Diet & Fitness: Weight Loss: Weight-Loss Success Stories:

 Daphne M.

 I had been overweight my whole life. I started out as a 9-pound baby. At age 6, my parents sent me to Weight Watchers because I was 15 pounds overweight. Can you imagine, a kindergartner on a diet of carrots, clear broth, and cottage cheese (Weight Watchers has come a LONG way since the early '80s!)? Needless to say, I started sneaking food and the weight kept creeping on. The floodgates burst when my parents divorced the summer that I turned 14 and my mother moved my sister and me to a big city, where I had to start high school with brand new classmates. I gained 100 pounds that summer and wore a size 16 in the 9th grade. By the time I graduated from college in 1995, I weighed 330 pounds. I got married three years later and weighed in at 350 pounds. My turbulent marriage only lasted two years and by the time my divorce was final, I tipped the scales at a whopping 390 pounds!

 I was finally motivated to take the weight off when I received my MBA degree and realized that no one wanted to hire me because I was obese. I decided to take matters in my own hands and do something about it. I underwent gastric bypass surgery on Sept. 12, 2000.

 Gastric bypass surgery reduces the size of your stomach so you have no choice but to eat small portions. However, you can still eat a lot of high-calorie foods like cookies and potato chips in small portions and sabotage your weight loss, so behavior modification is truly critical for success. I lost more than 200 pounds in 18 months by sticking to a high-protein, high-fiber diet and doing cardio five times per week along with strength training three times per week. I also drink up to one gallon of water per day.

 The key to my success has been taking everything one day at a time. I won the battle over obesity by losing more than 200 pounds but keeping it off has proved to be an ongoing war that I have to face and fight every day for the rest of my life. Surrounding myself with positive people has been a tremendous help. I also keep a before picture in my wallet so I will never forget the pain of this journey and how proud of myself I am for accomplishing such an insurmountable achievement. Cardio is my secret weapon and I still work out faithfully an hour every day, five days per week.

 Stress continues to derail me and I sometimes slip and go back to my best friend for comfort: FOOD! As I get older, I'm learning to have a better relationship with food and realizing that it's not going anywhere. I can have anything that I want to eat in moderation, so it is no longer necessary for me to wolf everything down in one sitting as I have done many times in the past. At the end of the day, I have to remember that it's just food.

 I handle setbacks by digging in deep within and finding my inner strength. Much easier said than done, but I've learned to deal with things that do not go my way instead of hiding and engaging in a secret rendezvous with food. Such behavior with food nearly killed me, and I had to learn to take the power away from food and find it within myself. I've learned to occupy my time with non-food activities such as reading, traveling, spending time with friends & family, and working out.

 I was on a flight from Atlanta to Boston and I put on my seatbelt and it fit without a seatbelt extender! I cried tears of joy the entire flight!