Dr. Pam Roberts knows that motivational speaker Robert Sweetgall changes lives. He changed hers.

A family practitioner with a sub-specialty in pain management, Roberts works at The Summit with the Journey to Wellness program. She said she noticed a poster at work advertising Sweetgall’s visit last year and decided she should probably attend.

As Roberts learned more about the speaker, she decided it would be good to videotape his presentation.

“I thought it might be something my patients could hear, not realizing that I am the patient,” she said. “We can all move a little more and that’s the message Rob gives.” Roberts said she’d had a third orthopedic reconstruction on her feet about 10 months prior to meeting and hearing Sweetgall. She wasn’t walking easily when the speaker issued the challenge.

“When he said ‘could you spare 15 second to write down your steps every day,’ my brain said ‘no, no I can’t do that,’” Roberts recalled. “Then I said ‘What? I’m so busy that I can’t spare 15 seconds?’”

Sweetgall’s program of walking with poles and wearing a pedometer and recording her steps put Roberts on the path to weight loss and better health and fitness. She said people still think that she is losing weight because Nordic walking has toned her core.

“Nordic walking has helped me with my health issues, my degenerative arthritis, my rheumatoid arthritis — I’ve got a list a mile long,” she said. “I can go farther and longer and that is what most of my patients are discovering. If they have a health issue, they can go farther and longer with poles in their hands because they are going to un-weight their joints and actually get a better workout.”

Roberts said people think they aren’t working out unless they walk on a treadmill or stair-stepper. As a collegiate athlete double letter winner in tennis and volleyball, she admits she used to think walking wasn’t exercising.

She said Sweetgall challenges people to value themselves enough to move their programs a little bit into a healthier space. The physician said that makes it fun so people want to do it.

Roberts said her clients love Nordic walking. Those with joint pain find that walking with poles takes away the hurt.

“They look at me and say ‘Oh, my gosh that was fun’.”

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.