of my creative non-fiction writing goals, I’d like to share a few stories that might warm our hearts with a bit of humor into weighty topics.
Sample Humorous Stories
Finally, After Burning Her House, Georgia Found Enlightenment
Hilarious Tips to Prevent Brain Atrophy and Keep the Gray Matter Giggling
8 Psychological Points I Had to Unlearn and Relearn the Opposite
Based on my writing experience and observations, I documented findings and strategies that might help you amplify your voice, engage your audience, and achieve your desired outcomes in your writing journey.
I publish my lifestyle, health, and well-being stories on EUPHORIA. My focus is on cellular, mitochondrial, metabolic, and mental health. Here is my collection of Insightful Life Lessons from Personal Stories.
You might join my six publications on Medium as a writer by sending a request via this link. 22K writers contribute to my publications. You might find more information about my professional background.
As a writer, blogger, content developer, and reader, you might join Medium, Vocal Media, NewsBreak, Medium Writing Superstars, Writing Paychecks, WordPress, Cliqly, and Thinkers360 with my referral links. These affiliate links will not cost you extra to join the services.
