Success Stories
Everyone loses weight in different ways. Also, losing weight can be tough, especially without outside inspiration.
Gracie and her parents lost a combined 80 lbs as a family.
After her doctor suggested she lose weight, Gracie committed to lose weight with her parents. “I wanted to show my doctor that I could lose weight and also I wanted to fit into my musical theater costume.” Gracie’s parents, Brad and Mandy, joined to support her but soon after began seeing results themselves.
The whole family started making changes after watching educational videos. “We realized that even when we were eating the right foods, we were eating too much. Now, at suppertime we’ll say to each other, ‘That looks larger than the size of your fist!’ We are empowered with knowledge,” Mandy shares.
Gracie began tracking. “We realized that she was using up all of her reds just on lunch,” Mandy says. “We became more aware of our food choices and started making substitutions, for example, olive oil spray instead of regular olive oil.”
Now Gracie and her mom invest time each night to prepare healthy meals for the next day. Also, they began spending less time on the couch and more time outside.
After trying many diets in the past, Brad and Mandy liked that Kurbo felt sustainable.
“We didn’t have to eliminate an entire food group. We didn’t say ‘no carbs’ or ‘no fats’. We can eat everything, but we are just more aware of how to be more balanced,” Mandy says.
6 months later, not only has Gracie dropped 12 BMI points, but she also feels healthier.
Mandy and Brad have both lost 24 and 35 lbs respectively. “We have been overweight our whole lives. We have yo-yoed through a lot of different diets together, but this feels different,” Mandy says. “Brad even has his diabetes under control and is off one of his medications.”
The key to their success was doing it as a family. “Before we would do a diet that I liked and then a diet Brad liked. Now we are all on the same team, which works much better. We keep each other accountable, but also fight less about food,” Mandy notes.
Becky Cabral lost 100 pounds with “one small change at a time”.
I lost 100 pounds one small change at a time.
There was so much trial and error (a LOT of error).
I loved junk food, watching TV, and being as lazy as possible, so as appealing as the extreme diets were, they never stuck.
For me, the key to success was one small change at a time.
Going from soda to lemonade. Then to light lemonade, flavored water, fruit-infused water, and finally plain water.
Going from no vegetables to hiding vegetables to a few microwaved frozen vegetables then learning to cook fresh vegetables and now I pack my meals full of vegetables.
I could give you hundreds of examples of one small change at work in my life.
Every diet I tried or exercise program I joined, I learned something from it that I carried on with me to create a healthy lifestyle I genuinely love living.
Dara Sarshuri lost 180 pounds in just 10 months this year just by diet and exercise.
35-year-old Dara Sarshuri weighed 390 pounds in February 2018 and said he was shocked by the number.
“It was way more than I thought.” “I was just mad at myself. It really just hit me and I thought, ‘You got to do something. You are almost 400 pounds.'”
At first, he decided on gastric bypass surgery and had to lose some weight ahead of the procedure. In his first two months following an eating plan, he lost 55 pounds. He lost 45 more by June, a total of 100 pounds.
It was at that point he decided not to go forward with the surgery. He had also started exercising, first just by walking. He eventually joined a gym and goes five days a week, still walking on the weekends.
“I am stronger than I ever thought I was. I never had any confidence and now I see how far I have come. I can run. I can do push-ups. I take these small victories.”
Rachel Saintfort lost 121 pounds by cutting fast food and soda from her life.
“In high school, I hit 200 lbs., but I was blessed to be a confident person.”
After the birth of her daughter in 2007, however, things changed for Saintfort. Weighing 291 pounds, her highest, she decided to try dieting. But it wasn’t until her daughter turned 10 and one of her classmates called Saintfort “fat” that she made lasting changes.
“She looked so sad, and she’s trying to act like it wasn’t a big deal. At that moment it hit me that she’s suffering, and she’s being picked on or laughed at because of my laziness or my unhealthy choices,” Saintfort told the magazine.
She cut out fast food and soda and started doing daily three-mile walks around the lake in her town.
Jen Wagner has lost 88 pounds since February without even going to the gym.
Jen Wagner had always been athletic, but when she got married, she stopped working out and gained 100 pounds, reaching her highest weight of 240 pounds in 2017.
“I felt like a stranger in my own body. I didn’t recognize my own reflection, and when I would see photos of myself, I was disgusted. I didn’t know who that was.”.
Though she had tried for six years to lose weight on fad diets and different programs, she finally buckled down in February 2018. She started with her diet, first on keto , then to low-carb. Now she tracks her calories using MyFitnessPal and does intermittent fasting .
She also exercises by playing tennis, swimming, walking with hand weights, jumping on trampolines with her daughter and even doing yard work.
“I never did something that made me miserable and not want to do it again”. “I haven’t stepped foot inside of a gym even one time on this journey.”
Her ultimate goal is to lose the 100 pounds she gained after getting married.
“The thing I hear the most from people is that I look like a new person. I agree, since I often don’t recognize myself when I pass a mirror or a window, but more important than that, I FEEL like a new person! I feel like the person I had longed to be all those years I was overweight.”
Kayla Mills lost 70 pounds after taking exercise classes through Groupon.
In April 2016, Kayla Mills decided to start losing weight because she said, she didn’t recognize who she was.
“One morning I woke up, looked in the mirror, and cried for a while and then told myself to pull it together.”
When she first started to lose weight, she bought a month of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) boot camp classes on Groupon. She saw a lot of progress after just her first month and continued for a few more before she started working out on her own.
Eventually, 21 months later, she lost almost 70 pounds.
“Since then, I have gained about 10 to 15 pounds, but I try not to focus on the scale… Weighing a certain amount can take away the joy and stress relief that working out has brought to my life,” she told the outlet.
Brianna Bernard lost 107 pounds and became a powerlifter.
Brianna Bernard gained 70 pounds when she was pregnant with her first child and weighed 245 pounds after she gave birth. Though she thought she could lose that weight quickly, she held on to the weight even a year after her child was born.
“I stopped feeling like myself,” she told People magazine . “I was so busy being a stay at home mom, that my whole life was about my son and I didn’t take the time for self-care.”
Though she had tried plenty of weight loss methods, she was inspired to go to a gym that had helped another woman lose weight. She started training there two or three times a week doing weightlifting, plyometrics, and boxing and also changed her diet.
One year later, she had lost 107 pounds and started doing powerlifting competitions.
“I feel like a completely different person, and I am in so many ways,” she said. “Not just physically – that’s obvious – but the way I feel in my mind. It’s hard to even look back. It feels like a lifetime ago. Now I feel like there’s nothing I can’t do. If I can lose 100 pounds, I can do anything.”
Joey Morganelli has lost 150 pounds by going vegan.
Both of Joey Morganelli’s parents died when he was a teenager, his mother from cancer when he was 13, and his father from a heart attack when he was 16. He began to cope with food but didn’t realize he was developing an addiction to food, according to what he told Men’s Health. By the time he was 18, he weighed about 312 pounds, and that number eventually rose to 400.
After encouragement from a professor during his freshman year, Morganelli decided to try to lose weight. At first, he lost some weight by counting calories but his weight fluctuated for several months because he sometimes binged.
One day he had a panic attack but thought it was a heart attack. He decided then that it was time to completely change his diet. He decided to go vegan.
“Since starting my weight loss journey, I have seriously learned so much about nutrition and what works for me that it’s becoming a passion of mine. If there’s one thing about Nutrition that EVERYONE knows, it’s that there’s always a new fad diet or there’s always a pill or some shakes to take … Over these past four years, I’ve learned so much about what my body likes and this is it. I’m focusing on a high-carb-low-fat vegan diet that is based on foods in their purest form.”
Since then, he has found both his physical and mental health improved drastically and his weight is down to 250 pounds.
