At age 12, Loida Fraijo moved with her family from Hermosillo, Mexico, to Tucson, where she discovered fast food. "I supersized everything," she says. "My sister and I would each eat a foot-long sub and then split a third one." By the time she was 19, Loida was carrying 173 pounds on her 5'7" frame. She dabbled in crash diets while attending Pima Community College in Tucson, but she could never commit. "I'd get upset and start eating again," says the 30-year-old aesthetic laser technician.
THE CHANGE
Although Loida was a size 14, she squeezed into the short skirts and tight tank tops her thin friends wore. "I didn't feel comfortable or pretty," she says. Then, at a party in the summer of 2000, she overheard a guy announce that the "chunky girl"—Loida—was leaving. "When I realized that's how people saw me, I knew I had to change," she says. "I wanted to transform my life more than I wanted a hamburger."
Years of crash diets did nothing to help Tricia Minnick, 28, control her weight, and by the time she got married in 2006, she was carrying more than 200 pounds on her 5’8″ frame. In 2007, she got pregnant, and a complication resulted in four months of bed rest—and a 75-pound weight gain. Shortly after Tricia had her son, she and her family moved from Texas to Stuart, Florida. Isolated from friends and extended family, she turned to food for comfort. With the scale stuck at 278 pounds, she says, “I was completely overwhelmed by how much I needed to lose.”
The Change
By January 2009, Tricia’s doctor warned her that she might need blood pressure medication. And when she found herself breathless trying to keep up with her son, Dash, Tricia realized her weight affected him too. “I didn’t want him to face the physical or emotional issues that I had,” she says. She gave herself a year to drop 100 pounds.
Although Deana Custer was on the volleyball and golf teams in high school, she carried 150 pounds on her 5’4" frame. Her weight began creeping up when she started cosmetology school in August 2005 while working two part-time jobs–she couldn’t find time to exercise or cook. Fast food took its toll, and she was 200 pounds at her December 2006 graduation. She got a job as a hairstylist in Washington, Iowa, but the irregular hours had her scarfing takeout between clients or skipping lunch and overeating at dinner. She put on 25 pounds in three months. "I was ashamed of letting myself go that far," she says.
The Change
Because Deana stood all day at work, the extra weight made her feet and back ache. But worse was the blow to her self-esteem. "In the beauty business, you have to look the part," she says. "And I didn’t." When her scale hit 225, she’d had enough. "I knew I was the only one who could change my body."
When Mechelle Wingle married her college sweetheart in 1994, she weighed 140 pounds. But over the next 11 years, she had four children, and as a stay-at-home mom in Layton, Utah, she was never able to lose the baby weight. In 2006, after the birth of her last child, Mechelle peaked at 175 pounds.
“I’d eat 10 chocolate-chip cookies after dinner and hide a few for breakfast the next day,” says Mechelle, now 36. “I felt that I deserved a treat for dealing with the pressure of raising four kids.”
Growing up, Brandi Byers stayed active by playing basketball and taking fitness classes, and she ate lots of salad. Still, her figure was more like “a football player’s,” she says, than like those of her slim, fit friends. And when she began attending Arizona State University, she grew careless with her eating habits. “My best friend and I got an apartment—and too many groceries,” recalls the 29-year-old e-learning training consultant from Phoenix. “By sophomore year, my eating was out of control.” Along with scarfing too many bagels and bowls of pasta, Brandi let her workouts wane. She packed 40 pounds onto her 5’3″ frame in just 18 months.
The Change
Several months before Brandi was to be a bridesmaid in her best friend’s October 2009 wedding, she couldn’t squeeze into the gown she’d ordered. “I could never tell my friend that I couldn’t be in her wedding because my dress didn’t fit!” she says. She vowed not only to sport the size-6 dress but to shed the extra pounds for good.
Thanks to a childhood filled with drive-through breakfasts and take-out dinners, Amy Banfield, now 22, was always one of the chubbiest kids in school. By fourth grade, she recalls, “I was heavier than my friends and felt self-conscious changing for gym class.” Her eating habits worsened when she enrolled at Miami University in Ohio in 2007. “My dorm was next to a 24-7 mini-mart, so I could snack all day or night,” she says. During freshman year, she packed 25 pounds onto her 5’7″ frame. With summer looming, she vowed to bring her scale back from the brink of 200 pounds.
The Change
To avoid facing the music about her weight, Amy lived in oversize tees and sweats. But in January 2008, when she was turned away from a fraternity party with a harsh “No fat girls allowed,” she decided she needed to act. “I was humiliated,” she says. She committed to fixing her weight problem for good.
Sherise Campbell, 35
Dining services coordinator, Dumfries, VA
Before: 205 lbs After: 140 lbs
Working in the kitchen of an assisted-living community, Sherise Campbell spent eight hours a day, five days a week surrounded by fries, pizza, pasta, and soda. Ten years into her job, this 5’4" former "skinny girl with no curves" was a size 16. It didn’t help that her chef husband, Tafari, worked the late shift and brought home fried chicken or tacos at 10 p.m. that Sherise would share despite having eaten earlier. She ignored her doctor’s advice to lose weight until she hit an all-time high of 205 pounds in the summer of 2009.
The Change
Because her weight gain was so gradual, Sherise didn’t realize just how many pounds she’d tacked on. That is, until she flipped through a photo album from her wedding-anniversary cruise in the Bahamas and spotted a shot of herself in a red halter dress. "Curves are good, but I didn’t like the way those curves looked," she says.
Misty Gauthier, 26
Bank-teller supervisor, Hudson Falls, NY
Before: 236 lbs After: 146 lbs
Despite a family history of type 2 diabetes, Misty Gauthier, 5’5″, ignored her growing waistline for most of her life. Exercise seemed like torture, and it was easier to grab takeout than cook for herself. In fact, it wasn’t unusual for her to eat out at every meal—a sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich on her morning commute, junky catered work lunches, and slices of pizza for dinner. She gained 60 pounds over the course of four years, reaching a high of 236.
The Change
When Misty visited her ob-gyn in February 2009, the doctor suggested testing her blood sugar levels—and the test revealed she was prediabetic. “I didn’t want to have to take pills or give myself a shot every day for the rest of my life. I was only 23. It scared me and made me kind of mad at myself,” she says. Determined to avoid diabetes and its complications, she took control of the scale.
Mary Renwick, 30
Stay-at-home mom, Monroe, MI Before: 255 lbs After: 155 lbs
When Mary Renwick moved with her husband, Tim, who was in the Navy, from Monroe, Michigan, to a military base in Sicily in 1999, her six-foot frame was lean and willowy. But while Tim worked odd hours at his new job, Mary filled her lonely days with food. “I ate for comfort and indulged in the local cuisine—oily pasta, buttered bread, lots of cannoli,” she says. By the time Tim was discharged and they returned to Monroe in 2002, she was 90 pounds heavier and depressed. In the next seven years, Mary gave birth to two boys, which improved her spirits but not her weight.
The Change
In December 2009, Mary reached down to pick up her youngest son, Parker, then 5 months old, and felt a stab in her back. A visit to the doctor revealed two bulging disks and a pinched nerve. “When I learned my weight was the main factor in my injury, I decided I could not, would not, live like that anymore,” she says.
Jessica Whitehead, 41
Director of sales for a technology company, Cheshire, CT
Before: 345 lbs After: 145 lbs
Jessica Whitehead was never one to pass up a good time—especially if food was involved. For years she met friends every night for dinner, ordering the largest sizes and every add-on: extra cheese on her pizza, extra mayo on her overstuffed sandwiches, and a side of chips or fries with her meal.
"Eating big and trying everything was symbolic of success and living my life fully—I literally ‘lived large,’ " she says. But if someone asked her to play volleyball or go skiing, Jessica, 5’5", always opted out because she feared her weight—which peaked at 345 pounds at age 36—would prevent her from participating. "I was embarrassed. I felt as if I couldn’t do those things."
For most of her adult life, Jennifer Martin hovered around 200 pounds, and it weighed on more than just the scale. Her difficulty finding clothes that fit made her feel uncomfortable and self-conscious, and the stay-at-home mom from Collegeville, Pennsylvania, hated that she never had energy to play with her two kids. In 2009, the scale hit a high of 211 pounds, and Jennifer, who is 5’2", realized she weighed as much as her foot-taller husband. Curbing her sweet tooth and lacing up her running shoes helped the 31-year-old shed 85 pounds and get into the best shape of her life.
The Change
In early November 2009, while bingeing on her kids’ leftover Halloween candy, Jennifer was suddenly flooded with guilt. "I saw my out-of-control habits through their eyes and knew I needed to change," she says. She put down a handful of chocolate and vowed to stop her chaotic eating.
As a teen growing up in Silver Spring, Maryland, Kristen Collins Eccleston regularly dined on greasy fast food with her friends. After college she met her now husband, Bryan, and got into the habit of splitting extra-large pizzas with him and ordering buffalo wings for Sunday-night football. Their junk-food feasts caused Kristen to tip the scale at 180 pounds. When Bryan proposed in 2009, it was a wake-up call for the 25-year-old special-ed teacher, who vowed to shed weight from her 5’6" frame before getting hitched.
The Change
While shopping for size-16 wedding gowns in February 2010, Kristen’s mom sensed her daughter’s misery. She sent Kristen an encouraging note, pledging her support and offering to buy her a new smaller-size outfit for the rehearsal dinner. "My mom wanted to see me happy, so she motivated me to do something about my weight," says Kristen. "She told me to do it as a wedding gift to myself."
When Jennie Nickel was pregnant in 2005, larger portions and excessive snacking caused her to tack more than 70 pounds onto her 5’7″ figure. The baby weight refused to budge, so this aesthetician from Huntsville, Alabama, decided it was time to whip herself into shape. Today, at 30, Jennie is a part-time nursing student and a fitness junkie who has done three triathlons.
The Change
Nine weeks into her maternity leave, Jennie was down only 15 pounds. “I didn’t want to go back to work, because I worried that all of my clients would think I was still pregnant!” she says.
The Lifestyle
“My biggest issue was mindless grazing—a handful of M&M’s here, a few chips there,” says Jennie. In April 2006, she began logging what she ate. “Writing it down made me aware of how much more I was eating than I was burning.” With a newborn at home, getting to the gym was a challenge, so she turned to fitness DVDs. “It was the first time I attempted to exercise in at least five years,” recalls Jennie.
Heather Mursch, now a 401(k) administrator in Lakewood, Ohio, put on 20 pounds in college and gained more weight when she moved in with a friend after graduation. “We’d eat dinner before going to a bar, and then stop for pizza or gyros on our way home,” says Heather, 34. Workouts became less frequent, until she quit exercising altogether. And when Heather got married in 2000, she wore a size-16 gown.
The Change
Four years later, Heather’s marriage was over, and her clothes were tighter than ever as she turned to food to cope. “One night, to deal with the stress, I went for a run,” she says. It was her first workout in four years, and she only made it one block, but it was enough. “I felt so much better,” she says.
When Andrea Vandiver graduated from Maryland’s Salisbury University in 2004, she was a healthy size 8. But then a job as a sales rep kept her on the road, which meant most of her meals came from drive-throughs. “I ate out constantly and munched on whatever was served at business meetings,” says Andrea, now 29. By the winter of 2006, at 5’4″ and 215 pounds, she was miserable with her weight—and her career.
The Change
A few months later, Andrea quit her sales job and enrolled at Towson University in Baltimore to pursue a teaching degree. Moving gave her the perfect opportunity for a fresh start. “My weight was out of control,” she says. “This was the excuse I needed to get back on track.”
Once a slim high school tennis player, Jennifer Gilman packed 30 pounds onto her 5’4″ frame during college. There, she stopped exercising and started hitting the dining hall—hard. “I’d eat what I now know is three portions of pasta at one time,” says the 32-year-old university administrator from Washington, D.C., whose weight peaked at 180 pounds. After graduation, she shrunk from a size 14 to a 10 by counting calories, but within six months her new clothes were too tight again. Her weight hovered in the 170s for the next eight years.
The Change
On her doctor’s advice, Jennifer joined a gym in January 2009 and hired a trainer. For her first session, she recalls, “I couldn’t even find a T-shirt that fit!” When the trainer took her measurements and told her that her body-fat percentage was 35, Jennifer felt embarrassed—and then determined. “I wanted to prove I could do this,” she says.
