Dropping 103 lbs Was a Matter of Life or Death

Morbid obesity had dragged poor Dean down to the lowest point of her life. She admits that before finding help and hope from Oprah-trainer Bob Greene and a low-carb lifestyle, she considered ending it all.

It wasn't just the weight that she was dragging around that made Dean's outlook so bleak. Declining health also played a huge role in her suicidal thinking.

Dean suffered from severe depression and the first stages of type 2 diabetes. She also endured fibromyalgia, a nightmarish disease characterized by chronic pain in the muscles and soft tissues surrounding joints, fatigue and uncomfortable tenderness in various areas.

She took 12 different medications daily. She was only 34, yet she felt like her life was over.

At her top weight, she tipped the scales at 215 pounds. Dean spent much of the past seven years trying every diet she could find -- everything from Weight Watchers to the cabbage soup diet. Nothing seemed to work.

Dean estimates that since her marriage nine years ago, she’s spent at least 25 months in bed suffering from various ailments. Just last year she underwent five surgeries and nearly died when her liver failed. But Dean has proven to be like a cat with nine lives.

"I was severely depressed and suicidal," she tells eDiets. "Physically I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t play with my kids. I couldn’t function. I was absolutely miserable. I felt worthless. When I felt bad physically, I stopped caring about stuff. I didn’t do my hair or makeup. I didn’t care that I lived in a t-shirt and sweats. I was a full-time mom and figured, 'No one sees me.'"

Dean pulled off her remarkable made-for-TV transformation from obese to "Oh, my!" when she hooked up with Bob Greene, Oprah Winfrey’s personal trainer. Since following Bob’s Get With The Program, Dean has gone from 190 to 112 pounds for a grand total of 103 pounds trimmed from her petite 5-foot-2 figure.

The best part: A year later, the size-20 clothing remains packed away and she's sporting form-fitting size 4s and 6s.

Dean is living proof that where there’s a will there’s a way. Even when she spent months in the hospital last year, she never wavered on her goal. She refused to deviate from her healthy eating regimen and she stayed active -- even when that meant slow walks down the hospital hallway, IV and all.

She credits her mental toughness to Bob Greene, who she'd seen on the Oprah show many times before she finally decided to take that first step and seek his help. After reading Greene's "Make The Connection," Dean realized that Oprah's personal trainer had cut through to the heart of the matter.

Emotional eating had played a huge role in Dean's weight gain. She turned to food in times of sadness and in times of joy. She followed up with Green's book Get With The Program. It proved to be a lifesaver.

"'Get With The Program' connects emotional eating with physical being," Dean tells eDiets. "That was my problem. I’m an emotional eater. I didn’t know that. When I was happy, sad or stressed, I would go to the drive-thru. I didn’t get the connection until I read the book and then I thought, 'Wait, he’s talking about me.'"

Dean remains an emotional eater, however, she’s learned to make smarter choices. When she does turn to food to "medicate" her feelings, she reaches for a healthy snack, goes for a walk, reads a book, drinks water or practices yoga. She no longer makes a beeline for her favorite fast-food haunts.

While she does enjoy a treat every now and then, she prefers eating fruits, grains, vegetables and protein. Dean has used a winning combination that includes two popular programs. She attributes the bulk of her weight loss to the Atkins Diet Nutritional Approach. But she’s also sold on Get With The Program for lifetime maintenance.

"I eat more balanced," she notes. "I watch my portions. I try not to eat late at night. Balance is the essential key to success. This is something I can do for the rest of my life."

One reason Greene’s program fit Dean’s needs perfectly was that the fitness aspect could be modified to match her lifestyle. When she first got started, she couldn’t lift weights or power walk because of her fibromyalgia. She relied on yoga and Pilates to build up her strength. Slowly she got into the step of the things. When strength training, she uses light weights and does more repetitions. On a good day, she power walks 4 miles with 2 1/2-pound weights wrapped around her ankles. It wasn't that long ago she couldn’t manage one lap around the block.

Dean says her healthy eating and exercise routines have done what her many medications couldn’t: They've improved her quality of life so much that even the worst days of pain are bearable. And the more she exercises, the better she feels. She has much more energy and far less pain.

"I wake up every day and my body aches for the first hour," she says. "After that I have the energy to get up, make breakfast, play with the kids and exercise. Bob asked me how things are different for me now. I told him that just like brushing my teeth and taking a shower, exercise is something I do every day. It’s something I can’t go without. Even on a bad fibro day I still do stretching or some kind of activity. Before, I would just lay here."

Dean says she never would have come this far without making a major change in her way of thinking. That meant looking for a permanent solution, not a short-term fix.

"I was ready to change, not go on a diet," she says. "I wasn’t going to try one more diet or one more program and fail. I changed my entire life for the rest of my life. I decided that even on a bad day when I’m bedridden, which is half the time, I accept it instead of fighting it. It goes by faster and I forgive myself for being sick. I don’t use it as an excuse.”

Dean still suffers from depression though it’s not as severe. She’s also reduced her daily medications to three. She no longer dwells on negative. Instead, she works on what she can do -- even on the bad days. There’s no stopping her. Her next goal is to write a book about her experiences and inspire others who think it can’t be done.

"I have fibromyalgia, diabetes and three kids. If I can do it, anyone can," she notes.