hey guys it’s Shannon John Beck DIY couple we’re gonna be doing a little bit of a different video today talking about our weight loss journey and how we lost pounds and how we felt before and after we lost a buncha weight I’m a little embarrassed to share some of these photos that was pretty careful not to appear on social media or take too many pictures when I was at my heaviest but we really want to inspire people to let them know that it’s possible if you set your mind to it to lose the weight that you need to I’ve always been overweight ever since I was pretty young I started really to gain a lot of weight in high school and by my senior year of high school I was at my heaviest which was pounds I didn’t play sports I didn’t exercise played a lot of video games and I was really focused on studying so I spent a lot of time in my room I’m preparing for college and studying for tests I didn’t really know anything about how to eat or had an exercise or anything about nutrition my favorite meals were pizza for lunch I would have pop-tarts for breakfast and then I would have something that I thought was healthy for dinner which were chicken Caesar salads from places like Applebee’s for Chili’s which I later realized just the dressing alone for those salads can be as bad for you and as caloric as a hamburger I presented myself throughout high school someone who didn’t really care about how they looked I had bad acne I was pretty shy and introverted it was hard for me to meet people or to make new friends and I’m not sure if this was the result of being heavy or contributed to me being overweight but I didn’t really have the wherewithal at the time to even realize that I was significantly overweight which I was so I’m like John I wasn’t really overweight as a child or until the end of high school I was a very active youth and I played a lot of sports I played three varsity sports during high school and even though I wasn’t aware of my nutritional needs or intake I was able to control my weight for the most part by just being extremely active I started to put on weight in my senior year of high school when I became very stressed about college admissions and when I entered college and stopped my physical activity my weight would slowly climb up to I believe I was something by the end of college I lost weight throughout college but not really in a sustainable way mostly by accident I didn’t change what I was eating at all but I did start walking because I had to walk from my dorm to my classes and I spent a summer in India where I lost about pounds mostly because I got really sick after I graduated from college and went to law school and resumed the lifestyle that I have had more in high school I quickly getting back all the weight that I had lost so by my third year of law school I was back at about or Turner’s to have when I graduated from college I spent a year in Brazil where I lost a lot of weight but in a really unsustainable way I was running an hour a day and lifting an hour a day and not really eating enough to support that level of activity so I harmed my metabolism and when I came back to the United States and began a job I quickly put on all of that weight and even more I would put on a significant amount of weight and then I would lose it by doing and then Sainath let it be like running a marathon but then every time I stopped working out or any time I got stressed my weight would crawl back and each time I gained my weight back the amount I gained was more by the time that rolled around I awake the same about his job the club the highest I clocked was pounds but it’s possible that I weighed more because I wasn’t in the mood to Mabley myself and as a six-foot one woman that was incredibly unhealthy in my mid-s I went through a time where I was really depressed I didn’t feel good about myself I didn’t feel good about what I was doing or my outlook in life I was tired all the time and I would go through pretty significant mood swings for some days I would feel really good and some days I would feel really bad I think this was something of a cycle in my life or because I was overweight I felt bad because I was bad I would eat more food and continue to be overweight I blamed a lot of this depression during this time of my life on my work and other things but looking back in and I think a significant aspect of it had to do with what I was eating and how much my weight I had terrible hormonal cystic acne and my blood pressure was high my cholesterol was high I suffered from gastrointestinal issues like heartburn and GERD I was pre-diabetic I had arthritis at a young age I got shingles I had very bad immunity I would get sick and stay sick for a very long time I suffered from allergies and the worst part was that the weight would tend to collect around my stomach so it was very common for people on the subway to ask me when I was due and that was always a very devastating question for me because it would really highlight for me however when I loved and so I would you know come I just cry my blood pressure was quite elevated like cholesterol on the spine and I started going to doctors who were to describe the medication to keep my blood pressure and cholesterol in check I also have a family history of issues with blood pressure and high cholesterol which really started to scare me by the time I turned at that time I was wearing a size or and shopping in plus-size section of department stores and the experience of shopping was always really upsetting I never felt good in my own skin I never felt like clothing worked for me and I would sometimes cry and the dressing room when trying things on and my heaviest I was wearing a size ornate and my shirt size was a xl it was very hard for people who loved me and cared about me like John dad to say anything about my weight because it was such an overwhelming sense of defeat and it made me so upset that it was just an unapproachable topic at home in general I just felt each year that I put on weight as though I had gains ten years and I felt less vibrant I felt unable to do things that I had previously enjoyed and I couldn’t I just felt like I was driving myself right around this time I started my first serious diet which was Weight Watchers I lost about pounds over the course of a few months which I thought was really good it required a ton of effort every day I was very very concerned about what I was eating and what I was doing and it ended up taking a lot of time just to think about it track the food that I was eating he was able to lose pounds fairly quickly and so was i but unlike me he kept it off as soon as I abandoned that program my weight all of my weight came back in July of I felt like I really needed to make a change again and I told John that I wanted to find a book that would help with weight loss so we went into a bookstore and found it to live by dr. joel Fuhrman we read that hook over a long car trip and I decided I was so convinced by what it had to say about weight loss but also about nutrition and health to adopt it about a week later I ended up losing about pounds in total through that diet and also the way that I had lots before most of the company within the first two or three months after I started eating that way it wasn’t until I really saw John I thought that diet and have tremendous results from it that I fully became on board with it but once I did feeling better and began losing weight unfortunately for me I learned in that process that my body was quite a bit different from John’s and where he was able to lose all the weight that he needed to solely as a result of adopting which Minges in fact my head I was still staying heavy for me the real breakthrough came when I discovered a book called bright line eating dr. Susan Pierce Thompson which has radically transformed my life and really helped me set me on the path towards closing all the way that I need to lose following that plan I was able to lose about pounds a month and games and it became feelings of control and happiness over my relationship with food without doing any exercise I’m now a way that I never imagined you know it was possible right now I weigh pounds and I’m feet inches tall I went from wearing a size or pin to a size I store extra extra-large t-shirts and now I wear a medium t-shirt I went from being in the overweight BMI category without being in the normal so today I weighed in at which is a way that I didn’t think was possible I the clothing that I learned today is a size six pet which I didn’t even in grade school my top is an extra small which just to hear those words come out of my mouth is insane I I never thought that I would be a girl who wore an extra-small just because I’m not an extra small girl I’m six month today I feel a tremendous amount of energy I feel younger than I feel like I’m again and I just feel like I can do anything I won seven before my weight is within the normal range of the BMI scale and I still feel like I have a little bit more to lose but I feel confident that I will get there my acne has cleared up my outlook in life is right and positive and cheery and optimistic I feel happy I don’t feel depressed my mood swings are not bad I mean I’ll occasionally have mood swings but there as a result of true external influence my life that are you know things happen there as opposed to internal discomfort and conflict my gastrointestinal issues have Mathon away arthritis that I was feeling I do not feel anymore my blood pressure and cholesterol are all with this healthy ranges it’s hard to say the effect of this diet has had on my life because it’s been so profound and so positive I have a lot more energy I’ve obviously lost a lot of weight like blood pressure and like cholesterol came down almost immediately as soon as I lost weight and I don’t have to take any medications basically at all by far the most important thing that’s happened in my life is that I feel immensely so much better it’s something that I truthfully had no idea would be impacted by what I eat or how much that I weigh but I feel more optimistic in general I feel more capable I feel younger and with sort of more vigor in life than I have probably in my entire life it’s early at least since when I was in college in total we’ve lost over a hundred and sixty pounds together and what we really want to do is to create a series of videos talking about how we lost the weight exactly what we need why we decided to eat that way as a way to help other people that are the same journey that we have been on we would love it if you subscribe to our videos to get updates and when we post new videos about this like comment if you have a similar story or you’re going through the same journey as we’re we’d love to engage with you and we feel amazing we have never been healthier we’ve never been happier with their lives and with what we eat and we’d love to share that with you so stay tuned for the next video and we will talk to you very soon