When Elizabeth Simion, a business analyst and MBA student in Austin, Texas, began looking for a job, she worried her weight would hold her back. Simion was all too aware of the prejudice against certain body types in the workplace, having chosen the subject as a research topic in grad school.
“Overweight people are fairly absent in leadership roles, and I was ‘severely obese,’” she says. “I didn’t want my weight to limit me, because even though it’s unfair, unkind and irrational to think fat women are less competent, people overwhelmingly do.”
2017年9月24日，Simion决定对她的未来做些事情，并下载了MyFitnessPal以保持身材。除了担心职业生涯外，丈夫的高血压和家庭意外死亡的结合最终促使她采取行动。她开始以最大的体重开始自己的旅程：270磅。
“Once I left the Air Force ROTC in college, I stopped exercising constantly and ballooned,” she says. “I was also wrongly put on a medication with significant weight gain-related side effects. I gained 80 pounds in the first year and 50 pounds in the next, about doubling my bodyweight.”
Simion说，这种药使她一直饿了，直到9月的六个月，Simion和她的丈夫每顿饭都吃了。她为她提供的典型午餐包括六杯炸鸡配上大量的蜂蜜芥末酱，三个带番茄酱的薯条和两张大茶。
她回忆说：“有时候，我整天都会像葡萄一样零食。”
As a result of her weight gain, Simion suffered from sleep apnea and was even scared to walk the length of a mall, for fear people would see her struggling.
“I also love high heels, but I couldn’t wear any because they hurt so bad,” she says. “I actually married my husband at my highest weight, and I couldn’t find a wedding dress in my size.”
当做出改变时，她决心按照自己的条件进行。
“I didn’t set cheat days, I didn’t make gym goals and I didn’t meal prep,” she says. “I downloaded MyFitnessPal, set the calorie goal to losing 2 pounds a week and just didn’t break my calories.”
In fact, she didn’t go over her assigned calorie limit until a vacation in July 2018, nearly 10 months after starting her journey.
“I didn’t break on Thanksgiving, Christmas, my first wedding anniversary, New Year’s, my husband’s birthday, my birthday or any other day in that time frame,” she says. “It was like as long as I did what the app suggested, the weight would come off as scheduled.”
A data-oriented person, she loved having the numbers at her fingertips and even plotted a forecast in an Excel spreadsheet, noting how accurate the app’s predictions were for her weight-loss milestones.
她解释说：“我对MyFitnessPal的抗拒时间最长，因为我担心这会导致与食物的痴迷或不健康的关系。”“如果有的话，我认为这主要为我提供了'食物作为燃料的观点。”
Over the course of 2018, Simion’s hard work paid off. She went on to lose 110 pounds, and this past December, switched to maintenance mode when she realized her current weight — 20 pounds higher than her original goal weight — made her happy enough. She still logs her food daily and keeps anInstagram accountwhere she details her recipes and workouts.
Now she encourages others who want to lose weight to do things their way — not somebody else’s.
“I didn’t say any foods were off-limits when I started tracking [with] MyFitnessPal,” she says. “I didn’t step foot in a gym until I had lost 55 pounds, because it hurt too much to exercise. I started meal prepping once I actually took interest in learning it. It was all on my timeline. To this day, I don’t eat [food] or do any workouts I dislike.”
She acknowledges though that some circumstances can make losing weight particularly difficult, such as the medication she was prescribed. She hopes others will learn to work with their situation.
她说：“这是不公平的，但这就是您所付出的手，您必须尽力而为。”“这并不是没有借口。当您击败他们时，您会感到更加胜利。”
