Meet: Lori (Finding Radiance)

Age: 41

Occupation: Medical Transcriptionist

Where she lives: Upstate New York

Height: 5′2″

Weight: 145 pounds

Pounds Lost: 105 pounds

How long it took to lose the weight: About 4 years

How long she has kept it off: 1 year 3 months

This is one person who not only lost a lot of weight and kept it off for over a year, but along the way found out she could eat things and do things she had never imagined. Her blog, Finding Radiance, is a must read for inspiration, healthy recipes, and oh yes, The Great Veggie Experiment. I am so proud of your accomplishments, Lori! Here’s your Weight Loss WooHoo! – Just FatFighterTV’s fun way of celebrating healthy weight.

How Lori gained the weight:
“I was pretty much overweight most of my childhood. And in college, it was very easy to gain weight. I would kind of lose some over the summer, and then I would gain more. I just liked to eat. My weight just kept creeping up and creeping up.

“When I got married 13 years ago, I’d hit 220 and I was very upset about that. I decided to get down to about 180, but I never really had a handle on what was the proper way of eating. It was always restrict calories or follow a program.”

Turning point:
“I hit 250 and that was a shocker for me. I thought, that’s halfway to 500 pounds. I don’t know why it was 2-5-0 that did it. I didn’t know what to do at that point. I knew it couldn’t continue, but I didn’t really know why I couldn’t lose weight and keep it off.”

How she shed the pounds:
“I was really trying to move towards getting rid of all the sugary stuff and the processed foods. I had started gradually weeding the sugar out of the diet, moving to whole grains, and trying to eat more vegetables, which is difficult when you’re not a veggie lover. I’m getting better. I’ve learned to like some vegetables that I never thought I would like. That’s been a big change for me because I do eat vegetables every day, whereas before, it would probably be once a week maybe, and it would be iceberg lettuce! Growing up, I ate broccoli and carrots and potatoes, and that was it.

“I started really paying attention to what I eat – making sure that my meals are balanced, that I’m getting good carbs, protein, and fat with all my meals and my snacks. That’s just been the last year and a half that I’ve been grinding it out – playing with food, making sure my meals are balanced, and trying new foods and cooking new recipes or trying to lighten up the other ones we’ve always liked to make them better, but still taste good. It’s very important for me that the food taste good because I like food.

“[For exercise,] I was doing a lot of things like Walk Away the Pounds tapes, biking, and The Firm. Then I stepped it up to the next level with real strength training. I loved it. I love feeling strong.”

Weekly workouts:
“I do strength training three times a week for about a half hour or so – three full-body workouts a week – and I run on the alternating days of that. I just started increasing my mileage. I used to run about 10 miles a week and now I’m averaging about 15. My big love is biking. My husband and I bike together, which is nice. Saturdays are usually our biking days where we try to plan to go somewhere further that’s maybe 20 or 30 miles away.”

Diet Philosophy:
“Eat good food and don’t feel guilty about it. The association of guilt with food causes a lot of problems. The thing is to make everything that you put in your mouth something that you want to eat. I decided no more guilt with food.”

Daily challenge:
“I have to be careful with portions. I like dark chocolate, but that’s one of those foods that I have trouble portioning. There are things like that that my husband has to keep out of reach for me because I work from home. That’s the big challenge because the fridge is 20 feet away all day long. He’ll put things really high up on top of the cupboards if I’m having trouble with it so I don’t snack on it, and that’s really helpful for me.”

Tips from Lori:
“I think writing down what you eat is very important, and everything, too. There are a lot of things that go by the wayside if you don’t record your food – let’s say when you grab two or three chips, but if you do that five or six times, it’s a whole serving and you haven’t counted it. It’s surprising when you really write down everything you eat.”

Favorite healthy recipe: Pumpkin Cranberry Oat Bars

Lori’s Weight Loss WooHoo!:
“I think it was when I did a triathlon this summer. It was something I never thought I would ever want to do, or let alone, be able to do. For whatever reason, to me, it was a big pinnacle moment. I had real difficulty at the end of the course because I was crying. I was trying to hold it together. I felt so emotionally overwhelmed. I thought, I can’t believe I’m doing this. Here I am at the end, I’ve lost 100 pounds, I’m doing a triathlon, I’m 40 – Who would have ever thought? There’s no way I would have ever thought I could do this. They were tears of joy. I was so moved by it. I can’t believe all my weight loss sort of culminated with the finishing of that. It was a big personal challenge.

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What an emotional and awesome finish – congrats, Lori! I hear you have a duathlon coming up in October. Go Lori, go!

Want to see who else got a Weight Loss WooHoo!? Check out the Wall of Fame!

If you know of someone who deserves this honor, just let me know – send me an email at sahar [at] fatfightertv [dot] com

Related posts

• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Cammy (The Tippy Toe Diet)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Tony (The Anti-Jared)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to The Biggest Loser’s Ali Vincent
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Shauna Reid (The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Roni (Roni’s Weigh)

Meet: Tony (The Anti-Jared)

Age: 33

Occupation: Managing Partner for a restaurant

Where he lives: Florida

Height: 5′6″

Weight: 208

Pounds Lost: 212

How long it took to lose the weight: 1 year

How long he has kept it off: almost 6 months

Here’s someone who failed at weight loss over and over, but came back for one more round and won! Tony told me he couldn’t lose the weight for good until he really got to know himself. And apparently, he got to know himself pretty darn well, because he lost more than 200 pounds! Stop by his blog – The Anti-Jared – he’ll motivate you, challenge you, and amuse you. Tony – here’s your Weight Loss WooHoo! - Just FatFighterTV’s fun way of celebrating healthy weight.

How Tony gained the weight:
“I’ve always been an over-eater. I’ve never been able to really control exactly how I eat. Some people would say, ‘Oh my God, I just had a Quarter Pounder!’ I would eat five or six of them. I never ate in front of other people. I always ate by myself. I would spend $30 at Taco Bell, I would spend $35 at McDonald’s, and I just got to the point where I was 420 pounds.”

I’ve had a problem with weight my whole life. I’ve done diets my whole life, as well.  This has just been an ongoing struggle.

“I lost a little bit of weight in high school, so I was down to 175, then I would go up to 240… then down to 215, up to 275… down to 255, up to 315… down to 230, then I just ballooned up to 420. I guess my biggest fear was if I would have failed one more time, I’d be over 500 pounds.”

Wake-up Call:
“Last January, I started coughing up blood and I would get numbness in my arms when I was laying down. I would basically look up and say, ‘When am I going to die? When is it time?’ I went to the doctor and he did a physical. My cholesterol was over 300. My blood pressure was 220/180. He had to give me medication at the office just so I wouldn’t leave with that kind of blood pressure.

“At 420 pounds, it just was really hard to live – I couldn’t go to the bathroom properly, I couldn’t put on a seat belt, I couldn’t fit in a lot of cars. The hardest thing was that I couldn’t do a whole lot of things for my wife, like she would need me to do some chores around the house and I just never had the energy to do them. I just got to the point where I was tired of being selfish. I was tired of eating so much and not caring about anyone else around me.”

How he shed the pounds:
“I decided I had to make a change because I can’t just get a picket sign and say, ‘Close down all McDonald’s’ and ‘No more processed foods.’ I can’t expect the world to change around me.

“I made a choice to change the way I eat for the rest of my life. I switched to fruits, vegetables, beans – they were foods I’d actually never eaten before! I’d never eaten a fresh apple – I would eat apple pie, I would eat apple fritters, but I never really just sat down and ate a fresh apple. It was really new to me and it was kind of exciting and I enjoyed it! I realized I’m not going to gain 200 pounds by eating three heads of cauliflower, so I could eat that kind of stuff. Something clicked in me – if I change the way I eat, I can do this for the rest of my life.

“I had never exercised before this. When I first went to the gym, I went on the treadmill for like a minute and I couldn’t do any more. But the next day, I came back and I did two minutes… then four minutes… Eventually, I would workout twice a day for an hour at a time.”

Weekly workouts:
“I workout 6-7 days a week. I do weight training 3 days and cardio 3 days. I like the elliptical machine – I usually do that for 60 minutes then a little bit of calisthenics, like jumping jacks, for 10 minutes after that.”

Diet Philosophy:
“Diets are like snowflakes. No two are going to be alike. Until you find something that works for you, you’re never going to be successful with it.”

Tips from Tony:
“Don’t fool yourself. Just because on the box it says ‘full of fiber’ or ‘lowers cholesterol’ doesn’t mean it might be healthy. You really need to do your research on your products.”

Tony’s Weight Loss WooHoo!:
“There are so many great things – I’m able to be normal, I’m able to put on a seat belt. When my wife asks me to do something, I’m able to do it and not be tired. At work, I’m able to run around. I never lost weight to be in a size 34 pants and I never lost weight to wear a Large shirt. I always did it so I could do normal things. That’s the most important thing to me – when I realized I could do things normal people could do, I said WooHoo!

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“Diets are like snowflakes” – I love that! It’s so true. I’m glad you found your snowflake, Tony!

Want to see who else got a Weight Loss WooHoo!? Check out the Wall of Fame!

If you know of someone who deserves this honor, just let me know – send me an email at sahar [at] fatfightertv [dot] com

Related posts

• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Shauna Reid (The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Kath (KathEats.com)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Cammy (The Tippy Toe Diet)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to The Biggest Loser’s Ali Vincent
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Roni (Roni’s Weigh)

Meet: Cammy of The Tippy Toe Diet

Age: 50

Where she lives: Tennessee

Height: 5′6″

Weight: 150 pounds

Pounds Lost: 100

How long it took her to lose the weight: 17 months

How long she has kept it off: 6 months

Almost every time I read Cammy’s blog, The Tippy Toe Diet, or one of her comments here, I laugh out loud! But I also seem to learn something from her. She shares her weight loss/maintenance journey in such an authentic, heartfelt way and offers her wisdom and advice… at times with that Cammy sense of humor, so check out her blog when you get a chance. It will leave you thinking and smiling. Cammy – here’s your Weight Loss WooHoo! - Just FatFighterTV’s fun way of celebrating healthy weight.

How Cammy gained the weight:
“I’ve always been chubby or above, and in the last 15 years or so, it was just bad choices. There was some emotional eating in there… but I like Mexican food, I like pizza, I just like to eat tasty but non-nutritious foods! It was just a combination of bad choices and developing habits that are sedentary – I love to read, I love to write. That’s how it piled on there. I’ve been either obese or morbidly obese for 15-20 years.”

Wake-up Call:
“A friend of mine had to have triple bypass surgery. Shortly after that, I went to my doctor for bronchitis and he paused when he had the stethoscope over my heart and said, ‘I would like you to go do a treadmill test.’ The doctor said I might need angioplasty. I got so worked up and they couldn’t fit me in for three weeks. I was encouraged because obviously I wasn’t facing imminent death, but I thought, this is just what happened to my friend. I was just frantic and I worked myself up so that my blood pressure was out of control. I had to go to the doctor to get a tranquilizer kind of thing just to calm myself down. And I thought, I do not want to ever go through this again as far as knowing that the way I was living my life was likely contributing to something like that, that all these choices were catching up to me.

“It turned out someone misread the test results… I think the kicker was I did all that worrying, all of that imagining the most dire thing, and the whole time telling myself, you could have done something about this years ago. It was a great lesson. I would never want to go through it again. But if I faced it again now I would be able to say, ‘No, I eat right, I get plenty of exercise. There may be a problem here but it’s not because I haven’t been trying to take care of myself.’ I took control back there and I think that was the issue before is I didn’t have control of my life.”

How she shed the pounds:
“I was doing some plus-size yoga and walking for a couple of months. Then I joined Spark People and learned everything about nutrition, then I started working with a personal trainer.

“The sessions were 45 minutes of strength training and 15 minutes of cardio. I worked out with a personal trainer three times a week almost every week. They gave me homework assignments, mainly involving cardio on my nights off from them.

“For years and years I’d tried so hard to follow all these diets and none of them fit with foods I like, so I decided to make the foods I like fit a healthier diet. I eat out a lot. I don’t cook. The trade-off there was I don’t go to McDonald’s or Burger King or Taco Bell – maybe once a year for any of those. I go to Chick-fil-A and get the grilled chicken salad if I’m on the go. I go to Jason’s Deli and have the salad bar. I do Subway sometimes, too. I made those fast foods work because I really don’t want to cook.”

Weekly workouts:
“I try to do strength training two to three times a week and then straight cardio two to three times a week, with the cardio being anywhere between 40 minutes and an hour, and the strength training and a little bit of cardio I do on those nights being anywhere between 40 minutes and an hour. I go to the ‘Manville’ area of the gym and work with the free weights and annoy them to no end. I usually do a full body workout each of those times.”

Diet Philosophy:
“Get it mostly right. I focus on making healthier choices. And by that I mean, if I’m faced with the choice of a Fiber One bar and a Little Debbie Snack Cake, Fiber One is not health food, but it’s a lot better than a Little Debbie Snack Cake… not taste-wise you understand! It’s just about making healthier choices as often as you can and doing it constantly.”

Daily challenge:
“I built in splurges all over the place with this thing – I call them splurgettes, actually. By having things like that, I don’t have a daily danger. Probably my biggest problem is getting enough protein.”

Tips from Cammy:
“The one thing I learned is I shouldn’t try to change everything at once. That’s what I did for years and years. If I made a household list that said, ‘Mow the lawn, paint the house, re-pave the driveway, do all the laundry, make a dress, and do it all Monday’ – there’s no way! So why did I think I could change my entire life – the way I live – every Monday, starting over and over again? It doesn’t work.

“My other tip is to avoid setting goals involving things you can’t control. I can control how I eat and how much I exercise, but I can’t make that scale go to a certain number.”

Favorite healthy recipe:

Honey-Teriyaki Chicken, modified from this link

Ingredients:
3 oz Boneless Chicken Breast
2 tbsp Honey
1.5 tbsp Teriyaki sauce
1/2 tbsp of sesame seeds

Preparation:
1. Slice chicken breast into sliver-like pieces or chunks to your liking.
2. Mix honey, teriyaki sauce together in a separate bowl.
3. Coat pan with cooking spray (I used Olive oil cooking spray)

Cooking Instructions:
Warm pan on low setting. Put pieces of chicken into pan. When completely cooked, pour honey/teriyaki mix onto chicken and let it warm to your liking. Be careful not to burn it. Apply sesame seeds on top of chicken.
Don’t forget to cook your rice. I did the boil-a-bag brown rice (7-8 minutes).
Serve over rice…enjoy.

Number of Servings: 2

Cammy’s Weight Loss WooHoo!:
“I made a commitment to myself and honored it. I decided I was worth it and I deserved it. I think that is what means the most to me.

“There are other good things – fitting in a desk chair in a classroom for the first time in my adult life, walking into a store and having the sales clerk say, ‘I think you’re about a size 8 or maybe a 6′ (No I’m not, I’m a 12 or 14!)… those were all great things, but getting to that 100 pound mark and just honoring myself by doing it, that meant all the world to me.”

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That takes so much, Cammy – to make a commitment to yourself and honor it. You do deserve it, and you should be so proud of yourself.

Want to see who else got a Weight Loss WooHoo!? Check out the Wall of Fame!

If you know of someone who deserves this honor, just let me know – send me an email at sahar [at] fatfightertv [dot] com

Related posts

• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Tony (The Anti-Jared)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Shauna Reid (The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Lori (Finding Radiance)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Kath (KathEats.com)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to The Biggest Loser’s Ali Vincent

Meet: Esther Brady Crawford, aka FaintStarLite

Age: 25

Occupation: Professional Video Blogger (see her Weight Watchers’ vlogs here)

Where she lives: Wisconsin

Pounds Lost: 70 pounds

How long it took to lose the weight: 11 months

How long she has kept it off: A year and a half… until she got pregnant (LOVE the belly pic!)

When I first met Esther last summer at BlogHer, I was so impressed with her adventures in vlogging and how videos about her weight loss ultimately led to a gig with Weight Watchers. She’s been busy since then getting married, moving, and being pregnant, so I was glad to finally catch up with her to chat some more about her weight loss journey, and of course give her a Weight Loss WooHoo! - Just FatFighterTV’s fun way of celebrating healthy weight.

How Esther gained the weight:
“My weight gain happened slowly throughout middle school, and accelerated in high school and then particularly during the first two years of college. I found it to be so difficult to eat healthy because all the food in front of me was crap – dorm food, buffets – it just was really, really challenging. My self-esteem had really taken a hit at that point. I was kind of spiraling out of control in terms of weight gain. I felt so bad about the fact that I was overweight that I would end up eating more. Then I would feel bad because I wasn’t able to lose it or I would make such limited progress that I would end up gaining more.”

Wake-up Calls:
“There were a couple of different moments that really hit me. My dad was very sick – he was dying. His last words to all of us kids were to really embrace life, to be happy with yourself. I felt really disappointed because I thought, here I am, motivated and intelligent, but there’s this one area of my life where I feel really bad about myself in terms of my body. That was the first wake up call – kind of like, okay Esther you need to start focusing on the parts of your life you’re not happy with, let’s figure out why you’re not happy with it and what you can do about it.”

“The second thing was during my senior year of college, I went to my physical exam and my doctor turned me to and said, ‘You are overweight, you’ve got to lose weight or you’re going to be at risk for diabetes, cancer…’ she just sort of rattles off all these adverse health side effects. I was so surprised because nobody had ever actually said that to me, especially not a medical professional. So I asked her – honestly, out of innocence –’Well, can you prescribe me some sort of pill that would help me lose weight?’ And she just looked at me completely dumbfounded and said, ‘No. It’s going to take eating better and exercising more!’”

How she shed the pounds:
“One of the things that’s so basic, and yet I really hadn’t learned growing up, was looking at the food on my plate and seeing where it was coming from – was this stuff coming directly out of a manufacturing plant or was it coming out of the ground, and was it natural?”

“I eventually joined Weight Watchers. What it really did was to help me re-focus, and I found when I was eating the right foods – when I was eating vegetables, when I was eating things that were bulkier in terms of density, I was not hungry two hours later. I didn’t need to snack on something, I didn’t need ice cream, because I was actually full.”

“It took me about four months before I really added in exercise. I joined a volleyball team, then I started building in more strength exercises. When I would need a break from studying, because I was in grad school at the time, I’d do 50 sit ups. Incorporating little things throughout the day made a huge difference in how I felt and it accelerated my weight loss exponentially.”

Weekly workouts:
“Every morning I was doing a beach run with a group of women. It was very motivating. We would go out to the beach and bring strength training equipment. For about 45 minutes to an hour, we’d do various cardio and strength training exercises. Occasionally I would also go swimming at the Y. Now that I’m pregnant, it’s such a great opportunity to swim more.”

Diet Philosophy:
“My diet philosophy is to be balanced, to find that balance, in terms of being able to go out and enjoy restaurant food with your friends, have cocktails, and at the same time really look at what you’re eating on a daily basis and figure out, is this natural? Is this something my ancestors would have eaten? One of the things that’s so challenging today in our country is most of what we eat is processed. It’s completely unnatural.”

Her Weakness:
“For me, it is all about sweets. I don’t ever want to eliminate anything, so I’ve handled my sweet addiction by integrating it into my life – having lower calorie options available, and also substituting things, like have some strawberries or even putting Cool Whip on my strawberries, so I’m getting what I’m craving but it’s not in the form of a Little Debbie or something.”

Tips from Esther:
“Persevere. It’s really hard in those moments when you had a bad day or you had a bad week to not want to give up. Think of it as just a bump in the road, and that’s going to happen. Life’s full of twists and turns, but what’s great is that if you keep your focus and keep moving in the direction you want, eventually you will make it there. It doesn’t have to happen overnight. In fact, it won’t happen overnight. But it makes you feel really good once you’ve accomplished it because you know that you stuck it out.”

Favorite healthy recipe:
Stuffed Red Peppers

Esther’s Weight Loss WooHoo!:
“I had never enjoyed the summer before, because it represented an entire season where I would be uncomfortable with myself – not wanting to get in a swimsuit, God forbid I had to wear shorts or show my arms. I wouldn’t even wear a tank top. I hit my goal in April, so between April and the summer, this transformation happened in my mind in terms of how I thought about myself. When the summer hit, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I love this time of the year!’ All these years I’ve been dreading the summer and looking forward to winter where I could pile all these layers on and kind of hide behind them. Now in the summer time, I’m like, This is me, I’m proud of myself! I’ve worked really hard and I’m not perfect and that’s totally okay. Before, I felt like I had to be perfect in order to enjoy or wear certain kinds of clothes – to wear shorts or to wear a tank top – that I had to look like a model. I finally came to a point where I was like, I don’t have to be perfect, I just have to be comfortable with myself. And that was just such a relief – a WooHoo! – I can do this! I can really be me.”

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Esther – Your father’s words are such great ones to live by. Oh, and you look fantastic in that sleeveless dress!

By the way, Esther is due May 10 – that’s coming right up, isn’t it?

Want to see who else got a Weight Loss WooHoo!? Check out the Wall of Fame!

If you know of someone who deserves this honor, just let me know – send me an email at sahar [at] fatfightertv [dot] com

Related posts

• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Tony (The Anti-Jared)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to The Biggest Loser’s Ali Vincent
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Shauna Reid (The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Roni (Roni’s Weigh)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Mr. and Mrs. Get Fit

Meet: Roni of Roni’s Weigh and Green Lite Bites

Age: 32

Occupation: Professional Blogger

Where she lives: Maryland

Height: 5’9”

Weight: 143

Pounds Lost: 70

How long it took her to lose the weight: 7 months

How long she has kept it off: 3 years

I am always impressed by people who not only lose a lot of weight, but those who come up with their own recipes along the way. I love to cook, but I have to follow a recipe – I’m no good at creating my own. Roni, on the other hand, features tons of her own yummy, healthy creations at her Green Lite Bites website. She also shares her weight loss journey – and now maintenance – at Roni’s Weigh. Here’s your Weight Loss WooHoo! Roni – Just FatFighterTV’s fun way of celebrating healthy weight!

How Roni gained the weight:
“I was always average – size 12 – but super unhappy in my skin. I was your classic 16-year-old on a diet who didn’t really need to be on a diet. And because of that, I actually started to gain weight. Because I was restricting my calories and binging and then trying not to eat for days, I created my own weight problem in a way.”

“In college, I gained just consistently. My freshman year I gained probably 25-30 pounds. Then it started a cycle where every summer I would lose about 20 pounds and then I would go back to school and gain 25-30. So I may have entered college around a fairly healthy weight of 160 pounds and graduated with my Master’s degree at 210 pounds.”

I did all of your stereotypical crash diets – the Negative Calorie Diet, the Grapefruit Diet, I was taking Xenadrine. I was like your desperate yo-yo dieter who would do anything to lose weight except for what she really needed to do. It was really all about just getting thin.

Turning point:
“I went to Weight Watchers, lost 11 pounds and learned to look at the bigger picture. Then I got pregnant. I gained 70 pounds with my pregnancy. It was almost like a last hurrah. I was eating with no holds barred. I just used pregnancy as an excuse to eat whenever I wanted.”

“Two weeks after my son was born I went back to Weight Watchers and I was like, This is it. The act of actually having a baby and nursing another life was like, My body is so much more than just something that I want to get thin. Pregnancy taught me to honor my body in a way. I just hit the ground running and I was like I’m going to do this. I’m going to learn and I’m going to eat right for him. He really gave me that motivation.”

How she shed the pounds:
“I dropped an average of two pounds a week. I was really on a mission. I had faith in the plan. I followed it and I didn’t try to work it or try to eat all my points in ice cream. I really tried to learn good nutrition while applying their points concept – this whole concept of balance. The weight really literally fell off.”

“I was becoming more active – I would carry my son around in a sling and walk everywhere, I’d park far away, I’d take the stairs, I’d dance around with him. I just kind of learned to do things more actively.”

Weekly workouts:
“Now I’m just crazy! I loathed the gym. I actually have posts where I declare that I hate working out. Now I’m running three or four times a week, I’m training for a half marathon in May, I workout with a trainer, I weight lift. I workout six days a week and I want to. If I don’t go, I’m angry that I couldn’t because my schedule didn’t allow it. I get mad that I didn’t make it to the gym. So I did a complete 360 with the whole working out thing.”

Daily Diet:
“I really became a grazer. It sounds so cliché, but it’s really everything in moderation. Old Roni – when I was in the crash diet decade – it was all or nothing. I always eat breakfast. My mid-day is just a lot of little things here and there – like I’ll grab a yogurt and then an hour later I’ll have some soy nuts, then an hour later I might have half a sandwich with a side of carrot sticks, and then a half hour later I’ll have popcorn. I tend to graze throughout the day and then I have another meal with my family that I cook at night. It’s always a lean protein, a grain and a vegetable.”

Daily challenge:
“Nighttime snacking for me is bad. I tend to stay up too late, so between 11 and midnight is a struggle.”

Tips from Roni:
“Take every choice as a new choice. Every choice that’s presented to you when you’re hungry or you have the munchies or you want to eat something or you’re at a restaurant is an isolated choice. It’s not going to effect tomorrow. That’s such a mentality that people have such a hard time with. Take it day by day and choice by choice. Lose the all or nothing mentality – it’s such a diet buster. I think it sabotages so many people’s efforts.”

A few of Roni’s Favorite healthy recipes:

Kidney Bean and Corn Salsa Salad

Pork Chops with Simple Mushroom Gravy

Southwestern Turkey Burgers

Roni’s Weight Loss WooHoo!:
My WooHoo! Moment was when my friend took me shopping. We went to White House Black Market and we were looking at all their beautiful dresses. If you know anything about me – I’m kind of a tomboy, I don’t dress up much, I wear Birkenstocks every day. But I have that inner girl in me that would always love to play dress-up but was always too ashamed of her body.”

“The [store employees] pulled all these dresses off the racks. I walk out of the dressing room and I’m in this strapless dress which I would have never worn – I just hated having my arms exposed – and I just felt like a movie star being dressed by a dressing team. It was just that moment where I was, Wow, I’m comfortable in my skin and I can try clothes on and kind of be proud. All the workers were like, ‘You look so good in that dress!’ And it was like one of those – Me? Really, me? – kind of moments.”

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Yes, YOU! Really you, Roni!

Want to see who else got a Weight Loss WooHoo!? Check out the Wall of Fame!

If you know of someone who deserves this honor, just let me know – send me an email at sahar [at] fatfightertv [dot] com

Related posts

• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Tony (The Anti-Jared)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to The Biggest Loser’s Ali Vincent
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Shauna Reid (The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Mr. and Mrs. Get Fit
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Mark Salinas

Meet: Jennette Fulda, aka PastaQueen, author of Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir

Age: 28

Occupation: Web designer/developer

Where she lives: Indiana

Pounds Lost: 200

How long it took to lose the weight: 2 years

How long she has kept it off: 4 years

She’s funny, inspirational, and oh yeah – she lost 200 pounds – more than half her weight! Jennette Fulda blogged about her weight loss journey here. Then she wrote a book about it all, appropriately called, Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir. I missed meeting her at BlogHer this year, but always wanted to connect. So, when one of her readers wrote me about how incredible she thought Jennette was, I knew it was time to get in touch. After all, someone with Jennette’s sense of humor just had to get a kick out of getting a Weight Loss WooHoo! right? – It’s FatFighterTV’s fun way of celebrating healthy weight.

How Jennette gained the weight:
“I’d always been overweight as a child and I just kind of slowly kept gaining weight year after year after year. I never yo-yo dieted, but I yo-yo exercised. Freshman year of high school, I joined the marching band and I probably lost some weight there. Between high school and college, I started walking a lot and I probably dropped about 40 pounds. But then I went to college and I started eating a lot and I didn’t keep up with my exercise. So I kept gaining and gaining and gaining and it got to a point where I didn’t want to step on a scale because I didn’t want to know how much I weighed. Eventually I was 372 pounds.”

“I was afraid I was going to be over 400 pounds, so I was actually kind of relieved (laughs) it was only 372. It was like I’d lost 30 pounds already! You gotta think positive.”

Wake-up Call:
“About a year before I started (losing weight) I had a gall bladder attack, which was extremely painful. I had to have my gall bladder removed – that was kind of scary. I was like, I’m pretty young to be having surgery. This is only a harbinger of things to come. My health is definitely starting to decline and I’m only in my 20’s.’  So I said, ‘Okay I’m going to lose the weight this time. Then three days after surgery I kind of forgot about my promise.”

“In the next year, my younger brother started to lose weight. He was eating pretty normal food and just exercising more, so he kind of made it seem like something I could do.”

How she shed the pounds:
“The first week, I just started walking. The week after that, I started making dietary changes. I started experimenting with recipes. Once I got to a point where I had six or seven recipes that I knew were good for me and I liked, it started to get a little bit easier. I basically followed the South Beach Diet.”

“There were some days where I was like, I’ve lost 50 pounds but I still have to lose another 150. There were times where I just wanted to fast forward to the endpoint.”

Weekly workouts:
“In the summer, I’m usually running. There’s this nature trail near my apartment that’s really nice so I’ll usually run on that. Now it’s gotten kind of colder so I’m using the workout room in my apartment complex – it has an elliptical trainer and a treadmill. I own dumbbells so I can do weight training. And I also do Pilates.”

Diet Philosophy:
“I try to make more healthy choices than not. If it’s my birthday, I’m going to eat cake! I have pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. I just try not to binge or get into a pattern where I’m making a lot of unhealthy choices.”

Daily challenge:
“I got a new job in January and I’m working in a bigger department with more people, so there’s definitely a bigger temptation to eat out, just to be social and hang out with people. Eating out and eating healthy can be really difficult, particularly because I work with a lot of guys.”

“If I’m having problems at work or in relationships or if I’m feeling really down, it can be harder to stick to the diet because coping with food is kind of my drug of choice. I find that when my life is going well, my diet tends to go better too.”

Tips from Jennette:
“Everyone needs to find what works for them. And don’t be too hard on yourself. If you’re succeeding 80-90 percent of the time, you’ll start to make progress.”

Favorite healthy recipe:
Peanut Butter Crepes

Jennette’s Weight Loss WooHoo!:
“I would have to say it’s basically my mobility. I can walk from the far end of the mall and I can walk all around the mall then come back and I’m not totally out of breath – I’m not exhausted; my knees don’t hurt. It’s really just a sense of freedom that I get because when I was that heavy, it really constricted how far I could go. It made my world smaller because I couldn’t go as far without hurting myself. So the freedom physically that comes with weight loss really makes me go, WooHoo!”

###

Freedom. Wow, that’s powerful, isn’t it? Glad we finally connected, Jennette. And I can’t wait to try those Peanut Butter Crepes – yum!

Want to see who else got a Weight Loss WooHoo!? Check out the Wall of Fame!

If you know of someone who deserves this honor, just let me know – send me an email at sahar [at] fatfightertv [dot] com

Related posts

• The Shoe Diet
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Tony (The Anti-Jared)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to The Biggest Loser’s Ali Vincent
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Shauna Reid (The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Roni (Roni’s Weigh)

Meet: Kim Bensen

Age: 47

Occupation: Owner, Kim’s Light Bagels

Where she lives: Connecticut

Pounds Lost: 212

How long it took to lose the weight: 2 years

How long she has kept it off: 5 years

When I first read about how Kim lost 212 pounds, I wanted to know more! As we chatted, she told me the aging process seems to have started going in reverse for her – she feels better and better as she gets older, now that she doesn’t weigh 350 pounds. Keep on feeling younger, Kim – you definitely look younger! Here’s your Weight Loss WooHoo! – Just FatFighterTV’s fun way of celebrating healthy weight.

How Kim gained the weight:
“I was always a little bit chubby, but with activities and cheerleading I was able to keep my weight at a normal range in my young years. I started dieting and wanting to lose weight – just like that 10-15 pounds – in high school. That’s kind of where the yo-yo’ing started. In college, the spread of pounds grew to 30… then 40.”

“I was a really great dieter and I tried all the diets out there. And I was always able to get to a somewhat normal range before kind of feeling good enough and going back to my old way of eating.”

“Right after I got married (25 years ago) my weight got up over 200 and I couldn’t believe it! Basically for the first 10 years of my marriage I struggled in the 200 pound range, always increasing. Then for the second 10 years of my marriage – in the 300 pound range.”

Turning point:
“A lot of people think I was this strong woman and I was ready to do it again, and nothing could be farther from the truth. I was broken. I was eating myself to death and I knew it. I basically cried my heart out to God. And I was just begging him to save my life. And I really feel that in this brief moment of prayer one morning, God gave me the strength to try one more time. Two days later, I signed up for Weight Watchers.”

How she shed the pounds:
“I did Weight Watchers and I loved the program. But this time, I approached things completely differently. I put more time and more effort into what I was doing than ever before. A lot of people want to get out of the kitchen – they don’t want to think about food; they want to think about it less. What I found was the more I focused on it and put into it and planned and cooked and lightened things up, the better I did and the more excited I got about it, and that kept me motivated. I made it a priority in my life.”

Weekly workouts:
“Okay, you had to ask that, right? I’m still a work in progress. Exercise has really been hard for me. When I was a year into losing my weight I said, ‘Man, I gotta do something about these flabby arms.” And I got down on my knees and I tried to do a girly pushup and I fell on my face and I couldn’t get up again! So I tried and tried and I worked myself up to a little routine of 20 guy pushups and 100 crunches and I do that every morning. And I’ve added to it some walking. But I do great for a few months and then I blow it, so I’m still working on it.”

Diet Philosophy:
“Enjoy the journey. I learned to find the things that I liked that I really enjoyed. Because if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, you will not live it and you’re going to yo-yo.”

Daily Challenge:
“Right now my weakness for food is in the evenings. So I’m having a cup of Chai tea latte and it’s almost like a dessert – it’s a new recipe I came up with that has really helped.”

Tips from Kim:
“The only way you’ll never lose weight is if you stop trying. So if you don’t succeed this time and you’ve kind of fallen off and you’re not liking it, the only thing you can’t do is give up. You’ve got to keep trying. If I hadn’t tried that last time I don’t know if I’d be here today. So keep trying!”

Favorite healthy recipes:
Cream of Broccoli soup

Cobb Family Cheese Cake

Kim’s Weight Loss WooHoo!:
“I can finally buckle up in a car, I can cross my legs, I can hop out of bed in the morning and my feet don’t hurt. I sleep through the night without sleep apnea and I don’t have nine sizes – one size clothing is the best! Out of all that, the biggest WooHoo would be – my husband can put his arms all the way around me.”

#####

Oh, that just gave me chills!

Now, remember how Kim said she’s all about lightening up recipes? She told me she’s always loved bagels but didn’t want to waste 300+ calories on one, so she came up with her own 110-calorie recipe. Her friends convinced her to market it and that’s how Kim’s Light Bagels came to be – find out how to win a bag of each of the six flavors here.

Want to see who else got a Weight Loss WooHoo!? Check out the Wall of Fame!

If you know of someone who deserves this honor, just let me know – send me an email at sahar [at] fatfightertv [dot] com

Related posts

• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Mark Salinas
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Kath (KathEats.com)
• What motivates me to live a healthy lifestyle?
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Tony (The Anti-Jared)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to The Biggest Loser’s Ali Vincent

Meet: Mark Salinas (Mark Salinas, MN – Healthy Living Today)

Age: 40

Occupation: Project Manager

Where he lives: Minnesota

Pounds Lost: 55

How long it took to lose the weight: About a year

How long he has kept off the weight: 2 years

If you haven’t read Mark’s blog yet, you must get over there soon! Not only does he share his fitness journey, he gives you great information on nutrition and various exercises to try, along with just the right words to motivate and inspire you. As Mark’s journey continues, let’s give him a Weight Loss WooHoo! – Just FatFighterTV’s fun way of celebrating healthy weight.

How Mark gained the weight:
“I was in sports and I was real active. I could eat whatever, had a very fast metabolism, and I was always on the go. In my mid 20’s I got married and had a daughter. My daughter had febrile seizures – her temperature would go from 100 to 106 in a matter of seconds, so my energy started to focus on that. Being the worry wart that I am, I wouldn’t sleep. I would stand next to her crib with a cold rag and Tylenol and a thermometer. I was less active, I was more tired and one thing led to another and it just snowballed.”

Turning point:
“Finally I got to a point where I said, ‘Enough is enough.’ I’ve always known that a healthier me and a happier me is better for everybody that comes in contact with me. I just stopped making excuses and justifying my unhealthy eating habits and lifestyle.”

How he shed the pounds:
“Initially what I did was cut out sugar and fast food. I didn’t try to do anything else because I didn’t want to take too much on and get frustrated. I started a Boot Camp class and just pushed myself and kept burning it and burning it and burning it. Eventually, more unhealthy foods became less desirable and I wanted to eat less junk and just be healthier. I wanted to consume whole foods and healthier foods.”

Weekly workouts:
“I did Boot Camp for so long – that was five days a week. Then I switched to taking Total Conditioning classes three times a week and included some running and Kickboxing and Spinning classes. For the past few months I’ve been strictly doing running and yoga with a couple of Total Conditioning classes a week. I’m constantly trying to infuse the muscles. I don’t want to get too much into a routine. For me, I hit plateaus very quickly.”

Daily Diet & Philosophy:
“I eat a pretty heavy breakfast and then I just graze all day – [things like] almonds and string cheese and yogurt. I have a decent dinner and a snack after dinner. I’m not a big believer in diets. I just think – be wise and be moderate and go ahead and have a bowl of ice cream every once in awhile and enjoy life.”

Daily challenge:
“Getting more sleep. I always feel like I have to be doing something. I think anybody in the fitness arena knows that recovery and rest are so important. And that has been my biggest challenge. I’m getting better at it.”

Mark’s tips:
“Don’t stress out. Just stay active and take it in steps. Don’t try to do it all at once. It’ll come and it’ll be all good.”

Favorite healthy recipe:

Chicken and Rice – with a kick
The heat is balanced by the briny olives and the sweet raisins.

Prep: 25 minutes; Total: 45 minutes

Servings: Makes 4 servings

Ingredients
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 large chicken thighs with skin and bones (about 2 pounds) Ground cloves

1 1/2 cups diced seeded red bell peppers
1 cup chopped onion
1/3 cup golden raisins
1/3 cup coarsely chopped pitted imported green olives
4 small bay leaves
2 garlic cloves, peeled
1 teaspoon hot chili paste (such as sambal oelek) or 1 small serrano chile, chopped
1 1/2 cups jasmine rice or long-grain white rice (9 to 10 ounces), rinsed, drained
2 to 2 1/2 cups low-salt chicken broth
Preparation
Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Sprinkle chicken generously with salt and pepper, then lightly with ground cloves. Add chicken to skillet and sauté until brown, about 5 minutes per side.
Transfer chicken to plate.

Pour off all but 4 tablespoons fat from skillet. Add bell peppers, onion, raisins, olives, bay leaves, garlic, and chili paste to skillet. Sauté until vegetables begin to soften, about 2 minutes. Add rice; stir 1 minute. Press chicken into rice. Add 2 cups broth; bring to boil. Cover, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer until chicken is cooked through and rice is tender, adding more broth if dry, about 20 minutes.
Nutritional Information

Per serving: 574calories, 18g fat, 2g saturated, 47mg cholesterol, 570mg sodium, 70g carbohydrate, 4g fiber, 25g protein (nutritional analysis provided by Nutrition Data)

Mark’s Weight Loss WooHoo!:
“The energy and excitement that has come from losing all that weight. My outlook on life is so much more optimistic and positive.”

###

Your positive outlook is contagious. Thanks for always inspiring us, Mark!

Want to see who else got a Weight Loss WooHoo!? Check out the Wall of Fame!

If you know of someone who deserves this honor, just let me know – send me an email at sahar [at] fatfightertv [dot] com

Related posts

• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Kim Bensen
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Kath (KathEats.com)
• What motivates me to live a healthy lifestyle?
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Tony (The Anti-Jared)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to The Biggest Loser’s Ali Vincent

Meet: Shauna Reid (The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl)

Age: 30

Occupation: Writer/Marketing Executive

Where she lives: Scotland

Pounds lost: 175

How long it took to lose the weight: 5.5 years

How long she’s kept off the weight: 2 years

I was surfing around when I first found Shauna’s blog and I was hooked right away! Her writing is candid, brilliant, and often hysterical. And her weight loss story is remarkable – she lost half her body weight! So here’s a Weight Loss WooHoo! to you, Shauna – just FFTV’s fun way of celebrating healthy weight.

How Shauna gained the weight:
“Aside from a chronic sweet tooth, there were a myriad of incidents and issues that led to me using and abusing food for all the wrong reasons from an early age. Food was never just food for me – it’s been a way of escaping from the world; a comfort and a coping mechanism. It sounds ridiculous to say that 175 extra pounds ’sneaked up on me’ but it is strange that once you reach a certain size you don’t really notice another 20 or 30 pounds.”

Wake-Up call:
“There were so many wake-up calls, really. One of the biggest moments was the shock of seeing my giant size 26 knickers hanging on the clothesline beside my sister’s tiny size 8 pair. I couldn’t believe that at just 23 years old that those frumpy undies belonged to me. Denial can be such a powerful thing. But that moment made me realize how I’d been kidding myself that I was happy. I was letting my weight hold me back from living life to the fullest. It was just a quiet realization that it was time to make some changes.”

How she shed the pounds:
“I started out with Weight Watchers as I wanted some structure and accountability. I had a really lovely, supportive meeting. After a year I decided to go on my own as the meeting clashed with my gym classes and I felt I needed to figure out what was going to work for me for the rest of my life.”

“I had many ups and downs but came to realize what worked for me was keeping things simple, eating smaller portions of real food and lots of exercise. Most importantly I finally managed to unravel my relationship with food and develop a healthier attitude to both my body and the way I eat. Seven years of keeping my blog, The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl, has been a big part of that process.”

Weekly workouts:
“When I started I could only walk to the end of the block and back before I had to sit down and catch my breath. I gradually added another block, and built up from there – this year I did a marathon walk. Over the years I’ve tried many different kinds of exercise but my favourite is kickboxing.”

Shauna’s current workout schedule:
Monday: Kickboxing
Tuesday: Weights
Wednesday: Kickboxing
Thursday: Spinning
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Weights
Sunday: Rest or a yoga/pilates DVD

“I’m not a slave to exercise, I just try to fit in what I can and don’t feel like a failure if I have a really busy week and the schedule goes right out the window. Even a short walk at lunchtime is good to get my endorphins going.”

Diet philosophy:
“Just do the healthy thing more often than you don’t.”

Daily challenge:
“3PM at work when the chocolate bars start calling my name.”

Her tips:
“Weight loss is about persistence, not perfection. I screwed up many, many times along the way but managed to succeed simply because I didn’t give up.”

“My other tip is to make sure you don’t put your life on hold for weight loss. Don’t think you have to be a certain jeans size before you can go on that European vacation or go for that promotion – you’re worthy of all those things right now.”

Favorite healthy recipe:
“Now that the nights are getting cold and nasty I’m craving a big bowl of comfort. I love this Comforting Butternut Squash and Lentil Dahl from Mostly Eating. It tastes rich and creamy but it is incredibly healthy and low in fat”

Shauna’s Weight Loss WooHoo!:
“While the clichés like buying clothes and fitting into chairs are obviously nice, the biggest WooHoo is just feeling comfortable in my own skin. I used to feel such loathing for my body, but getting hooked on exercise very early on in my weight loss journey helped me appreciate my body for what it can do, rather than just for what it looked like.”

That last line is a great one – we should all appreciate our body for what it can do, instead of just for what it looks like. Shauna has an amazing story and I can’t wait for her new book, The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl to be available here in the U.S. December 30. You can pre-order it here.

Want to see who else got a Weight Loss WooHoo!? Check out the Wall of Fame!

If you know of someone who deserves this honor, just let me know – send me an email at sahar [at] fatfightertv [dot] com

Related posts

• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Tony (The Anti-Jared)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Kath (KathEats.com)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Cammy (The Tippy Toe Diet)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to The Biggest Loser’s Ali Vincent
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Roni (Roni’s Weigh)

Meet: Ali Vincent (Winner of The Biggest Loser, Season 5)

Age: 33

Occupation: Weight Loss Spokesperson

Location: Arizona

Pounds Lost: 112

Ali’s energy is contagious! She had me ready to hit the gym right after we talked. Don’t miss FFTV’s interview with Ali. Find out what she has to say about how those pounds kept piling on, how tough it was to shed 112 pounds on The Biggest Loser, and what it’s like keeping that weight off in the real world. Here’s your Weight Loss WooHoo! Ali – Just FatFighterTV’s fun way of celebrating healthy weight.

How long she has kept off the weight: 6 months

Weekly workouts:
“I try to workout a minimum of five days a week, but I will usually do something active on that 6th day like dancing or swimming or go on a hike, whatever. I try to do at least an hour of cardio and an hour of some type of strength training. I try to. But sometimes life happens.”

Diet Philosophy:
“If I can’t taste it, I’m not going to waste it. What I mean by that is – if the cheese is just one of many things in my sandwich, then I’m not going to have the cheese. I’m not going to waste those 70 calories.”

“I eat whatever I want – I just budget it. I account for it. I do eat really bad things, but when I eat that really bad thing, I know how many calories are in it and I make sure that I burn that in addition to my normal workout.”

Weakness:
“I am a sugar girl. I never was a big candy and ice cream person, but now I am.”

Ali’s Weight Loss Tips:
“Start. Just start. Do something different today than you did yesterday that is in regards to it – if you want to start in your diet realm, then start food journaling. I’m not even telling you to change your diet. But start writing it down and start figuring out how many calories it is so you can just acknowledge how many calories you’re eating. You’ve gotta know where you are. You’ve gotta know where Point A is before you get to Point B.”

Ali’s Weight Loss WooHoo!:
“It feels so good to be healthy. I’m just flat-out excited to be alive!”

Want to see who else got a Weight Loss WooHoo!? Check out the Wall of Fame!

If you know of someone who deserves this honor, just let me know – send me an email at sahar [at] fatfightertv [dot] com

Related posts

• Ali Vincent: Before, during, and after The Biggest Loser
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Mr. and Mrs. Get Fit
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Kath (KathEats.com)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Tony (The Anti-Jared)
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Shauna Reid (The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl)