For as long as I can remember, I was always on a diet or trying new things to lose weight. I started becoming self conscious about my weight when I was in middle school and weighed around 160 pounds. I have always been the “thicker” friend and always knew I looked different than the rest of my peers. I began to believe that I was just “big boned” and meant to look that way for the rest of my life.

I would try new diets frequently and only lose about 10 lbs in a two month timespan. That was very frustrating and discouraging to me. All throughout high school I maintained 190 lbs but once college started is where I saw my weight spike. I experienced a lot of obstacles in my 4 years of college that I believe lead me to become an emotional eater. I would eat all the time, whether that meant if I was happy, sad, mad, you name it.

June 2016 I got engaged to my high school sweetheart, and that was my wake up call. I remember a week after the engagement looking in the mirror at myself and sobbing because I was so depressed and so tired of not loving the way I looked. I did not enjoy life at that point, and I didn’t feel good. I was tired all the time, and that is when I knew something had to change.

Ever since I was little, I had this vision of my wedding day and how I would look and I knew I wanted to be healthy, look good, and feel good. I began to seek professional help and that is when I started my journey with Metabolic Research Center. I weighed my heaviest at that time, 250 pounds. I remember my very first weigh in, losing 7.5 lbs in only 4 days and feeling so accomplished and extra motivated to get the weight off. I successfully lost 98 lbs. I feel amazing physically AND emotionally.

The important thing was I never gave up and I constantly reminded myself of how far I had already come. In the year since reaching my lowest weight, I’ve seen some amazing things happen in my life. I married an amazing man and I started training for my very first 5K to celebrate  losing 100 lbs. My goal is to train and inspire people to show them that the weight loss is possible. Going from someone who over ate all my meals and tired all the time to someone who has lost about 100 lbs and is working toward living the rest of her life as a healthy and fit individual is something I am very proud of.