The following article was written about me by my coworker to appear in our monthly newsletter. May is Open Enrollment for health insurance with the State of Nebraska and we do a Wellness Plan that encourages you to make healthy choices and move more. When my coworker found out about my weight loss, she pitched this story idea to my boss. She was all about it. Here’s the finished piece, including my before and after photos that will accompany it. If you have any great ideas for a title, please send them my way…we are still searching for one, thanks!

Transforming Melissa: Small Steps Yield Big Changes

Note: May is National Health and Fitness Month and Global Employee Health and Fitness Month. Here’s hoping this story can be a motivator for better health. Melissa participates in the state’s Wellness Option Insurance Plan.

By Julie N.

Melissa L. has lost herself. Half of herself, that is.

To look at Melissa, you’d never know that she lost 150 pounds – going from a high of 300 pounds to 150 pounds. And what’s even more remarkable is the way that she did it: the old-fashioned way, incorporating simple wellness tips into her daily routine, such as eating smaller portions and adding light exercise to her routine. In fact, you may see the 5’9” public information officer for the Department of Health and Human Services doing a few laps around the lower level of the State Office Building each day, as she logs the 10,000 steps a day prescribed by the State’s Wellness Options Health Plan while on breaks and her lunch hour.

As part of May’s Global Employee Health and Fitness month, Melissa shared her story with Connections.

Melissa, who began gaining weight in the fifth grade, noted that the catalyst of her major change was a former co-worker, who looked at her pre-diet lunch of cheeseburgers and asked her point blank, “why are you eating that junk?” As well, her mother, a cardiac nurse, warned of the dangers of overeating and recommended an 80/20 plan: eating healthily 80 percent of the time, allowing less-healthy treats the remaining 20 percent of the time. “I realized that my quality of life was not going to be great as I got older if I held on to the weight,” Melissa said.

So Melissa, then 23, decided she’d try eating a new way and kick what she calls “the other f-word.” While no food was off-limits (“that’s an invitation to binge,” she said of “forbidden” foods), breakfast was typically oatmeal or half a cup of Special K cereal; lunch, a Lean Cuisine meal – “because they were already portioned out,” she explained – and dinner a salad with chicken and dressing on the side from Runza. “I’d dip my fork into the dressing, then into the salad,” she said. “And portion control is absolutely key. With a lot of restaurant meals, I’ll ask for a to-go container and automatically put half of the food in it for another meal. When I was losing weight, I often ordered a kids’ meal. They are often healthier, and the portions are more in line with what we should be eating. And – bonus – they’re cheaper.”

Within a month, Melissa lost 20 pounds and was inspired to keep going, even though her doctor told her she’d likely never get below 200 pounds. “I took that as a challenge,” she said with a smile.  Teaming up with two close friends, Melissa began a regular gym routine two months after beginning her dietary changes. “Even when I didn’t feel like working out, my friends would drag me out of the house and to the gym,” she remembered (six months later and 60 pounds down, Melissa was a bridesmaid for one of those friends.) Melissa began by walking slowly on the treadmill, gradually adding weight-lifting and elliptical training to her routine. “I didn’t do everything at once,” she said. “I think if I’d tried to completely change the way I ate and began exercising right away I’d set myself up to fail. So I started eating more healthily, then began to work in the exercise piece.”

Melissa emphasizes that her weight-loss journey was a slow and steady path, rather than a faddish, lose-weight-quick scheme. “I started losing weight in June 2005, and I hit my goal in October 2011,” she said. That included a year-long plateau at 90 pounds down, which she broke through when she began running. She will run the Lincoln Half-Marathon for the sixth consecutive year in May 2016, and ran the Chicago Marathon in 2012. She’s also done “countless” 5K and 10K races. “It’s become a stress reliever,” she said. “I get all itchy when I haven’t run. Given a long-enough run, I feel like I could solve all the world’s problems.”

Melissa also emphasizes that keeping weight off is a matter of constant vigilance. “I weigh myself every day, and my weight will be something I’ll always have to watch,” she said. “I don’t have a superhuman metabolism. It’s hard. But choose your hard.”  But it’s a worthwhile tradeoff. “I had no self-confidence when I was younger,” she said. “People don’t see you when you’re that big, even though you take up so much space. If I had a dollar for every time I heard, ‘you have such a pretty face…’ Everyone knows what that dot dot dot means, even if they don’t say it out loud.”

She encourages everyone who is thinking of making lifestyle changes to believe in themselves enough to do it. “It has to be on your time, but getting healthy is a gift you give your future self,” she said. “And don’t beat yourself up if you slip. Every day is a new day.”