The Easiest 50 Pounds I Ever Lost

Two years ago, I had this picture in my head.
Me, turning 50.
Fifty pounds lighter. Stronger. Clearer. Definitely more confident.

At the time, my life was sliding off the rails, and I had almost no control over any of it. So I set a challenge for myself: lose 50 pounds by 50. In my mind, I dubbed it "the 50 by 50 challenge."

The difference this time was that I knew I couldn't force it; if I wanted this to work, I had to rebuild my foundation first.

But to do it right this time, I had to start by rebuilding the foundation. Because the truth is, I never really had a fair shot at seeing myself clearly.

When I was a little girl, my father would only refer to me as "Jelly Belly", or "J.B." He was the kind of broken and sick who got off on being cruel.

And I wasn’t even fat, not even a little.

I’d just won our state beauty pageant, had nationals on the horizon, and spent my days bouncing between music and dance lessons, dragging home trophies like it was my job.

By every outside measure, I was killing it.

But his voice was bigger than my accomplishments, and I spent years chasing the moment I might finally be enough.

Because until he couldn't find something wrong with me, nothing else mattered. And that damn nickname burrowed into my subconscious and became the voice in my head.

The worst part was that I believed him. He spoke it like gospel, and I accepted it as truth.

The actual truth was that I was surviving things that no child should have to. I didn’t gain weight until after he was gone from my life. Maybe my body was trying to protect me, creating a barrier between me and everything that had hurt me.

Lord knows the culture didn’t help. I came of age in the 90s, when heroin chic was all the rage and hollow cheeks, ribs, and hip bones were seen as accessories.

I already hated my reflection, and there was the world telling me starvation was sexy.

Through my teens and twenties, I gained steadily. God, I envied those willowy girls with glossy hair and effortless confidence, always seeming so above it all.

Meanwhile, I was stuck in a mentality that if I could just fix my body's "problems", I would finally fix myself.

By 22, I was a fat bride.
By 25, I had hit 200+ pounds during pregnancy.

It wasn’t until my daughter was a toddler that I finally came to my senses. I didn’t want her to grow up thinking the way I looked and felt was normal.

So I joined the diet program everyone swore by. I counted every point, took up running, and I began losing weight.

But little by little, I began losing myself as well.

At first, it felt amazing because I finally looked ‘normal’.
But I wasn’t eating real food; I was living on low-point frozen meals and sugar-free, fat-free everything.

I turned down my grandmother’s homemade meals for artificial crap, over and over again. I'm still heartsick over that.

At the time, I believed it was worth it - that it was the only way I could stay “healthy”, which really just meant getting even thinner.
It was my safeguard against turning back into that awkward and vulnerable fat girl. And I hated her.

A few years later, freshly divorced and emotionally stripped, I lost even more weight. Fast. Like really fast.

The thinner I got, the more compliments I received. People noticed me, and men tripped over themselves to talk to me.

After years of feeling invisible and stuck in an emotionally abusive marriage, my God, it was intoxicating. It felt like power.
Like safety.

It wasn’t.

At a party one night, that illusion shattered.

Looking back, I know I wasn't okay. I'd had a little to drink, but it hit me harder than it should have. I felt off in a way that didn't add up, and I didn't know if it was exhaustion, grief, or something else.

I just know I was in no state to protect myself.

I went to sleep alone in a guest room, believing I was safe and among friends.
I woke up to a man I barely knew pressing his naked body against me.
I could feel everything.

I managed to fend him off in time, but the damage was still done. That memory still turns my stomach.

And of course I blamed myself - for being there at all, for wanting one night of freedom, and letting my guard down.

My grandmother had died two days before Christmas. I'd been her medical proxy, trying to manage her end-of-life care while family egos made everything harder than it had to be.

A few months later, on that fateful night, I just wanted to forget everything for a few hours. I wanted to feel like the person I was before being tasked with decisions I never wanted to make.

Instead, someone saw my lowest point as his opportunity.

After that, it felt like my life was shedding itself; my grandma was gone, grandpa was terminal, and after that night, everything I’d been repressing finally surfaced.

I didn’t know how to deal with it, so I started binging. Hard.

Eating bowls full of peanut butter until I cried because I was terrified and unable to stop.
My hunger cues were wrecked from years of ignoring them, so I began full-on gorging, my body demanding everything I’d ever denied it from years of restriction.

Of course, then I would become so terrified and uncomfortably full that I began purging to "fix it."

It was hell, and I knew I couldn't keep living like that. So I found a great counselor, put in the work, and pulled myself out of hell one step at a time.

Not long after, I met my now-husband, The Balkan Storm, and for the first time in a long time, I felt that things would begin to level out.

But of course, they didn't. That's not how reality works.

My grandfather passed away, and ten days after we buried him, my stepdad died of a heart attack.

I'd missed his birthday the week before because I was busy with work, family, and the next week's midterms.

I did call him, of course. I wanted him to know I hadn't forgotten him.
I had no reason to believe it would be the last time I’d ever hear his voice.

I can’t even remember what we said.

Eventually, things finally began to look up. I was engaged, finishing my degree, and beginning to believe in the future.

I was planning my wedding with one of my best friends who lived in New York. We visited when we could, and talked constantly.

She was everything I wasn't back then - ballsy, unapologetic, and brash in the only way a Long Island woman can be. She warned my husband in her distinctive accent that he'd "better not hurt me" and God help him if he ever did.

She was funny as hell, but underneath it all, she was fighting things she never let me see. A few months before my wedding, a wellness check found her deceased in her apartment.

By then, it all felt so cruel. I was trying to start a new life, and it felt like fate seemed determined to take away everyone I wanted to share it with.

And I was doing everything I could to not eat my stress away.
I didn't always succeed at that.

Starting over was supposed to feel hopeful, but instead, every moment of joy brought about guilt. How could I think about a wedding or a honeymoon with so many holes in my family?

My mother was newly widowed, and her grief-driven actions changed everything between us for a while. And I, trying to recapture some semblance of 'normalcy', was tempted to revisit my old methods of "control" again.

I genuinely felt cursed.

At one point, I even told The Balkan Storm that he should run before something bad happened to him just for loving me. That's how warped my logic had become.

He knew my history, and still, he stayed.

After the wedding, I stayed active.
Not because I loved running (I didn’t), but because I loved how it felt afterward.

My husband, a former hotshot D.C. chef, cooks ridiculously good food. I’m not blaming him at all (honestly, bless him), but going from point-counting to fine dining was a bigger adjustment than I expected.

The truth was, I never learned how to eat like a normal person. I either obsessed over every calorie or avoided eating altogether; there was no happy medium.

For the first time, I was sitting at eight-course dinners, tasting menus, and wine pairings - not just from my husband, but from his friends too. Many of them are professional chefs, eager to share their best work.

It delighted me and terrified me.

It was generosity and celebration on a scale I wasn't used to. I ate every bite and hated myself for it.

And then life crept back in, like it always does. Stress, surgeries, and early menopause came in like a wrecking ball. (Cue Miley).

I quit running because I got burned out. I gained weight again and resigned myself to the fact that I was "getting older".

Then life threw us another curveball: emergency guardianship of two wildly athletic and energetic kids.

And I realized: I'm gonna have to keep up.

So before we traded our cabin-in-the-woods life for suburbia, I started walking our winding roads. Just me, the cows, the trees, and the thoughts in my head.

And it was on one of those walks that the phrase 50 by 50 popped into my head.

It sounded catchy and almost...exciting. Lose 50 pounds by my 50th birthday.

No shots, no diet food, no restrictions, no bullshit.

And in what felt like the wildest experiment of my life, I committed to one radical idea: trusting myself.

It was the one thing I’d never actually tried.

That’s it. That was the whole plan.

I needed to trust consistency, not punishment. To trust that I could eat real food without logging it or panicking that my ass would cartoonishly expand the second it wasn't a prepackaged, "approved" meal.

(And yes, I absolutely did think that more than once.)

What was the risk in trying?

The only thing I had to lose was all the weight from all the other failed attempts.

But first, I had to deal with the biggest problem: my brain, that lying little bitch.

"You have no self-control anymore.”
“You’re too old for this now.”
“Your genetics screwed you. Just accept it."

Watch me.

I didn’t do a massive overhaul of all my habits - that had never worked before. Instead, I started small, just one decision at a time.

First, I got off diet soda. I’d been practically married to it for decades, but I knew I needed more water in my life. So, I basically gamified quitting. I approached it as, "see how long you can go without before you cave".

I still haven't broken that streak.

Then I focused on whole foods. I slowed down and ate when I was hungry, stopped when I wasn’t. I cut out most of the processed crap.

Groundbreaking stuff, right?
But if you know, you know.

Slowly and steadily, the weight dropped.

I moved more. A short walk counted. Fifteen minutes on the treadmill counted.
Because it all does count. The body truly does keep the score.

If I ate more than usual or had something more indulgent, I didn’t write off the day and eat all the things like I used to.

I just started again with the very next meal.

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t punishing my body. I was partnering with it. And before my 50th birthday arrived, I surpassed my goal - without dieting.

I'm proud of the numbers now, no doubt. But I’m more proud of how I got there.

Now, I lift. I run. I take care of myself daily because I have finally come to understand what living with intention actually means.

The other day, I pulled my wedding dress out for the first time in a decade.
It’s too big now, and I love that, because I got to that point safely and sustainably.

My relationship with food is healthy, and my head is clear.
I’m proud of the clothes I can slip into, but what matters more is what you can’t see: the peace I earned.

That said, I’d be lying if I said it was perfect, 'cause frankly, I’m also kinda pissed.

First, thanks to spectacular genetics, my cholesterol is still high. Like 200+ high. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, eat clean as hell most days...and yet, here we are.

(Yes, I'm dealing with it. No, I don't need your cousin's red yeast rice recipes, thanks.)

God has a sense of humor I don’t always appreciate.

Second, major weight loss (twice over) changes your body permanently. I can wear size 4s now, but I’m left with the physical evidence of someone who no longer exists.

That's my poetic way of saying I have a little loose skin.
Which is a mindfuck because I also have a thigh gap and visible definition. Make it make sense.

But what pisses me off most is knowing this life could've been mine all along.

If I had trusted myself sooner.
If I'd spent less time hating my own reflection and more time listening to my body.
If I hadn’t been stuck in cycles that someone else profited from.

I don't think there's anything particularly special about me or what I achieved here.
I believe the power to do this was always there, and most of us are taught not to trust it.

There's no profit in people learning to trust themselves, is there?

I didn't suddenly become uber-disciplined or magically healed; I just stopped fighting with myself every day.

Letting go of that battle was harder than I expected, and I still have moments of doubt.

But once I did, the weight loss that followed came easier.

If you connected with this, there's a short PDF essay here.

Related Reads

• The Weight I Still Carry - what came after the weight loss.
• Beautiful Lies - where it all started.

Heather Papovich is the voice behind Unfinished Business, a weekly essay series where real life meets pop culture, and how to get through both without (mostly) losing it.