Quad

Micheline Wedderburn struggled with her weight in her twenties. She tried everything — aerobics, step classes, and even subscription weight loss services — to no avail. It was 1996 and Micheline was living in Los Angeles at the time when spin classes started to pick up steam. She opted to take a free class on LA’s Ventura Boulevard and thought it was the toughest thing she’d ever done.

“I didn’t know what it was about the music or the bike that made me feel like spin was the hardest thing, but I wanted keep trying,” Micheline reminisces. “And because I had such great instructors who saw something in me, I was inspired to move from the back row to the middle row, and I just stayed consistent.”

For the first time since she started spinning, Micheline dropped weight without even trying — 30 pounds in four months, to be precise. She saw subtle changes in her physique and lifestyle: the muscles in her forearms became more defined and her cravings for junk food now fell short of all the hard work she spent burning calories at spin class.