Success Stories

Sometimes you have to overcome your inner struggle to transform your outer self.

Chubby. Big-boned. Thick. These are the adjectives Queing Jones used to describe herself growing up, finally settling on “obese” as her ultimate physical descriptor as she entered her 30s and 40s. A steady diet of fast food and disappointment meant the slow creep of the scale, until Jones maxed out at 246 pounds.

“Eating was a way of coping for me, and I used food as a balm,” says Jones in retrospect. “I was trying to soothe the feelings of hopelessness because of the transitions that constantly plagued me — loss of a job, moving, my grandmother’s death, financial pressure and the elusive quest to lose weight.”

The final straw was a bad breakup. “I was so heartbroken, but as cliché as it sounds, I wanted to be better, not bitter,” she says. “I vowed to give myself the love that I had been longing to get from someone else and started by practicing compassion toward myself. I knew I needed that more than anything else because if my body was going to change, my thinking and feelings about myself had to change first.”

This is a typical cycle for many women, building up their friends and loved ones but then tearing themselves down. “I’d never tell my bestie, ‘You are so fat I can’t stand to look at you,’” Jones says. “Therefore, I could no longer tell myself things like that, either.”

Eat …