Before: 172
After: 116
Program used: Weight Watchers

When Yolanda Quesada was newly divorced, she met the man of her dreams. Her new suitor, Rey Marquez, now 41, loved wining and dining Yolanda, now 44, and she loved being wined and dined, blissfully shoveling down lobster and other rich dishes. But as the years passed, so did her acquaintance with size 8. Her knees ached, and she could not figure out why her elastic waistbands had lost their stretch.

The Turning Point

After 19 years with Rey — a union chairman for the United Auto Workers — Yolanda saw a Christmas picture of herself in January 2004 that solved the mystery: She was huge! She zipped immediately to a Weight Watchers meeting near her job as an office manager for the City of Chicago. At 5 feet 2 inches, she weighed in at 172 lbs. Ouch! “I weighed 168 lbs. when I was nine months pregnant,” Yolanda recalls (her children, Toni and Victor, are now 26 and 25, respectively).

But once on board with Weight Watchers, Yolanda promptly “bonded with a lot of vegetables” and guzzled enough water to float a barge. After six weeks, Yolanda began hopping off the train one stop early, then two stops, working up to a 45-minute daily walk. She also took up yoga. The pounds — one to two a week — melted away.

She and Rey continued to eat out, but Yolanda was no longer a passive patron. Instead, she grilled the waiters about food preparation and insisted that her requests for low-cal, no-fat preparations be accommodated.
“If we went to a new place, she’d call ahead to make sure they’d fix her food the way she wanted,” Rey marvels. If they wouldn’t, Yolanda steered clear.

Surprising Perks

By December 2004 — 11 months after she revamped her diet — Yolanda reached her goal weight of 125 lbs. Instead of stopping there, though, she kept dieting, and settled into a trim 116 lbs. The following August, she reveled in feeling light as she splashed around in a friend’s pool, wearing a bikini. “I call her Cat-woman,” says Rey, laughing. “She has muscles — lean, yoga-made muscles!”

Her weight loss has not only allowed Yolanda’s knees to rebound, but also unleashed her inner jock. “We play basketball a lot,” says Rey. “She’s competitive; she hates to lose!”

The frugal Yolanda also discovered it pays — quite literally — to be thin. Weight Watchers meetings are free once members reach and stay at their goal weight, and sales racks at clothing stores are stuffed full of tiny size 0s and 2s. “I got a pair of great pants for $5,” she reports. “The bargains are unbelievable!”

The confidence Yolanda developed by advocating for herself in restaurants seeped into her personal life: She returned to school last December to pursue a bachelor’s degree in business and marketing. “Losing weight taught me I can get anything I want by breaking down a problem, solving it in baby steps and staying flexible and disciplined,” says Yolanda. “It feels awesome.”