Single, two kids, sick, unemployed, and weighing in at 315 pounds, Marilyn Chivetta’s story seemed hopeless. That might be most people, but it’s not Marilyn. This is a woman whose wedding was called off six days before the vows, and she still hosted the reception, a party she ended up calling the Broken Heart Ball.

“I celebrate everything, all of the time,” she told us. While she used the party to momentarily pick up the pieces of a life that unexpectedly shattered around her, it wasn’t long before she turned all of her focus to her young son and not herself. Then, a car accident would break her back leading to multiple health problems that would render her unable to work. At the end of 2010, when things couldn’t seem to get much worse, she received an eviction notice for her rented house; she learned the landlord hadn’t been making the mortgage payments.

“One thing lead to another and the next thing you know I’m over 300 pounds,” Marilyn said. “I started 2011 barely walking. Things were really bad, I was really sick,” she told us.

It was then that she had that all-important “ah-ha” moment. She says she prayed about what to do, and relied on her faith. Her plan was to “lose the weight and go see Oprah.” It didn’t quite happen that way, but her outreach to Oprah did land her an appearance on Dr. Phil in spring 2011. That was the turning point.

At her heaviest, Marilyn weighed 315 pounds. Today, she’s down more than 129, and notes that the number is “so far,” because she’s not done. She lost the weight in about 10 months, and credits the majority to her Bistro MD diet.

“I started feeling better within three days,” she says of the Bistro MD meals, which were afforded to her after her Dr. Phil appearance to help her lose weight and start regaining her life.
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Many weight loss success stories begin with a personal revelation. That moment when it suddenly strikes the person like a lightning bolt that something has to change. For John Thompson of Wichita, Kansas, that moment came when he weighed in for a job physical only to see the number on the scale read 400 pounds.

With so much to lose, it would be easy to understand if John was feeling a bit overwhelmed. Luckily, he took some powerful words of wisdom to heart.

“I knew I had to change but didn’t know what to do. I watched Dr. Oz a lot, he always said change something, start small,” says John. “So I started with brown rice instead of crap sides like bread and butter.”

From there the positive changes started to pile up. John quit drinking soda, minimized fast food, ate out less and started watching his portions. Most importantly of all, he stopped drinking alcohol, which was a problem he only saw after a DUI charge.

“I was crushed and realized I had to quit drinking because I made terrible choices while drinking. This slowly became the best thing that ever happened to me.”
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Growing up in Wichita, Kansas, 30-year-old Matt Long was never apt to be idle.

“I guess you could say I was raised in an active household… there was always something going on, or someone coming to visit,” says Matt. “There was always work to be done and there wasn’t time to sit around relaxing and eating.”

Matt was in great shape in high school and like many young kids with rocketing metabolisms, he could eat anything. However, once he moved out of his parents’ home, Matt began to see his weight increase.

The seeds of unhealthy eating may have been planted in high school when his weight fluctuated dramatically by his own doing for sports.

As a freshman, Matt weighed 180 pounds for football season. When wrestling season came along, he lost weight dramatically, getting down to 119 pounds. Matt says he was “a cranky hot mess for the rest of the season.”

After wrestling, Matt put it all back on and then some for football, moving up to 200 pounds, repeating the cycle for the next three years.
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You think you’re busy, so busy that you just don’t have time to eat right and exercise? Well, if a young mother of four who works full time and runs a successful health blog can find the time, you probably can too.

Meet Josie Maurer, who, when she’s not busy raising her kids and working every day, keeps up with a health blog. She blogs from the perspective of a regular person with plenty of experience in diet and fitness to share with her audience in a fun and colorful style. I asked Josie to share her weight loss experience:

Was there a moment that made you think “enough is enough”?

In my mind I still looked pretty good in a mirror despite knowing my weight was creeping up. My family also patronized me by not being honest when I asked their opinion on my weight gain with the old, “you look fine, mom.” It was only after looking through some summer photos that my eyes saw the real picture. I thought to myself, “This is not me. This is not who I am.” That was back in 2006, and it was from that moment on that I made serious changes and never looked back.
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This is the story of Amber, a woman who didn’t take care of herself until she had an awakening while taking care of others.

Amber’s struggles with her weight were spawned from a teenage fight with chronic asthma. Before then, she was at an average weight. But through a combination of medications that caused weight gain and a spiraling depression, she began to put on the pounds – 100 pounds throughout her high school years to be exact.

The depression worsened as she dealt with the senseless cruelty that teenagers are capable of inflicting on people who are different than the ideal. Amber’s asthma made any hopes of turning things around even more difficult since she couldn’t participate in school sports or other activities.

Unfortunately, activities could not be avoided during gym class, when Amber was forced to run the track. She struggled as kids teased her. She even felt little support from her gym teachers, who she thought looked down on her as lazy.

While Amber continued to struggle with her weight after high school, things did get a little better. She met and married a very supportive husband, and the couple had a daughter together.

But the respite was short-lived, as Amber gained more weight after having her daughter and she fell further into the depths of depression. What made matters worse is she picked up smoking, not caring whether she lived or died.

Then hope arrived unexpectedly in the form of a job as a nursing assistant for a hospice agency. Taking care of terminally ill patients gave new meaning to Amber’s life, as she began to realize a purpose.

“These people needed me and I was able to provide comfort and love to them and their family,” Amber told us. “It was a wonderfully rewarding feeling. The feeling of gratefulness that people had for me started to make me appreciate myself.”
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