Megan C’s Weightloss Journey

I see so many great weight loss stories on social media, and when I saw Megan’s story in IG, I was blown away by her transformation. I knew there was an amazing story behind this transformation.  

I reached out to her and she was nice enough to say that she really wanted to share her story with me and my readers.  I was not wrong after the interview – her story is one of consistency, discipline, dedication, perseverance and focus. Here is the interview:

1.  Can you tell me your age, height, what was your start weight and your actual weight now?

I am 36 years old, and I am 5’5″.  My starting weight was 351 pounds, and my current weight is 146 pounds.   

2.  How did you gained your weight?

I have been overweight my whole life.  Even as child, every wish upon a star, every prayer was to find some way to lose weight.  I was unable to break away from food addiction.  Growing up, every memorable moment centered around food in my family.  Every holiday, every celebration, even sad moments were all about the food we ate in those moments.  It led to a really unhealthy relationship with food that stayed with me through my adult life.

3.  What made you change your lifestyle?

I have tried and failed to lose weight my entire life.  In 2018, I had a large non-cancerous tumor that grew to the size of a small cantaloupe in my uterus.  It led to a lot of health problems and it took awhile for doctors to find it based on my symptoms because I was so overweight.  No one could tell something that large was growing inside of me.  It took three different surgeries to remove it.  After that, I promised myself I would never let something take over my body without me knowing again.  I set a New Year’s resolution in January 2019 and this time it worked.     

4.  How did you lose your weight, and have you hit your goal weight?

I signed up for a DietBet in January 2019 and told myself I would play a DietBet every month for 12 months and see what happened.  I had read that even if you didn’t win the DietBet, over 80% of people lose some weight.  So I figured I would give it a try.  I began tracking everything I ate in MyFitnessPal and watched my carbohydrate intake. 

I started limiting my carbs, first it was 100g a day, then 50g and ultimately less than 20g.  I realized at this point that I was actually following a Ketogenic diet.  I stayed strictly Keto after that for a total of 15 months.  At this point I started to get really serious about my exercise and strength training goal and added back in carbohydrates into my diet.  

I used to have a goal weight, but then I realized that it is easy to become addicted to achieving lower and lower numbers and that is not healthy.  I hit my lowest at 140 pounds and I was a size x-small for the first time in my life.  I always wanted to be small, but I realized that it did not make me happy.  I realized that I didn’t really want to be small after all.  I wanted to be strong.  So I started a reverse diet and strength training program and now I am trying to put on some more muscle.  

5.  What was the hardest obstacle in your weight loss journey?

The mental challenge is so much harder than the physical challenge.  For me in particular, my mental challenge centered around sugar addiction.  I had such a strong desire to binge eat, particularly at night.  That was really hard to break.  In the past, I tried to cut back on sugar, but I never really broke the addiction. I had to cut sugar completely out, including the natural sugars found in most fruits and some vegetables.   It took about three very tough weeks to break the addiction, but once that happened, I found that food had no control over me anymore.

This has been a challenge as I have reintroduced those foods into my diet over the last six months, but I am slowly working on continuing to heal my relationship with food. 

6.  Any advise you would like to offer to people that are starting this journey?

Start small and be consistent.  I think the reason why I failed so many times before is that I wold decide to change my life and put everything behind that decision. I took aggressive calorie reductions and tried to kill myself with cardio.  It left me hungry and frustrated when I felt like my progress wasn’t as fast as it should be – given how much work I was putting in.

This time, I focused 100% on nutrition at the beginning and did not worry about working out until I had my food under control.  With the food, I made small changes that I could sustain and kept building upon those small changes.  I think this approach really made all the difference in making this a lifestyle versus diet.  

7.  What kept you motivated?

I’m a really a big goal person – so setting and achieving goals was a big part of my journey.  In the beginning, I joined DietBet games to keep me accountable. I am so competitive and do not like to lose – so the games helped me be super focused on my goals each month.  I played 13 DietBet games in total in 2019 and won every single one of them.

8.  Who inspired you or supported you through out the journey?

For me, my inspiration and support has always been my family.  I wanted my children to grow up knowing that anything is possible with hard work and dedication.  I wanted them to see that is never too late to change your life and no goal is unachievable with the right amount of focus.  

9.  What is your secret indulgence?

I am a huge ice cream person.  I’ve had to find lower calorie substitutions because I just can’t imaging life without ice cream.  The best that I’ve found is a Swedish brand call “Nick’s”. Half a pint is 120 calories and I eat this basically every night after dinner. 

10.  Do you have a FB fan page, IG and/or blog you want to share with us?

I have an IG account and you can find me @maintaining_megan

Editor’s Note:

I want to thank Megan for sharing her amazing story and motivating us to make health our priority.  She is also reminding us that this is a lifestyle and not a fad.

Congratulations Megan on you 2nd year anniversary of losing 200 pounds in 15 months.  Like you said  “no goal is unachievable with the right amount of focus.”  Thank you and continue to inspire.