Alicia decided to lose weight after she became 267 pounds.

Alicia's Weight Struggle
This is the year to finally end your struggle with weight and change everything with Bob Greene's Best Life Diet. Alicia reclaimed her life after losing the weight.

Alicia says she began to gain weight after having kids. After her first child was born, she gained 100 pounds. After the birth of her second, Alicia carried 267 pounds on her 4'11" frame. In denial about her weight, she spent 14 years hiding from the truth. "If I saw someone else bigger, I thought, 'Well, I'm not that bad.'"

Her out-of-control eating habits—including fast food every day—began to take a toll. Alicia rarely left the house and had little energy. She couldn't walk to the park with her kids and refused to attend company parties, even family gatherings. "I felt people stared at me when we went to restaurants to eat," she says. "It's like I didn't belong there, like I didn't need to eat."

Alicia says she hit rock bottom when she was turned down for a job in the cruelest way. "I went for a job interview for a radio station and I didn't think it mattered how I looked, but the man's like, 'Look at you.' And I asked him, 'Why?'" she says. "And he said, 'You're just too big.'"
Alicia lost 137 pounds on Bob Greene's Best Life Diet.

Alicia's New Body
Alicia decided to take action. She started Bob's Best Life Diet and lost 137 pounds!

"I started with the eating habits because ... my problem was eating," Alicia says. "Once I got that, it was on."
Julee says feelings of isolation contributed to her weight gain.

Julee's Isolation
Like many who are overweight, Julee thought she would never be able to lose weight. "I started to gain weight right after high school and going into college. It really is a sense of loneliness, like you're the only one that's going through this," she says.

Julee says her feelings of isolation fueled her out-of-control eating habits, and her weight hit an all-time high at 270 pounds. "I would avoid looking in the mirror. I found that if I ignored it, it wasn't there," Julee says.

Her weight also made her feel "unlovable," she says. "Who would accept a 270-pound woman in his life?" she says. "I just couldn't imagine there was someone who could take me as I was."

Still, she wasn't sure she could confront the issues behind her weight problem. "It's so hard to change, and I just didn't think I could do it because I knew I was going to have to answer some questions and I didn't think I was ready for that." 
Julee dropped nine dress sizes and 120 pounds.

Julee's New Motivation
At 271 pounds, Julee started Bob's plan. She dropped nine dress sizes and 120 pounds!

Julee says something Bob said really struck a chord for her. "Sometimes we lack the motivation to do something, but oftentimes we need to do it first and then the motivation follows," Julee says. "And that's what I found over and over again."

Bob urges others to follow Julee's lead. "Just start and don't think about tomorrow. Think a month out, two months out, or a year out," Bob says. "And guaranteed if you can focus on waking up and taking small steps, your life will be different a year from now."
Cindy confronted her weight problem after a phone call from Bob Greene.

An Unexpected Call From Bob
Cindy finally confronted the truth about her weight when Bob Greene himself gave her an unexpected call!

Growing up, Cindy says she was self-conscious about her weight. "When I was 11 years old, a boy teased me about being overweight and I was humiliated," she says. "That triggered my first diet. This cycle of extreme dieting and binging continued for decades."

In college, Cindy majored in nutrition because she thought she would find the answer to weight loss. Instead, Cindy felt more pressure to be a lower weight, and at one point in grad school, says she became bulimic. Still, she eventually earned a Ph.D. in nutrition.

One day, Cindy saw Bob on The Oprah Show and his message of change "reverberated in my soul," she says.

Then, fate brought Cindy even more motivation. "I got this phone call one day from an exercise physiologist, and he was looking for a dietitian to edit one of his books," she says. "It wasn't till I hung up the phone and I thought, 'Oh, my gosh. That's Bob Greene.' I knew from that moment on that my life was going to change."
Cindy lost 100 pounds.

Cindy's Dramatic Weight Loss
Since that phone call, Cindy has lost 100 pounds! Bob has only spoken with her by phone and e-mail, and they meet for the first time during her Oprah Show reveal.

Cindy now practices what she preaches and says she dropped 30 pounds within a few months—by cutting out her heavy soda intake. "That one thing was the first dietary change I made," she says.

Bob says he recommends eventually removing even diet soda from your eating habits. "It has its place in a weight loss mode, but I don't like overdoing that either because you never break your taste for real sweets, so it's better to weed that out as well in the final phase of the program."
Brie realized her weight problem after seeing herself on videotape.

Brie's Unhealthy Routine
Every year since 1992, Brie says she has gained 10–15 pounds a year. "When I graduated from college and got married, it was a steady gain. There was no working out. At all," she says. "I tried eating very little during the day. And when I went back to eating normally, all the weight came back and then some."

Like so many, Brie eventually fell into an unhealthy routine. After work, she'd settle in on the couch, turn on the television and ask her husband to pick up some fast food for dinner.

Brie's weight tipped the scale at 215 pounds, but she didn't realize she had a problem until seeing a shocking home video. "There I was on the videotape with my daughter in a bathing suit and I was shocked," Brie says. "It was shattering to me to see myself looking that large. I left the room in tears. I was devastated."
Brie lost 75 pounds and gained a new career.

Brie's New Passion
Not wanting her daughter to follow in her footsteps, Brie found the hope she needed to change her life while on a trip. "I got on the plane to come home and there was an article by Bob Greene on fitness makeovers," she says. "The light bulb went on and there was a determination that came over me that had never been there before."

Brie lost 75 pounds and is now a size 4! She also says after she started living her best life, she decided to turn her new passion into a career. "I'm a wellness coach now, two years, and it's just been amazing," she says.