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How One Woman Halved Her Weight In A Year Without Surgery

She did it by permanently transforming her approach to food.

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gif of two before and after images of Katie Gustavesen's weight loss
Courtesy of Katie Gustavesen
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“A crazy thing happened in a little Facebook group I started on July 9, 2018, with about 500 people … A bunch of us got skinny.”

So reads the intro to the website Eat Like a Bear, an online community and company started by Amanda Rose, a political scientist from California, after she halved her weight from 280 pounds to 140 in a single year.

In the seven years since, she has maintained that weight loss and publicized her methods in a Facebook group, a YouTube channel and the website. Two hundred adherents in her community have lost more than 100 pounds each. Scores of others have lost lesser amounts, and many in the group have had their lives completely transformed.

Focusing on a Vision

Rose’s transformation was sparked by a yearning to live life to the fullest. She lives in the Giant Sequoia National Monument surrounded by forestland, but painful walking due to obesity kept her from hiking. Instead, she would drive her son, an avid hiker, to the trailhead and wait for him to come back.

She realized her deepest desire was to hike with him. She knew how to lose weight — and had done so many times — but it always came back. When she was approved for bariatric surgery in the summer of 2017, she understood that the only way she could hike without going under the knife was to permanently transform her approach to food.

Rose realized her mindset was just as important as what she ate in achieving permanent weight loss. She needed deep internal motivation and self-accountability to become the person she envisioned — not so much a thin person as a person who could hike.

“What we really need to do is focus in a positive, visual way on our bright future,” she says. For her, this means “focusing on visions of hiking, of being out in the world and moving in a way I had never been able to before.”

Inspiring Others

Rose combined this positive mindset with two strategies she had not previously paired: intermittent fasting and low-carb eating. Her method was simple. She ate one large meal per day, primarily vegetables and healthy protein and consumed it in a single hour.

By January 2018, she was down to 190 pounds, and her surgery was canceled. A few months later, she says, her primary care doctor told her, “No one else would ever implement what I did.”

To her, that sounded like a challenge.

By that summer, she was down to 140, her lowest-ever adult weight. She also started the Eat Like a Bear Facebook group, which now tops 100,000 members. She posts a steady stream of personal and energetic YouTube videos, has published three cookbooks and cultivates an active online community where members find support and encouragement.

But Rose has always been the encourager-in-chief.

“If you are watching this video, it’s because you are stronger than everyone thinks you are, not because you are weaker,” she says in the 2018 video explaining her story that received 4 million views. “Here’s my message to life-long dieters: I know you have the skill, and I know you have the willpower.”

This is an important message for her audience, which is comprised mostly of older women who have lost and regained weight multiple times. Rose sees the potential for their changing attitudes toward food to “trickle down in the family” and help a younger generation gain an appreciation for eating more vegetables and a sense of empowerment around dietary choices.  

The root of Rose’s success, both in her weight loss and ability to inspire others, is understanding that changing our eating habits is about who we are, not just what we eat.

“Eating habits are essential for weight loss, but I don't believe they are enough for long-term success,” she says. “Even if you know what to eat and understand that it works, the key factor ultimately becomes consistency. The question is, how can you continue to implement these habits day after day?”

Doing so requires an audacious goal. “You’ve got to compete with the doughnut,” she says in another video. “Y’all know what I mean, right?... What is your goal and what is your vision? What are you giving up when you eat the doughnut?”

For real, lasting weight loss, she says, “The only play is to look at your positive future.”

Please always consult your doctor before embarking on a weight-loss journey such as the one above.

 
How many of you have lost a lot of weight? How did you do it? Let us know in the comments below.

Follow Article Topics: Health