Tess Fitzgerald's struggle with food and weight gain began in 2004, at the very early age of 8, when she attended her first Weight Watchers meeting. Tess shared with , I struggled all of my life to eat right and to fit in. Keep reading to learn how at age 21, she's regained control and finally feels confident in her own skin.
At a very young age, Tess remembers having an issue with binging. I would wait until no one was around before consuming large quantities of food. I used to come home from school and eat a whole bag of Goldfish. This continued and when she hit puberty, her weight gain skyrocketed.
At age 14, Tess was diagnosed with PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome), which causes an imbalance in hormone and insulin levels, which leads to weight gain. So this explained why despite all her efforts to lose weight, she ended up gaining. By 2014, she graduated high school at about 330 pounds. Tess says, I was ashamed and embarrassed by my body. I wanted to hide from the world.
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During her first year of college, Tess gained an additional 17 pounds, and couldn't fit comfortably in the desks. Upon reaching 347 pounds, Tess shares, I felt miserable. In February of 2015, I decided that in order to change my life. I needed to do something drastic. She decided to undergo gastric sleeve surgery. She had to attend 10 months of meetings in order to learn about the procedure, which she did in December 2015.
After her surgery, Tess had to eat very small portions. The post-op diet was very similar to that of a keto (low-carb) diet. The weight started to fall off, and in the first six months, she lost more than 150 pounds. By September of 2017, one year and nine months after her surgery, she had lost an astounding 213 pounds, hitting her lowest weight of 134 pounds.
Tess shares, However, I did not feel well at this low weight and decided it was time to hit the gym [in November 2017]. I knew that I would be having my loose skin removed in January of 2018, so I wanted to prepare the best I could. On Jan. 30, 2018, Tess had 5.6 pounds of loose skin removed (the surgery was 9.5 hours!), and documented her journey on her YouTube channel Fittess Fitness.
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At 10 weeks post-op, she was back at the gym, going three to five times a week, as recommended by her doctor. She focused on building lean muscle, purposely regaining 15 pounds. She also takes a lot of walks and stands all day at her job. Tess is now only down 198 pounds and says, I was able to fully transform my body in three years.
Tess aims to follow a low-carb diet, similar to that of a keto diet. Here's what she eats in a typical day:
Tess uses her Instagram account fittessfitness to document her journey and says, I stay motivated by inspiring others and having them ask me for advice! Aside from finally feeling confident in her skin, wearing a bikini in public, and being able to fit in an airplane seat in order to travel to Paris and London, another amazing non-scale victory Tess experienced from her weight loss is feeling proud to fit into an old pair of jeans —
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If you can relate, and you too have a significant amount of weight to lose, Tess says, Don't be afraid to start your journey. Loose skin can always be fixed. Believe in yourself. And when things get hard and you feel like giving up, Always dare to dream, never lose sight of yourself, and remember why you started!
Fitness How the 988 Hotline Really Works — Plus, What's Being Done to Better Support Callers by Alexis Jones 4 days agoWhen keeping up with her children felt too tough, mom Megan Christensen took a look her health. At the time she weighed 351 pounds and it kept her from enjoying activities with her children.
“I have been overweight my entire life. It really became out of control after I had children, ” the 37-year-old from Windsor, Connecticut, told . “Being a parent at 350 pounds, there’s so much that you can’t do like climbing stairs or going for a walk or a trip to the amusement park.”
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When Megan Christensen struggled to enjoy activities with her family, she decided to look at her health. She started making small changes that ended up having a big impact. Courtesy Megan Christensen/@ maintaining_megan
“For the first six months, I focused 100% on nutrition, looking at the calories I was eating, ” Christensen explained. “The calories I was eating — it was a lot of processed foods. It was a lot of carbohydrates.”
When Megan Christensen decided to lose weight she made small tweaks to her diet. That helped kickstart her weight loss. Courtesy Megan Christensen/@ maintaining_megan
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Making small changes to her diet had a big impact. In just six months, she shed 100 pounds. But keeping it off felt like a different challenge.
“I needed to do something different to maintain that weight loss, ” Christensen said. “All the research that I had done suggested that people who successfully maintain their weight loss focused on strength training.
So Christensen hired an online fitness coach and focused on exercise goals, including helping increasing her cardiovascular health and becoming stronger. Soon, she found herself running. Again, she started small, which helped her build her stamina.
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During her weight loss, Megan Christensen celebrated victories along the way, such as when she had a low enough weight so zip line with her children. Courtesy Megan Christensen/@ maintaining_megan
In 15 months, she lost more than 200 pounds going from 351 to 146. While Christensen loves that she can run long distances and is stronger, the real joy comes from what she can do with her family.
“Things like going on a vacation with my kids and going zip lining for the first time because I was finally under the weight limit or going roller skating with my son, focusing on those things and those milestones really helped keep the momentum going, ” she said.
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“The funny thing that happens is when you hit your goal weight, you have this moment where you say, ‘Well now what?’” she said. The scale wasn’t going to be the thing to dictate my life anymore. I actually took it to a smash room and I smashed it. And that, to me, symbolizes moving from beyond goals associated with a number and goals associated with what my body could achieve.”
While wanting to be active and engaged with her family kept her motivated, losing so much weight meant she had excess skin that no amount of lifting could tighten up. Christensen decided to undergo skin removal surgery. Recovery felt difficult, especially because she couldn’t exercise as rigorously as she wanted. But her doctor said she could walk as far as she could. So she laced up her shoes and started.
“I said, ‘OK. Challenged accepted, ’” she said. “My friend Karen comes over and we go for a walk together. Such a release being out in nature and just having the challenge of the hills and we held each other accountable, even on days that weren’t so great. Before I knew it, I was at 10, 15 miles a day.”
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Megan Christensen hopes that others understand they have what it takes to successfully lose weight if they want to do it. Courtesy Megan Christensen/@ maintaining_megan
“I had convinced myself that I was just meant to be overweight and I think we have a tendency, as a culture, to look at these before and after post photos and get really enamored with the girl on the right, the girl in the post picture, ” she said. “If you’re sitting there as the person that is the before photo right now, know that you already have everything inside you to be successful. You just have to embrace it and grab onto it.”
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Meghan Holohan is a digital health reporter for who covers patient-centered stories, women's health, disability, rare diseases among other topics. She enjoys cooking, yoga, reading, music and walking her two rescue dogs. Follow her on X or Instagram to see her recent stories.Trying to lose weight when you’re already over 200 pounds is frustrating enough to bring tears. You see a journey you’ve already tried multiple times without success.
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When you’re 30-50 pounds overweight it’s important to accept the reality of the time investment needed to get the fat off. It took several months, and often years, to accumulate that much excess body fat and it will likely take an equal amount of time to get it off.
When you have a goal in mind, you want it to happen now. You want to see results, now. This impatience works against you, because of the time it takes for your body to adapt to new behavior and diet changes.
It can take 4-6 weeks of specific behavior to notice anything in the mirror. When you’re on a strict diet, exercising five times a week,
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