BodyBugg Helped Rebecca Lose 70 Pounds

Name: Rebecca R. Berger

Age: 54

Height: 5 feet, 10 inches

Before Weight: 206 pounds

How I Gained It: I weighed 120 pounds when I married my husband -- I had never cooked for myself and had never had to worry about my weight so I didn't have a clue about controlling it. My exercise was minimal to nonexistent. Once we started dating and then living as a couple, our life included lots of eating out, drinking and socializing and I began to slowly gain weight. I didn't understand the relationship of food and weight. Each life episode I faced -- having two children, declaring bankruptcy, quitting smoking -- led to packing on more weight.

I went to Weight Watchers in my early thirties for my first attempt at weight and food control, and the weight came off. But what I didn't realize was that when I quit the program, the weight would come back. I quit exercising after reaching my goal weight and fell right back into my old eating habits, and I gained even more weight than I had before. This began a cycle with various plans and yo-yo diets. Each time I would quit a diet plan, I would gain more weight than I had lost, and this ultimately led to my maximum weight of 206 pounds the year that my younger daughter graduated high school.

This whole process had been so detrimental to how I felt about myself. I realized I needed to begin working on coming to terms with who I was, no matter what the scale said.

Breaking Point: I turned 51. My face and body were sagging, and I didn't like what I saw in the mirror. My hair stylist suggested I come see a demonstration of a new product that he said would help make me look younger in 10 minutes, and that started me on my final body-changing journey. Changing my face made me want to do something for the rest of me.

How I Lost It: I started by walking. I live in a development with wonderful walking trails and exercise equipment that I had only been using sporadically. I started slowly with not much distance, gradually increasing the time and distance I walked until I reached a comfortable routine. I was never much of a runner, but I listened to some songs that had a faster beat, so I started running to them, even if it was just for the chorus. I also began to utilize information from my past weight-loss experiences, and I started cutting things out of my diet that I could live without, like starches. I lost my first 20 pounds in a few months and then hit my first plateau.

My plateau happened during the holidays. Luckily, I got a Christmas present that changed my life: the BodyBugg. It's an armband that reads your body information, which you then upload into a computer program. It tells you how many calories you've burned, allowing me to balance my calorie intake with my calorie burn. By using this program, I learned how exercise affected my calorie burn, and it helped me bust through my plateau. I kept eating what I wanted throughout this whole process, just as long as my calorie intake was less than my calorie burn.

I met my first weight loss goal of a total of 50 pounds five months after receiving my BodyBugg, just in time for my older daughter's wedding. I looked so much better than when I started, and I felt fabulous.

Once I reached my goal of 135 pounds, I re-evaluated my body. I was happy with my weight and didn't want to lose anymore, but weight loss didn't eliminate the flab so the next part of my journey was to figure out how to firm it up. I had always been resistant to weight training -- I didn't want to look like a body builder -- but one of the magazines I read said that if you don't do weight resistance training, you will just have a smaller version of the same flabby body. So I started trying exercise routines, looking for one that would work. That's when my body really started to change.

I'm now 54 years old, and I'm in the best shape I've been in decades. I still walk and do the weight resistance exercises, changing routines to work areas of my body that I would like to improve. I've accepted the fact that I like to eat, so I just make sure that I work it off. I gained about seven pounds following this last holiday season. Instead of depriving myself of my Christmas cookies, I celebrate that I only had seven pounds to lose this year instead of 25.

I'd always heard that once you hit menopause, you might as well give up. I'm proof that this mentality is totally false -- I've lost weight, I've changed my body shape and I'm firming up areas that I thought I would have to hide for the rest of my life. I went from a size 18 to a size 4. My life has changed completely. I will never be fat again.

After Weight: 135 pounds

It took Rebecca a year to lose 70 pounds, and she's maintained it for over two years.

Becky, another mom, also slimmed down in time for summer -- find out how she shed over 100 pounds.