Weight Loss Transformation: From 304 Pounds To 128 Pounds

The short version of my weight-loss transformation:

I was a chubby kid starting at about five years old. By age ten, I was dieting. I ended up with an eating disorder by the time I was thirteen.

I suffered for nearly 20 years with bulimia and spent more than two decades on what I call the diet-go-round, jumping off one diet only to start another, hoping this next one would be the answer that actually kept the weight off. It never was. So around and around and around in circles I went. I could never keep the weight off for long and always gained it all back plus more.

I lost and gained and lost and gained . . . all the way up to 304 pounds and a size 26 at my heaviest.

Now, as of this writing, I weigh 128 pounds and wear a size 0-2, depending on the designer. It took me two years to lose all the weight. I’ve kept the weight off for eight years and counting. I fluctuate between 128-140 pounds (and that’s okay!).

The long version of my weight-loss transformation:

I’ve done nearly every major diet program that you’ve seen advertised on television. I’ve sent away for questionable diets you find in the back of magazines. I have, at different points in my life and because someone told me it would work, stopped eating: sugar, white flour, meat, processed foods, and/or anything that tasted halfway decent.

I have weighed and measured down to the ounce. I have special-ordered food at restaurants with so many specifics that the waiter nearly threw his hands into the air in exasperation. I have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours going to weight-loss related meetings. I have exercised to exhaustion and purged with my index finger crammed down my throat.

But still, I couldn’t lose weight and keep it off.

Losing the weight was never my issue. I could lose the weight, often over a hundred pounds at a time. My problem was that I could never keep it off for long and usually within a year or less, I gained back all the weight and then some. For decades, I kept believing that a diet would work even while dieting damaged my mental state, leaving me feeling shamed, humiliated, and like a failure.

Then finally, in exasperation, I wrote in my journal: If it’s not about food, then what is it?

That’s when I started exploring the reasons behind why I was eating and learning what I needed to do to help heal myself. That’s also when I decided to stop listening to all this advice that I’d been getting from everyone else and to start listening to my own body and my own wisdom. That exploration was the crux of my weight-loss transformation and eventually turned into a book I wrote called, Start Where You Are Weight Loss.

What I do now to maintain my weight-loss transformation

Now I listen to my body, eating when I’m hungry and stopping when I’m comfortably full. I eat, without judgment, whatever my body is craving (as long as I’m not allergic to it). If I want a doughnut, I eat a doughnut. If I want bread or pasta or cake or whatever, I simply eat it. When I screw up and eat too much (because I’m human, so of course I still screw up), I simply wait until I’m hungry again. No worries and no beating myself up. Ever.

I lost 174 pounds naturally without pills, supplements, surgery, excessive exercise, and/or disordered eating. I don’t count calories, carbs, fat grams, or anything else. I don’t have a list of “unhealthy/bad” foods. I don’t have a list of “healthy/good” foods either. I no longer have a raging eating disorder. I am no longer afraid of food. I no longer live trapped in a body that doesn’t feel like me. I am finally (finally!) comfortable in my own skin.

• I don’t live in fear that the weight is going to come back and I won’t know what to do about it.
• I don’t live in confusion and desperation and frustration and panic and humiliation and shame.
• Food is no longer the focus of my life.
• I am no longer trapped in a dieting mentality.
• I no longer have a fear of being seen.

I got free. Your life can be that way too.

I started down this path because I needed to get myself out of the crazy-making behavior I was having around food. I needed no restrictions, no weighing and measuring food, no off-limit foods, no more judging my self-worth based on the scale, no more rules that were only fueling my constant-thinking about and obsession with food.

A successful weight-loss transformation is not about the food

To have lasting weight-loss results, I needed to:

• delve deeper into who I was as a person.
• explore the reasons behind why I was doing what I was doing.
• work through what had me challenged in my life.
• discover what would nourish and heal me.
• create a life that deeply mattered to me.
• among other things.

Just imagine what you could be doing with your life, following your own dreams and reaching your own goals, cultivating your own passions, making both your inner and outer worlds a more blissful and peaceful place, if you weren’t running in circles on the diet-go-round.

Get off the diet-go-round. Get on with your life.^®

Stop wishing, start doing.
Create your own weight loss before and after success story.

My weight loss transformation & how it can help you have your own weight loss transformation

You absolutely can break the diet cycle. I got free. Your life can be that way too.

I made my own path because I needed to get myself out of the crazy-making behavior I was having around food. I needed:

• no more dieting.
• no more restrictive eating.
• no weighing and measuring food.
• no off-limit foods.
• no more judgment around food.
• no more trying to figure out healthy eating or just what healthy foods to eat.
• no more judging my self-worth based on the scale.
• no more you’re-not-doing-it-perfectly diet rules that were only fueling my constant thinking about and obsession with food.

I needed to stop: searching for weight loss tips, wondering how to lose belly fat fast or how to lose weight fast, worrying about how to eat healthy or finding healthy snacks for weight loss, coming up with yet another healthy eating plan, trying to have quick weight loss, or forcing myself onto yet another weight loss diet. What I needed instead was to find, out of all the weight loss programs out there, the best weight loss program for me. Turns out, the best way to lose weight was to find out what works for me and do that.

• I’ve lost 160+ pounds naturally by simply trusting myself and listening to my intuition (mindful eating and eating intuitively).
• I have maintained that weight loss for 9 years and counting by trusting myself and listening to my intuition (mindful eating and intuitive eating).
• I no longer have any eating disorders, including bulimia (bulimia nervosa) and binge eating disorder (compulsive overeating).
• I no longer have a fear of food.

Just imagine what you could be doing with your life if you’d just commit to having your own before and after weight loss success story. You could be: following your own dreams and reaching your own goals, cultivating your own passions, and making both your inner and outer worlds a more blissful and peaceful place.

I got that for my life. I want it for yours. I will teach you how.

Start Where You Are Weight Loss Coaching

Start Where You Are Weight Loss Books

Start Where You Are Weight Loss™ Online Course

Let today be the day you make peace with your body and with food.

For more information, check out the Start Where You Are Weight Loss^® page.