A WAKE-UP CALL FOR WELLNESS
Losing her parents was the wake-up call Jotina Buck needed to make life changes
Jotina Buck’s father died of a heart attack shortly after she started her freshman year of college in 2002. Her mother had a heart attack and died the year Buck graduated.
Losing both her parents to heart disease was devastating, but it was a reality check Buck needed. She was following in her parents’ footsteps when it came to her own health. Her mother was morbidly obese, and her father had high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
Through the grief, Buck decided to take better care of herself. Ultimately, she dropped 80 pounds — down from 250, her highest weight ever.
“The goal has never been weight loss but wanting a new story for my family and wanting to be completely happy with the woman in the mirror,” said the 35-year-old mother, educator and school counselor at KIPP Prime College Preparatory.
Buck, also an an ordained minister and graduate of Houston Baptist University, said she started by simply walking in her Humble neighborhood. Her goal was to just get moving.
“Some days I wouldn’t know my sweat from my tears,” she said. “I just wanted to put one foot in front of the other. It really was a journey of the body and the mind.”
She used positive mantras about self-love and -worth to help her stay
on task. Within months, she was walking to the end of her subdivision, then to the end of the running trail. She even completed the Memorial Hermann Sugar Land Half Marathon in March after only nine weeks of training. Now she plans to run the full Chevron Houston Marathon in January.
“I got here by just deciding to show up,” Buck said. “I used movement to transform my grief. I felt like I was growing a super power. With every step and every mantra, I felt stronger and more committed.”
Charease Davis, her best friend of 20 years, has been inspired by Buck’s evolution. They met in the ninth grade, which Buck failed; she was constantly in trouble for fighting with other students.
“Sometimes when you come from backgrounds that don’t support education success, you tend to do things to try to get attention,” Davis said. “She was always fighting for that attention. She is testimony of what we can become when we are able to conquer the mindset.”
Davis is owner of Total Woman, a personal empowerment and thought-healing service. The two friends had shared experiences; Davis’ own mother died from heart disease at age 52.
“You get to a point where you are tired of everything. I think that’s what happened for Jotina. She is the most disciplined, consistent and loving being I know. She’s always been those things for other people. Now she’s disciplined, consistent and very loving to herself.”
Buck’s weight loss came after shedding emotional baggage. “I don’t think she would have gotten there physically if she hadn’t done the mental work before,” Davis said.
When it came to her diet, Buck said, she stopped eating meat and added hefty amounts of kale and spinach, egg whites and eight to 10 glasses of water to her daily diet.
“I’m from a family of 12, so I have a lot of memories in the kitchen and Sunday dinners, which is why I love cooking,” Buck said. “But we ate a lot of canned and boxed foods, and both of my parents had hypertension. I knew I needed to eat better if I wanted to live better.”
Buck now works out four to five times a week, with cycling classes, cardio sessions and weightlifting. She does yoga at home daily for 20 minutes and has signed up to become a certified yoga instructor, with the goal of using yoga as a way to handle grief and loss and help empower others.
“I know there’s a need for underserved communities to have resources to experience life in a healthy and holistic way,” she said. “Every day I remind myself that the body is incredible and that this journey has given me a new relationship with my body, and I’m proud of that.”
“I used movement to transform my grief. I felt like I was growing a superpower.” Jotina Buck