How To Lose Weight After College

Want to share your transformation story? Whether you lost weight or gained muscle, I want to hear from you! Email me at kolsen@washingtonian.com.

Turning point: My weight gain started as a side effect of the medicine I was taking. I found myself eating more and doing less. I wanted to make a change because I was miserable being so big. Everybody started to make fat nicknames for me. I couldn’t even tie my shoes by myself and I was always out of breath. I had to make a change to feel good about myself again and actually be okay with myself when I looked in the mirror.

Exercise: My Sport&Health trainer Aaron and I usually do a lot of total body strength training to improve lean muscle. We work in all planes of motion and focus on a variety of exercises. I work out with him twice a week. He also taught me how to use all the equipment at the gym and how to create my own workouts.

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Diet: Before, I used to eat maybe five or six times a day. I ate everything I could find. I didn’t care because I thought,

How she stuck with it: After I started seeing the results I was getting from working out, I started to get more motivated. I made goals of how I was going to lose weight, fit into all the cute clothes, and show off my new body to the people who made fun of me because I was fat.

Transformation: I lost 41 pounds. My legs got slimmer and muscular. My arms and shoulders got smaller. My stomach got flatter, and I lost the layers of fat on my side. I have no trouble breathing anymore and it’s easy to go up stairs now. I got stronger and can push five to six plates on the sled now. I can go out dancing and join my parents for long walks.

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How she felt then vs. now: Before I started working with my trainer, I felt disgusting. When I was getting ready to go out and tried on literally everything in my closet, I always had a breakdown and would start tearing up because it was so frustrating. Then my mom would have to tie my shoes because I couldn’t. I had a triple chin. I couldn’t physically participate in all the activities that everyone else could. I wouldn’t go to the pool because I was too embarrassed. I would make my friends go to an unpopular beach far away because there were no people there. I hated myself so much.

Now, I feel amazing. I keep looking in the mirror and taking pictures, and I like the pictures people take of me! It has been a long time since I willingly let someone take a picture of me. I look good in the clothes that I want to wear. I’m so happy! My trainer Aaron is the best! If it wasn’t for him I could never have done this.

Newfound body love: I’m still amazed at how I can move the sled. I feel so proud when people compliment me. Now, I truly believe if I try hard enough, I can accomplish anything. I’m looking forward to attending college and meeting new friends.

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Workout wisdom: Get a personal trainer if you can. My trainer pushed me when I didn’t have the self-confidence to push myself. The most important thing he taught me was to always push myself to do better.

Sometimes I didn’t want to go to the gym and sometimes I wanted to eat everything I shouldn’t eat, but I kept reminding myself of how I’m going to look like if I do keep going to the gym and keep eating healthy. Whenever you feel like you want to give up, just remind yourself of the goal you set and how amazing it’ll be when you achieve it.“I’d been overweight for so much of my life, ” says Jenkins, who at the time was a 278-pound freshman at East Tennessee State University. “I never had a specific weight goal other than to get below 200. I did want to be a size 8 in jeans, though.”

We’ll spoil the story a bit: She got there. It was enough of a life-changing experience that she changed her career plans midway through college. That she became something of a media darling this past spring didn’t hurt either — it just affirmed she made the right choice.

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“My parents didn’t have a lot of nutritional knowledge, ” Hannah explains. “Meals at home were frozen convenience foods like burritos, fries, corn dogs and chicken patties. We always had lots of junk food around the house like Little Debbies and chips and ate whatever and whenever we wanted. In the South, it’s acceptable to be overweight.”

But she didn’t like the way it felt, inside or out. “When you’re overweight and someone’s talking about someone else who’s overweight, I felt ashamed, ” she says. “You think people are talking about you.”

So she started working out at the campus gym. “I thought you lost weight by exercising, ” she says. “But when I took the time to research, I learned exercise is just one part of it. So I started counting calories in my head.”

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Everything clicked when she found MyFitnessPal. Jenkins was able to log her meals and exercise in the same place instead of keeping track of calories, carbs and sugar on her own. And if she had a craving for sour Skittles, her favorite, she could check her sugar intake with a few quick clicks.

While fellow freshmen were gaining the stereotypical 15 pounds, Jenkins dropped a significant amount of weight between New Year’s and summer — and went home looking and feeling a lot different than she had when she left.

“I didn’t weigh myself until January of the next year, ” says Jenkins, who currently weighs 175. “I’m the kind of person who can be discouraged by the scale if I don’t see it going down as quickly as I want, so I decided not to weigh myself until I was 100 percent ready to see what that number was.”

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But losing weight affected more than her health and appearance. Toward the end of her sophomore year, Jenkins decided mass communications wasn’t her path and changed her major.

“It hit me that I wanted to switch to nutrition when I realized what a huge impact learning about nutrition had on my life, ” she says. “I wanted to share that knowledge with others so I could help others change for the better, too.”

Jenkins’ two favorite classes were human metabolism and nutritional biochemistry, where she learned about how the body breaks down food for energy.

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“It was eye-opening to learn how the body can use healthy foods like veggies and what happens when we eat not-so-healthy foods like cheeseburgers, ” she says. “The classes really helped me view food as fuel rather than a source of entertainment or comfort.”

And they inspired her to keep the weight off. “I realized that, as a nutritionist, people would be looking to me for advice, ” she says. “Nobody would want advice on how to lose weight from a nutritionist who doesn’t look like they’re at a healthy weight themselves.”

Though Jenkins lost the weight three years ago, recent features in People , on MSN.com and SFGate have celebrated her accomplishments — and given her new opportunities to help others.

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“I’m almost more appreciative to have the attention now because it shows I lost the weight and kept it off, ” she says. “I’ve had many girls reach out on social media to say I’ve inspired them to lose weight or get healthier. Most had no idea how to lose weight or how important it is to track calories. Most people seemed to want to hear I had some sort of special secret to weight loss, but at the end of the day, it’s all about burning more than you’re taking in.”

Three people can already attest to her combination of education and experience: Jenkins’ father, twin sister and younger sister have lost a collective 276 pounds, all inspired by her hard work.

“I’m focused on getting stronger and becoming more well-rounded in my fitness routine, ” she says. “Right now, my goal is to be able to do a pullup. My ultimate career goal is to work with overweight children and teens. Going through childhood overweight is not fun and I want to help other children not have to go through what I did.”

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Danny Bonvissuto Danny loves words, writing for a living, independent bookstores, chips, salsa and queso, sunshine, jeans, tank tops and running — but only if ’80s rock is involved. Her goals include growing out her gray hair, writing a book of short stories and taking hip-hop dance lessons. Her work has appeared in Food & Wine, Travel + Leisure, Food Network Magazine, HGTV, WebMD and Plate magazine.When Lori Odegaard was visiting her parents over Thanksgiving break in 2016, she struggled to walk up their stairs. As she stood at the top of the 10 steps gasping for breath, she worried