The Author

My name’s Jessica.  I was cute and skinny in high school but got fat in college.  For me, this meant lugging around an extra 20 lbs and only feeling comfortable in hooded sweatshirts.  Like a lot of students, I hit an all-time low my freshman year after partying my way to 140 lbs and struggled to find a way to lose those 20 lbs and keep them off permanently.  I tried the South Beach Diet and Opti-fast.  I joined gyms, took salsa lessons, did Pilates and ran up and down hills like a maniac.  I experimented with my own versions of torture like eating one granola bar a day with diet sodas, eating carrots in the morning and chewing gum the rest of the day, abstaining from weekend drinking, and skipping as many meals as possible.  Of course nothing worked.  I couldn’t stay thin longer than a few months at a time.  I don’t have to tell you how many pairs of jeans I went through in the past five years to cater to my ever-changing waistline.  I’m sure many of you went through the same thing.

After graduating, two years ago, I took a job teaching English in South Korea where I was surrounded by girls half my size and stores full of clothes I couldn’t fit into.  This had a huge effect on me.  I’m a girl, I like buying clothes, and not being able to was probably the catalyst in my transformation from a serial dieter into a skinny, healthy adult.  I didn’t learn any Korean girl secret of magic weight loss (although I looked for one), I simply analyzed everything I’d done in the past and read up on the subject as a mature adult instead of someone looking for a quick fix.  There’s a reason Koreans are so skinny and it has everything to do with their lifestyle and diet.  I found a way to incorporate their good habits into a system that works for me in America.  I’m so happy to have finally figured out how to keep my weight under control without doing or eating anything I hate.  Now I can devote my spare time to doing things I enjoy instead of obsessing over my reflection.  I’ve achieved my goal of returning to a size 4 and am completely confident I will wear the same jeans for the second year in a row; a first in my adult life.

When I returned to the States earlier this year after two years in Korea, my friends and family were impressed with my transformation and wanted to know how I did it, especially my newly graduated friends who’d put on the average 10-30 lbs during college.  Equipped with new knowledge and insights, I realized I was in a position to help them and others all over the world who are dealing with the same problem.  We often develop horrible eating and lifestyle habits during school and it’s hard to break them once we graduate.  I want to teach you how to change those habits in order to get back to the real you and stay there.

Gaining weight in college is easy, getting back to high school cute and skinny can be challenging.  My mission is to make the journey as painless and enjoyable as possible.

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