Before: 316 pounds
After: 148 pounds
Height: 5'5"
Age: 42
Michelle Vinson, 42, says she can remember being on and off a diet off since the third grade. Boredom has always been a trigger for her eating—she says she can remember being alone as a kid with a book in one hand and a bag of chips in the other. As she got older, her bad eating tendencies continued, and by the time she graduated from college she weighed about 250 pounds.
Lose the Freshman 15
In an effort to ditch the weight, she signed up for Jenny Craig, but she couldn’t afford to keep buying the prepared meals. When she quit that plan she gained back the weight she lost, plus 25 pounds. Next she tried the Atkins Diet, which helped her lose an impressive 50 pounds. (Search: Does Atkins work?) But she regained all that weight—plus some more as time passed. “It wasn't a lifestyle I could live with,” she says.
The Turning Point
Michelle’s extra weight started to take a toll on her health. She suffered from migraines two or three times a month, which she attributes to lack of sleep and the stress the weight put on her body. “Finding clothes that fit, just breathing, even sleeping was difficult,” she says. (Make a small change. Find out how to burn 100 calories right now.)
She signed up for a weight loss competition at her company, but approached it with a bad attitude. “I just wanted to get people to shut up. I had no real intention of doing anything,” she says. And for the first month, she did nothing. Then one day in February 2009, she woke up wanting to go to the gym. She told herself she’d stay as long as there was no one there, and luckily, there wasn’t.
Discover how to lose up to 15 pounds in 32 days!
