Jess lost 40 pounds

Transformation of the Day: Jess lost 40 pounds. While making videos, this content creator could see the pounds piling on. She found success with intermittent fasting and maintaining a calorie deficit, but the key to her success was addressing a pattern of emotional eating and compulsive overeating.

What is your motivation?
I am a content creator, and my favorite hobby requires me to be on camera and film constantly. When doing so, you really notice the pounds piling on. One day, I was in a fitting room, and I noticed that my ankles were swollen. I went home, weighed myself, and I was over 250 pounds at 5’4″. Although I have always been full figured, I had never been so overweight. At that moment, I knew I had to make a change!

What inspired you to keep going, even when you wanted to give up?
Seeing results, having improved mental clarity, and keeping my
confidence up. I’ve never felt more confident than I do now. It has a lot to do with my discipline and determination to end what has been an incredibly unhealthy relationship with food.

How did you change your eating habits?
I used Intermittent Fasting and made sure that I’m in a calorie deficit every day! I’m more focused on breaking the emotional attachment to food in general than eliminating certain foods or food groups. I have a relatively small eating window to help train my brain to be OKAY with delayed gratification. I’ve always been the type to feel like I need food “NOW” whenever negative or uncomfortable emotions would arise… and even when I wasn’t experiencing negative emotions.

Before I started losing weight, I always fixated on eating all the time. It was one of the only things I looked forward to in a day, and I couldn’t stop thinking about eating. It was so bad that even eating healthy foods would trigger a desire to overeat.

What did your workout routine consist of?
I’m still in the process and on my weight loss journey, so my routine will change. However, right now (and up until this point) my focus is on being consistent with getting my heart rate up every day. Most days, I go to the gym at 5 am. I do about 45 minutes of cardio (usually treadmill or elliptical) and watch music videos on my iPad to keep me motivated. When you’re watching Beyonce and JLo on the cardio machine, trust me, you’ll crank that incline up. You’ll increase the speed for as long as you can. You’ll be in the gym trying to match their work ethic! I work out 3-5 times per week!

What was your starting weight? What is your current weight?
My starting weight was 254 pounds. I now weigh 214 pounds. My goal weight is 160 pounds.

When did you start your journey? How long did your transformation take?
I started in June 2018. It took me about seven months to lose my first 40
pounds.

What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned?
You can’t out-exercise a bad diet. Exercise is fantastic, healthy, and great for you. However, when you compare the effort and time required to skip an unhealthy snack or food, and swap it for something with half the calories – or even just intermittent fast so you can indulge without going overboard – far less effort is required when compared to what it takes to burn off a series of bad food decisions.

When I realized that it could take less than 10 minutes to eat a 1,500 calorie meal at a restaurant, but it would take hours in the gym to burn that food off, I knew that food discipline had to be a top priority.

What advice do you have for women who want to lose weight?
Have a series of ways to measure your success (i.e., non-scale
victories!) I recommend this because although the fat loss is mostly linear, weight loss is not. You may have a week or two when everything is great. Your eating has been on point, and you’ve been consistently staying active, but the scale may not move. Do not be discouraged by this.

Also, always remember that there are different routes to the same destination. The recipe for weight loss is literally just eating less than you burn (or burning more than you eat, if you think of it that way). There are a ton of ways to do this. You have to do it in a way that works for you… a way that will allow you to be consistent. If not, you may fall off the wagon. You don’t always need to take advice from others, because someone else’s trajectory is not yours. I share five things that helped me lose the first 40 lbs in a video here.

Instagram: @jessicancreate