A Real Weight Loss Success Story

Before After

I was always the fat, active girl. I excelled in sports and dance as a kid and teenager but often consumed enough calories fit for a grown man on a daily basis.  My body developed at an early age, and the more my body developed the less physical activity I did out of sheer embarrassment.  But I didn’t grow up with the idea that I was fat. Most of my relatives looked the same way I did so it wasn’t until I started middle school and I was teased by a boy about my weight that I really started to take notice of my size. 

When I was a senior in high school I spent an afternoon going through all of my old papers and pictures and came across my height and weight chart from middle school, it said I weighed 178lbs in the 8^th grade. I weigh less now than I did in middle school! That always shocks my system every time I think about it.

I went to college and became an explorer. I made lots of friends, traveled around the world, studied and taught African dance classes, I set goals and accomplished them.  But my diet mainly consisted of fast food and I never really learned how to cook so I gained even more weight.  By the way, learning how to cook healthy foods and eating at home later became the best tool in my weight loss arsenal. While I was in college my maternal grandmother had two strokes and both of her legs amputated due to Diabetes complications, and it frightened me!  I remember going home for breaks and I often dreaded seeing her because she had become such a different person, her physical condition turned her into a woman I did not recognize. 

Growing up I spent a lot of time with my grandmother and she was often the one to cook for me while my mom worked and went to school.  My grandmother taught me invaluable lessons about how to treat people with respect and to love your family, but she also taught me poor eating habits, the same habits that contributed to her physical deterioration.  My grandmother died in 2001 while I was home from graduate school for winter recess. When I returned to school I felt homesick and a little less adventurous for the first time in my life and I missed my grandmother in ways I could not describe. Not long after that my weight crept up to over 265lbs and I was a size 24 at 5’3” tall.

My grandmother’s death was the turning point for me in how I thought about my weight and health.  I spent my early 20’s figuring out how to live in the body I had because there were so many things I wanted to do and I allowed nothing to hold me back from accomplishing my goals.  But I didn’t want my grandmother to have died for naught.  Through her illness she taught me another valuable lesson: take care of your body and give it what it needs so it can take care of you and help you live a long and healthy life.

It wasn’t until 5 years later that I finally got fed up with how I looked and felt and had enough courage to lose weight. I was working in a job I hated, tired and lethargic all the time, and I had horrible acid reflux. I checked out several popular diet programs and nothing really appealed to me but I intuitively knew a holistic approach to weight loss was what I needed.  One afternoon at a belly dancing class I found a flyer for a low cost consultation with a holistic health counselor and I told myself this would be a good way to start and figure out how I would get healthy.  I spent the next 6 months getting re-educated on how to eat and what my body needed.  Not only that, I learned that my needs in my spiritual life, career, and personal relationships all played a major role in losing weight and learning how to be ‘at home’ in my body.  Two months after that program ended a friend gave me some workout DVD’s and my weight loss commenced. I was determined to lose weight and to live a healthy active lifestyle no matter the cost.  For motivation I often imagined myself as an old woman walking along the beach and tending to a beautiful garden, all of the things my grandmother never got to enjoy.  I developed mantras and committed myself daily to my goals and 11 months later I had lost 100lbs!

Losing weight is not about being the perfect size it’s about being at home in your body.  Get yourself to a place that is comfortable for you and be at home there.  I love the water and being comfortable with how I look and feel in swim gear was also important to me.  I don’t have ripped abs but I love that my body can swim nonstop for hours and that I can run on the beach and fit comfortably into a kayak.

The moral of the story is each woman must find her weight loss switch, turn it on and decide for herself what her true motivation will be. Are you ready to receive ALL you need to step into making a powerful decision for YOU? Then you must join the upcoming FREE teleclass on Wednesday, November 18^th at 8PM EST: The Top 4 Secrets You Must Know About Weight Loss: What The Weight Loss Industry Is Not Telling You! Be sure to register with me at thefatgirlexpert@gmail.com using “registration” in the subject line and get ready to stick to your weight loss plan (I’ll be revealing how on this call and I can tell you it sure isn’t about “will power”!). Register by e-mailing thefatgirlexpert@gmail.com using “registration” in the subject line.