Nicole Ransom is the very image of a California girl: long, bronzed legs, sun-kissed hair, curves in all the right places. But it wasn’t always that way.
The advertising-sales rep is a mere wisp of the woman she was back in 1999, when her weight peaked at 231.6 pounds (she remembers the number exactly). Over four years, she lost 100 pounds through a combination of diet and exercise—and a heavy dose of determination.
Food was a constant focus when she was growing up. “When we would go out to eat, I couldn’t pay attention to the conversation until I ordered and my meal came. That’s how focused I was on food,” Ransom says.
Her outgoing personality and take-me-as-I-am attitude won her tons of friends—but few dates. “I was the guys’ girl,” she says. “There were guys who liked me for my personality, but then they would want to keep our relationship a secret. That’s what really hurt.”
Over the years, Ransom tried a litany of diets, but nothing stuck. “It was always a short-term goal: to fit into a dress, get a guy,” she says.
Then, she signed up for Weight Watchers … again.
But this time, something was different. “I decided to do it for me,” she says. And the pounds started coming off. Ransom lost 50 pounds over six months, and dropped another 20 when she started running.
“I was so jazzed that I could actually do it!” she says. Ransom lost the last 30 pounds by eating fewer packaged foods and more fresh fruits and vegetables.
Now, the girl who was recruited to anchor her grade school tug-of-war team three years in a row is standing tall at 130 pounds.
“It’s still a struggle,” she says, particularly because her job on Health’s sales team involves a lot of entertaining. “I have to deal with people urging me, ‘Just one bite.’”
But when Ransom does indulge, it’s not because someone else wants her to. “Now, I decide when I cave.”
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