Wow Jay- congrats on your amazing weight loss! You definitely sound like you took the sensible approach to losing the weight: healthy & wholesome foods combined with physical activity. I completely know what you mean about being amazed at how much extra weight you used to carry. Sometimes when I’m lifting my suitcase off the conveyor belt, I wonder how I ever walked around with almost triple that amount on my body every single day. Keep up the great work :)!

At 12 year old I was 5’6 and weighed 175+ lbs. I think my highest weight was over 180 lbs. Although I was tall, my body frame beneath the weight was not at all proportionate. I went from being a thin child to an overweight preteen. Despite my healthy upbringing, I found myself emotionally eating and sneaking huge snacks and meals outside the supervision of my working parents and nannies. I ate so much because I loved food (lover of lobster, foie gras at the age of 5) and was always an anxious child, eating relaxed me. I finally lost an uncle to complications related to diabetes and heart disease–he was only 50 years old. I began to trade snacks of 2 bagels dripping in butter after school to reviewing my pre-algebra notes while walking on the treadmill upstairs. Walking for about 1 hour each day, eating the healthy, wholesome foods my parents cooked each day, and hitting puberty, I lost over 60 lbs in about 7 months.

My doctors agreed that although the weight loss was rather rapid, it was due to the fact that I grew 3 inches, hit puberty, and was never meant to be ANYWHERE near 180 lbs. I am now 22 years old, weighing 117 lbs at 5’9. I am an avid runner and avid foodie (always have been).

Sometimes I when working with weights, I’ll pick up a 30 lb dumb-bell in each hand and astound myself of what I could have been carrying under my skin for the past 10 years.