how I lost weight

Today’s featured weight loss success story: Brooke lost 100 pounds with the help of the Oxygen show “My Big Fat Revenge”.  She has provided a LOT of detail about her weight loss journey.  Here is what she shared:

What was your motivation?

“I had reached 287 lbs from poor eating habits and lack of exercising. As my husband and I decided we wanted to try to conceive. I felt convicted about raising children with no knowledge of how to eat, workout and worried about my own health if I gained more weight through pregnancy. I was blessed with an amazing opportunity to be apart of a hit weight loss reality
show from the creators if The Biggest Loser. The show aired on the Oxygen network and is called My Big Fat Revenge. They focused on teaching us how to loose weight healthily while confronting a bulky who tormented us about our weight. My main goal was to accomplish this for my future babies and telling one of my many horror stories was just a tool for addition help in this case. I relied on my faith in Christ to get me through the process as I discovered their were parts of myself I was unhappy with that I never confessed to anyone but God. Accepting that, believing God loved me anyway and would give me the strength to make it through helped me to step out on faith and conquer a fear I’ve had since childhood, loosing weight.”

How did you change your eating habits?

“The show explained to us how much eating affects of weight gain and loss. They had us take a look at what was in the food we were eating and recognize that a lot of empty calories were actually harder to burn off. We used free tools like an app called My Fitness Pal to keep track of our food intake and see a picture of how balanced our diet was. I ate unprocessed foods, such as cooked veggies, lean meats and protein shakes before and after morning workouts. I kept my calorie intake to 1200 calories 6 days a week and then carb loaded on healthy foods once a week up to 1500 calories. I also drank a gallon of water a day and coffee with a sugar free creamer sometimes for those mornings I felt sluggish.”

What did your workout routines look like?

“Oh my, I went IN! I woke up in the wee hours of the morning and did an hour on the stair mill and half our walking on the treadmill until I built up the endurance and confidence to jog. These activities were very boring to me so bringing music or watching movies / tv shows on Netflix helped me a GREAT deal. I also used a heart rate monitor to get an idea of how hard I needed to push myself.

In the afternoon I met with a trainer for about an hour fifteen minutes for strength training fused with cardio. We did things like climb hills with cement blocks, football drills, leg presses, arm presses, burpees (yea YouTube those smh) as well as jumping jacks to name a few.

In the evening I’d go back to the gym and take a couple of fun aerobics classes like hip hop, flirty girl fitness or even a home work out video like Insanity, in which I did at my own pace not at the level they did on the DVD. If they did 20 jump squats I prob only made it to 5 at first.”

What was your starting weight? “287 lbs”

What is your current weight? “My ending weight was 187 lbs
( I’m currently pregnant and had some complications where Im not able to work out and have been eating tons of carbs for nausea so I’m currently at 200 lbs)”

How long did your transformation take?
“A total of 7 months for my 100lb victory!”

What advice to you have for others who want to lose weight?

“Slow and steady wins the race! I was so discouraged by my 1 or 2 lb losses each week because I thought it wasn’t enough for the results I wanted as quick as I wanted them but it was a healthy speed for my body. Those pounds started adding up and I realized the number on the scale or measuring tape reflected the work I put in each week. How clean did I really eat? How sweaty did I get during a work out or did I not want to mess my hair up? When I was close to a milestone week I got extremely disciplined just hit my goal and it was those weeks I hit big numbers like a 10 or even 13 lb week. But I cried through my work out or cried when I wanted to eat certain foods yet kept myself disciplined. I went from NEVER running in my life, I mean straight up being embarrassed or complaining about it hurting to being able to run a 10k (6.2 miles) and possibly more because I haven’t pushed myself pass that yet. If someone as lazy, as defensive, as undisciplined, as addicted to food as I am lost weight. Anyone could do it! You are MORE than a conqueror!

I operate a small Facebook group called The New Me Project where we share tips, success stores, weak moments and motivate each other to consistently work on becoming the new version of themselves.”

Check out the video and more details from her episode of the show on the My Big Fat Revenge website.