If you are in need of inspiration on your weight loss journey, look no further!  I love reading weight loss success stories and always find something to take with me in every story that I come across.  Recently Mara,  a Loser for Life reader, sent me an email and quickly shared with me her weight loss success along with amazing Before and After Photos.  I was so inspired and begged her for more!  She kindly agreed to share her story on the blog.  Please welcome Mara!!!!!!

MY JOURNEY

My name is Mara Staller Starr and I live in Oak Park, Michigan. I work as an Office Manager; I have been married for 19 years, and have three beautiful daughters, ages 17, 13 and 5. I have always struggled with my weight, and today I think I have finally found the solution! I am honored to share my story with you.

In October 2004, I had lost a considerable amount of weight (120 lbs) through a doctor’s prescribed meal replacement type program, and joined my local Curves to ‘tighten up a little.’ Six weeks later, I found out I was pregnant, which was a big surprise not only to us, but to our seven and ten year old daughters! I continued my workouts as long as I could, and finally delivered a beautiful baby girl at the end of July, 2005. But with the diet program I was on, I really hadn’t learned how to eat properly; I gained all of my weight back and was right back to where I started from!

I didn’t return to diet and exercise right away. I had a newborn daughter; school aged children, and a full-time job. By the time the baby’s second birthday rolled around (July 2007), I had had enough. It was time to get back on track! It also didn’t hurt that my husband told me that if I wasn’t going to use my Curves membership, I would have to give it up. So, off to Curves I went! I was hesitant, but I stepped on the scale for an updated weigh and measure report. I weighed 292 pounds! It was time to make a change, and I was glad to be back at Curves. I saw many friends that I remembered from before, and met many more new ones, too.

It was around the same time that my sister began going to Weight Watchers meetings in Cincinnati, Ohio. She would call and tell me how she was enjoying the program, and that she was seeing results. After a little prodding and many long distance phone calls, I decided that I was ready. Now this wasn’t my first trip down the road with Weight Watchers, but I thought I could try it again. I began attending Weight Watchers meetings on Sunday mornings.

I started back at diet and exercise with a vengeance! I didn’t like the way I looked and wanted to wear all those new clothes I had bought before the pregnancy. I went back to my three workouts a week, and with the support of my family and friends, the weight started to come off. My monthly weigh and measure reports were glowing; I looked better and I felt better, too. The more I lost, the more motivated I was to achieve my goals.

Over the last three years, I have become a champion at variety, creativity and planning. I am meticulous about weighing out my portions and keeping track of them. My newest obsession has been finding low fat, low calorie, low point recipes that allow me to eat all the foods I love, but still stay within my daily points target. I cook and bake all the time and I am always trying new recipes. My favorites right now are cupcakes and muffins – after all, muffins are like portion-controlled CAKE – and I do love my cake! And oh yeah, I love peanut butter too – and I make sure to fit it into my day (almost every day!) in so many yummy ways!

I have had my share of ups and downs – my successes and my plateaus. I had hit a period of time where I was following my Weight Watchers program, and exercising at Curves regularly, but I wasn’t seeing results the way I wanted to. My Weight Watchers leader explained to me that my metabolism is like a machine, and I have to feed it in order for it to work properly. So, I started eating a little more on the days I worked out, and lo and behold, I was back on track again! It is funny how I jump started things again – I guess all I can say is that you really HAVE to eat in order to lose! Unfortunately, it’s taking my brain much longer to wrap itself around this very simple concept!

And now here I am three years later and I’ve lost 146 lbs. I have gained muscle definition and strength I never knew I had. I’ve lost over 100 inches and over 100 pounds of body fat. My BMI has decreased by more than 25 points. It is so hard to believe how far I have come! I have literally lost an entire person.

I feel terrific! The clothes I had been saving in my closet are all now too big on me! My body is firmer and more toned than it has been in the last 20 years and I weigh less than I did at my wedding! My family is so proud of me! In fact, I’ve become sort of a ‘celebrity’ everywhere I go!

People don’t recognize me. People want to meet me or know my ’secret’ to how I lost all my weight. I have had friends at my weekly meeting want their ‘hug for the week’ or want to touch my arm, thinking something will ‘rub off’ and help them – but seriously; I am really not that special. I have no magic powers and I am certainly NOT any kind of superhero (but please don’t tell my girls!). I just did what I needed to do. And anyone else can do it too – if they just set their mind to it, make it a priority but also fun, interesting and exciting. Variety is the spice of life, right?

The greatest compliment I have received came from my own friends and trainers at Curves when they asked me to work a couple shifts a week to help and motivate our own members to reach their weight loss and exercise goals – I enjoy it so much, and I get to exercise on the circuit with the members, too!

My family has greatly benefited from my experience. My husband Alan is eating healthier, moving more and has lost 45 pounds. My oldest daughter Ariel, 17, has lost 40 pounds in the last four years. My middle daughter Sarah, now 13, has asked me to teach her some weight management and exercise skills and has now lost over 20 pounds. And hopefully, my five year old daughter Dayna will never have the struggles I had, and will never remember what I used to look like! I really love the person I’ve become, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for me!

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Okay, how AWESOME is that?!  Go, Mara!!!

Have a great day, everyone!

I’ve traveled over to Trish’s at I Am Succeeding talking about my journey and where it’s led me.  Meet ya there!…

Have a great day, everyone!

Heather is a registered dietician and owns the company, Intuitive Nutrition, where she counsels clients on how they can begin to tune into their own inner wisdom.  She has kindly offered to share her knowledge and experience in making the transition to Intuitive Eating.  Please welcome Heather!

How to get started with IE

If you are currently dieting, or have tried dieting in the past you most likely know that diets are usually a short term solution, at least for 95 % of the people that go on a diet. As a matter of fact, if you are on a diet now, itʼs probably because you have been on a diet before! Did you know that every time you go on a diet it is harder to lose the weight and easier to gain it back?

If you want to lose weight what else are you going to do though, right? Wrong. There is another way, and that way is known as intuitive eating.

Intuitive Eating is not a diet, it is actually the opposite of a diet. The definition of Intuitive Eating according to Wikipedia is: a nutrition philosophy based on the premise that becoming more attuned to the body’s natural hunger signals is a more effective way to attain a healthy weight; rather than keeping track of the amounts of energy and fats in foods.

It’s a process that is intended to create a healthy relationship with food, mind, and body. Intuitive Eating, goes by many names, including non-dieting or non-diet approach, normal eating, wisdom eating, conscious eating and more.

With a diet, you are “told” what to eat, when to eat it and how much of it to eat. Even with a plan such as Weight Watchers (the best diet out there) point system, someone is telling you how many “points”, based on grams of carbohydrate, you can have every day. The problem with this is that most people donʼt want to spend the rest of their lives weighing and measuring food. It just isnʼt realistic!

The thought of going off a diet can be very scary for most people. To some, it feels like throwing in the towel and to others it seems like it would be impossible to eat what you want and lose weight, especially if you are used to being told what to eat. Remember, itʼs your past dieting mentality that has led you to believe you canʼt trust yourself. You have the ability to eat intuitively, everybody does. When you were an infant you ate when you were hungry and stopped when you got full, even as a toddler you most likely were known to eat a half of a cookie or 3 bites of your dinner. You used to eat intuitively,but somewhere down the line you stopped listening to your body. When did that happen?

If you are ready to jump off the dieting cycle or are at the bottom of your dieting rope and are ready to try relearning how to eat intuitively, here are some tips to get you started. First, I highly recommend reading Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole RD and Elyse Resch RD, they are the original intuitive eaters! Currently, the book Women Food,and God by Geneen Roth is a NY Times bestseller, I think she does an excellent job at helping you find out the reasons you overeat to begin with. Honestly, if you just start eating whatever you want, without figuring out why you are eating, you arenʼt going to lose weight-sorry!

Once you do a little reading on IE, youʼll have to be willing to give up the notion that if you just found the right diet…You would be thin and happy forever! It would be one thing if diets were a pain but worked, but people, listen to me, “THEY DONʼT WORK” at least not long term for the majority of people. Even “pseudo-dieting” such as following a raw food diet or choosing to become vegetarian just for the sake of losing weight, will prevent you from listening to your own body, your own true inner wisdom.

Once you are on board with realizing dieting is not the answer you seek, and you have thrown away all your diet books and maybe even your scale then comes the hard part, beginning to ask yourself, “am I hungry?” and if I am than what do I really want right now. You can go slowly with this and use the “am I hungry” speed-bump every time you catch yourself reaching for something to eat. Just recognizing how often you reach for food without being hungry is progress! At this stage, you are just exploring why and when you reach for food. At this early stage, you may decide to eat even though your answer to “am I hungry” is no. Thatʼs OK, you wonʼt be at this place forever.

After you begin to realize that eating only solves hunger, not boredom, loneliness, anger, stress or any other emotion, then you can begin to eat slowly and try to tune into your satisfaction and satiety. Every few bites, pause and ask, “am I still hungry? Does this food still taste good?” You might be surprised by the answer! Gone are the days where you would eat birthday cake so fast you didnʼt even taste it, now you are slowing down and beginning to notice that bakery cake icing kind of tastes oily or greasy and you might decide to just eat the cake part. Or, maybe stealing cold fries off of your childʼs plate is disgusting and you prefer to order your own fries and eat a few while they are still hot- concept! LOL!

I know I am not going in depth enough to really give you an A-Ha! moment, but if you do some experimenting yourself and begin to slow down and savor your food, youʼll realize you need less of it to feel satisfied! There is so much more to IE than just food, it really does go to a much deeper level. This is challenging for some, we of the human race prefer to stuff our feelings down, often with food, instead of facing those feelings head on. Maybe you donʼt really want to bring up those feelings, maybe you think you will die if you had to face those feelings, how much power are you giving to those feelings? Are you living in the past and letting those stories control you today? Whose voice is telling you that chocolate is bad or that leaving food on your plate is wasteful?

IE is not, as some claim, eating whatever you want, whenever you want. Rather, it is learning to love yourself enough to want to take care of your body by providing it with healthy nutritious food that nourishes your body and your soul! Your body is amazing, beautiful and deserves respect! Many people treat their pets better than their own bodies, they provide their pets with love and exercise, fresh air and adequate food. Do you treat your pets better than you treat yourself? Your pets deserve love, so do you.

I am just scratching the surface in this post, maybe Iʼll be invited to guest post again and we can discuss IE in more detail. For now, if you would like more information on IE, please visit the site www.intuitiveeating.org, there you will find links to more sites, resources and a list of IE counselors listed by state. I also have many postings on my own site www.intuitive-nutrition.com that discuss many of the different pieces of learning to eat intuitively.

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What are your thoughts on Intuitive Eating?  Is it something that you’d like to transition into or are you more comfortable staying on a specific weight loss/maintenance plan?