From Dieting to a Healthy Lifestyle Change!

“I Never Ate a Vegetable.”

Christy Franklin works as a certified medical assistant in pediatrics at a family practice. One of the conversations she has with parents, on a daily basis, is how to get children to eat. Some have difficulties starting new foods because of the different flavors and textures being introduced and ironically, Christy had similar difficulties and was not in the habit of practicing her knowledge for herself.

Christy grew up in a diet culture:

“From the time I was little, I grew up in a diet culture. We were always on a diet–my sisters, my mom, somebody was always dieting.”

Though she encouraged her parents at the family practice to introduce vegetables, Christy hated them:

“I never ate a vegetable; I was never forced to.”

She never had the “eat your veggies” kind of parents. Christy’s home, because of their income level, did not have any fresh food options. The cabinets were full of processed, canned, and boxed foods.

Dieting was about not getting fat, and as a result, Christy developed an unhealthy relationship with food. Food was for recreation, a reward, a friend, a hobby. She learned to binge eat:

“From a very early age, I learned to hide what I was eating, and then punish myself for overeating. That paired with some very, very, deep trauma in my childhood created the perfect recipe for becoming dependent on food.”

She was left to her own devices because she was never taught how to make healthy choices. So, into her adulthood, she kept gaining and gaining and gaining, all the way to 381 lbs.

“What Have I Not Tried?” PROFILE!

Christy got angry creating a pivotal moment in her life:

“I was always kind of angry about it (her weight), but this black hole just kept consuming me. I’ve been on almost every diet you can imagine.”

She had some success in dropping 20-30 lbs through Atkins, Keto, Jenny Craig or WW, but all to no avail; left to her own devices, she could not follow through:

“I’m a person that needs a plan in place.”

According to Christy,

“I can tell patients all day, everyday how to eat healthy by making better food choices, but when it comes to putting it into practice for myself, I can’t do it.”

She admits she is not good at making a menu, meal prepping, thinking ahead or quick on her feet.

"I am impulsive.”

Christy cannot write down WHAT she eats; she needs what she WILL eat written down…an individualized plan just for her, which she found at Profile.

Profile Works!

Christy began Profile on August 10, 2021 at her unhealthiest, physically and mentally: 381 lbs, insulin resistant, insulin level of 21, A1C level of 5.6, fasting blood sugar of 100. Prediabetes was “around the corner” for her. Adding to her physical struggles, depression caused by the excess pounds and the extreme trauma from her childhood haunted her. But, she was determined to give Profile 110%:

“That’s the thing; anything I try is always ‘go with gusto’, and Profile was no different."

It was Profile or surgery, and she knew that surgery would not deal with the food issues developed since childhood.

Though a little anxious about one more weight loss attempt, Christy began her individualized program. She quickly found a way to incorporate the despised vegetables into her food plan:

“If I’m going to do this, I’m going to go down a very rudimentary way and ask myself how would I introduce a new vegetable to a baby?”

Christy began pureeing her vegetables with her shakes! She would bring a blender to work along with her frozen, cubed zucchini, and blend. She became creative with riced cauliflower by adding it to tomato soup making a consummate:

“I realized I was shaping a healthier view of food. It was no longer a recreation, reward, friend, or hobby. Food was the fuel I needed to live.”

After Christy's first week on Profile, she lost 10 pounds! Seeing that immediate success motivated her to continue prioritizing her health with the help of Profile.

One-On-One Coaching

Profile’s difference from Christy’s other programs is the one-on-one coaching:

“My coach has affected my success in Profile by 1,000,000%! I would not have been as successful if it was not for Erin. She is fantastic.”

Christy stresses that the key to making Profile work is having a relationship with your coach. It’s not a simple conversation each week about how much you lose, here’s your food, have a good week, and I’ll see you next time; it’s about syncing with your coach on a personal level to develop that relationship:

“Erin feels my joys and my sorrows; she feels my happiness when I lose three pounds and can tie my shoes without holding my breath, and my frustration when the scale does not move. Erin has never given up on me, ever.”

Through Profile and the support of Erin, Christy has also learned how to think about food. Before Profile,

“I would binge eat, stop on the way home from work and get all kinds of junk food and eat it on the way home, and then throw away the wrapping so my husband would not know.”

Christy said binging was her way of dealing with her emotional issues:

“When you are binging, you feel nothing. I would just completely zone out of my entire body while eating, literally, a pound of M&M’s. I didn’t think about anything else except that bag. It numbed the sadness, frustration and the feelings that get stirred up when you have sustained trauma in your life.”

Now, Christy says she can still be triggered to binge, but she is in a much better place to handle that. She no longer has any foods in her home that feed those triggers, and she can always talk to her coach:

“I have to go as far as just to remove those trigger foods, those weaknesses, identify them and remove them from my orbit.”

ON and OFF-the-Scale Victories  

On the scale, Christy celebrated dropping to 245 lbs, a loss of 135 pounds within a year!

Off the scale, she dropped her insulin level to 3, A1C level of 5.3, fasting blood sugar to 85, and she lost a total of 116.4 inches over her entire body. With the weight loss and inches lost, she now wears a large shirt rather than a 4X, a size 16-18 pant rather than a 28, and her Body Mass Index (BMI) is now at 36 rather than 57:

“I even dropped a shoe size. I went from a size 12 to an 11!”

She can shop at Target instead of specialty stores and sleeps in her 3X shirts that used to be too tight.

Recently she went to Dollywood:

“I was able to ride all the roller coasters; I didn’t have to worry if I would fit! I was always the one holding everybody’s things while they rode, but no more!”

She has more energy to play with her son:

“I’m really enjoying being a mom now.”

Christy admits to being happier:

“I’m happier. I’ve developed healthier opinions of myself and learned to give myself more grace. I feel better about myself, and this happiness is rolling into my marriage. Things are good, and when that’s good, everything else kind of falls into place.”

Christy’s Advice: “It Works If You Work.”

According to Christy, Profile is not a diet, it’s her life. Her advice?

“Get in your own corner. This is your life, and your life is so much more than your weight and your size. Your life is worth every ounce of blood, sweat and tears you put into it. The more you do for yourself, the better off you'll be.”