Jen Dropped 85 Pounds Doing These 3 Things Every Single Day (and Didn't Set Foot in a Gym)

When Jen reached her heaviest recorded weight in 2017 — 240 pounds — she had gotten to a point of pure misery. "I felt like a stranger in my own body. I didn't recognize my own reflection, and when I would see photos of myself, I was disgusted. I didn't know who that was," Jen said.

The weight gain made her develop high blood pressure and a rapid heartbeat, both of which required medication. She was devastated that at the age of 25, she was on high blood pressure meds.

"In January of 2018, I saw photos of myself from a New Year's Eve party we had attended, and something about those particular photos finally lit a fire inside of me that has since changed my entire life." She had been trying and failing to lose weight for over six years, attempting every fad diet and every program there was. She admits she was trying to do it the lazy way, which Jen said doesn't accomplish anything since there is nothing lazy about losing weight!

Something was different now. She started her weight-loss journey on Feb. 12, 2018, and Jen said, "For the first time ever, I didn't give up after a few weeks of trying to lose weight."

Now age 29, it has taken Jen nine months to lose 85 pounds, and diet played a huge role. She said for the first 30 days, she followed strictly keto, which did help her lose weight, but by the end, she said, "I knew it wasn't a way of eating I would be able to sustain."

Jen then switched to a strict low-carb, no-sugar way of eating, staying under 20 net carbs a day. This meant no sugar at all (yes, even no fruit!), and she drank a minimum of 100 ounces of water every day. She didn't count calories or track anything other than those 20 net carbs. "When I made that switch from keto to low-carb and no sugar, the weight just started melting off rapidly," Jen shared.

She did that for eight months and just recently switched to good old-fashioned calorie counting. She had stopped losing weight and realized she was eating too many calories, so now she uses MyFitnessPal to track her calories and said she's loving the freedom to eat foods she had given up for nine months. "Welcome back, delicious fruit!"

Her current weekly weight-loss goal is set at one and a half pounds a week, and she is considered very active, so it put her calorie goal at 1,550 a day. That number goes up dependent on the amount of calories she burns during exercise, but she usually doesn't eat those extra calories solely due to the fact that she just can't eat that much food anymore. "I am very thankful for the low-carb diet I did, as it naturally decreased my appetite over time and taught me discipline that I now use to keep from eating too much," Jenny said.

Jen implemented intermittent fasting throughout her entire nine-month journey. She follows the 16:8 method and eats from noon until 8 p.m. Jen fasts until 12:00 p.m. every day except for one morning on the weekends.

"I was never big into breakfast, so this was really easy for me," she told POPSUGAR. "I have an eight-hour window every day to get my food in. I am positive that has played a huge role in my weight loss. I used to be so bad about late-night snacking."

A typical day of eating includes:

Lunch: grilled chicken, a serving of fruit (an apple or red seedless grapes), and a serving of chips (her faves are Simply Cheetos Puffs [White Cheddar flavor] or Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips). Jenny said, "I count out however many a serving is and put it on my plate, rather than taking the entire bag with me and mindlessly eating." Great tip!
Snack (3 p.m.): something sweet, like a Fiber One Brownie or celery with whipped Peter Pan peanut butter
Dinner: chicken-stuffed peppers with a side of sea salt garlic asparagus and a roll
Dessert: "I'll usually have dessert right after dinner to make sure I don't eat anything past 8 p.m. My favorite right now is the Enlightened Hot Cocoa Ice Cream Bar. It is so good and is low in sugar and calories."

Some days she eats like the above example, and other days she'll have a really low-calorie lunch so she can have Taco Bell for dinner. It's all about balance, right? No matter what she eats, though, she immediately tracks it, and that's what holds her accountable. "Yeah, that Taco Bell might've been 800+ calories, but since my lunch was only 300 and my snack 150, I am STILL under my daily calorie goal."

Jen plays a lot of tennis — four days a week usually, and anywhere from one to three hours at a time. She also took over doing all the yard work once a week and has used that as her fifth workout for the week many times. "There were times I burned more calories doing yard work than I did running for 30 minutes," Jenny said.

One main thing Jen did was to make sure that whatever exercise she did, she enjoyed it. "I never did something that made me miserable and not want to do it again." She used all sorts of activities as exercise, including swimming, walking with hand weights, jumping on trampolines with her daughter . . . as long as her Apple Watch showed that she had exercised for at least 30 minutes, that was all she needed. "I haven't stepped foot inside of a gym even one time on this journey."

Here are some nonscale victories Jen experienced from losing 85 pounds:

There are two sources of motivation for Jenny: her daughter and her husband. "They deserve the best version of me, and for a while they were getting the worst version of me. They were the ones who loved me through every stage, and I want to make sure I'm around for them for a long, long time," Jen said.

Jen said, "Get rid of the excuses. We are all busy, we are all stressed, we all have 800 things going on at once." She added that if you keep waiting for a good time to start, you will never find it. And if you've already started, just keep going — the time is going to pass anyway, so you might as well make the most of it.

Never compare your journey to someone else's, Jen advised; there are so many things that make us all different, and there will never be a standard for how a weight-loss journey should go. Plus, find a way of eating that makes you feel good, do exercise that you actually enjoy, and, as Jen said, "drink all the water."

She said to give yourself grace on the days you mess up and always remember that one bad meal or day will not erase all of the work you've done. Just move on and get back on track!