Tori, an artist and mother of two, says she has been overweight since she was a child. "My sister was always the thinner one, and I was the heavier one," she says. "They would first see me and see my weight before they saw me as a person."

That doesn't mean that she has always had a bad self-image. Tori says that when she was younger, she thought of herself as "shapely" with "big-butt-big-hips" and was not necessarily interested in losing weight.

Now she says she's ready for a change. "I'm not looking to be some skinny stick. I just want to feel comfortable when I walk by a mirror or a window," she says. "I want to walk into a department store, and pick something up, and not struggle with it, not feel depressed about shopping."