Two years ago, Marie Stiegman took the principles she’d learned at a Qnity seminar and used them to increase her business. A stylist at Parker Paris Salon in Hammond, Louisiana, Stiegman immediately connected with the simplicity of the Qnity program, which she says felt as if “someone jumped into my brain and put all my thoughts in order.” The program seemed to fit every business challenge that popped up.

But while business was getting easier to manage, Stiegman’s health was getting harder to control. Her mother had battled diabetes and died of cancer just three years ago, and now Stiegman was becoming insulin-resistant and her doctor wanted to prescribe Metformin for that. She was gaining weight and sinking into self-pity. She didn’t know where to start.

“I knew what I needed to do, but the mountain seemed to be too large for me to move it,” Stiegman recalls. “I spent a weekend reflecting on what the doctor had told me, and I kept hearing him say, ‘You can reverse this.’” Then she remember how she moved the last mountain she’d encountered—with the help of Qnity. By Monday, she’d gathered the strength to begin fighting her way back to health.

“I used the five success principles from Qnity, and applied them to my health,” she says. “The result: 25 pounds lighter, I am no longer insulin resistant, I do not have to take Metformin and I am happier than ever. I have more sustained energy than I have had since I was a child. I always thought that following fancy diets and workouts was what I needed to do, but when I decided to ‘keep it simple,’ I finally could begin to follow through.” 

Stiegman applied five principles from the Qnity program:

1. Keep it simple. “Start by stopping, she says. “I stopped smoking, eating terrible food and drinking bad drinks. I am a picky eater, so I started with the foods I liked, and when I felt brave I tried different things. I never thought I would enjoy a sweet potato! I like to make humor of anything I can, so my boyfriend came up with the phrase: ‘If it’s white, it ain’t right!’ Anything that was white (other than egg whites), I could not eat.”

2. Go visual. “Health is on my QPlan that lives next to my computer,” she says, “so I look at it every day.”

3. Celebrate small wins. “I started by doing only 20 minutes of cardio and built upon that,” Stiegman explains. Currently, her workouts run 30 minutes, divided into 15 minutes of weight training and 15 minutes of cardio.

4. Create freedom from structure. With a bag she packs the night before, Stiegman leaves for work 2 hours before she has to get there. That becomes her workout time. She recommends listening to the podcast, “Fitness for Busy People with Ted Ryce.”

5. Go from knowing to doing. Stiegman stays motivated by keeping a quote by Robin Sharma on her phone that she checks each day—“The titan’s mindset: Do what’s hard now to enjoy what’s beautiful later.”

Stiegman is happy to share her story with Healthy Hairdresser readers. She says, “I hope this can be something that you can use if you always thought that choosing a healthier lifestyle would be really difficult.”