“Through my lifetime, I have gone up and down on weight. I’ve been as much as 170, as low as 110. I always thought it was just how active I was and not what I was eating. As it turns out, it was a little bit of both.

I got as heavy as 170 and was not feeling good about myself. My parents both died at early ages. My father had diabetes.  My mother had heart problems. I didn’t want to be that person. I wanted to have a long, healthy life. I wanted to feel good about myself. When I saw photographs of myself, I didn’t like who I was seeing, I didn’t like who I saw in the mirror every day, so I decided it was time to take action and get the weight off.

I never went on a diet because to me, that was punishment and I didn’t want to do that, so I just thought I could increase my metabolism through exercise. But unfortunately, as you get older, that doesn’t always work, so I needed to find something else, and the Food Lovers Program did that for me.

On this program, I’ve eaten tacos, spaghetti or pasta, had chocolate, had wine, and I’ve loss over 22 pounds, four dress sizes and kept it off for over a year. Surprisingly enough, on the Food Lovers Program, you are not hungry. You eat all the time. You get to graze every three hours. It’s amazing how that really does work.

Metabolism is a huge part in how this program works because we learn early on, there’s five ingredients to increasing your metabolism, and if you stick to those, the program works. Those, those five are drinking plenty of water, getting seven to eight hours of sleep, being active, eating foods in the right combinations and, believe it or not, eating every two to three hours.

For me, the single best thing about the Food Lovers Program is how I feel about myself. I’ve gained so much more confidence. I like the person I see in the mirror now. And I’ve become a mentor to people around me. They ask me, ‘How did I do it, what can I eat?’ Especially at work, younger people would come and go, ‘I’m hungry, what can I eat?’ And I’ll tell them, this food has X, Y and Z in it. So, it’s great. I feel like I’ve given myself a new lease on life.