Name: Dana Curtiss

Age: 54

Residence: Sunrise, FL

Job: Director of nursing

Family status: Married with a 29-year-old son and a 24-year-old daughter

Peak weight: 255 pounds

Current weight: 165 pounds

Height: 5 feet 6 inches

Dana Curtiss remembers the moment that she decided she needed to find a different path for weight loss. “My doctor told me, ‘The way you’re headed, your weight is going to kill you’,” she says.

My doctor told me, ‘The way you’re headed, your weight is going to kill you.'

Curtiss had battled excess weight all her life. “I was always the chunky girl. In eighth grade I weighed 155 pounds,” she says. Why did that particular weight stick in her memory? “I remember that because the teacher had us weighing ourselves in front of each other, and the teacher said she weighed less than I did,” Curtiss says. She never forgot it.

Growing up, healthy eating wasn’t a priority for her family. “We were not into good nutrition. We didn’t know any better. We had bad eating habits that were passed along the generations,” she says. She lists her top foods back then: pancakes and syrup, biscuits, bacon or sausage and eggs, and anything fried.

She hid under oversized clothes, but once she married and had two children she got serious about losing weight. Her weight contributed to health issues — high blood pressure and diabetes — and she didn’t want to cut short the years she could spend with her family.

Over the years she would lose weight, and gain it back, plus more. “I would lose 15 pounds and gain 20, or lose 25 and gain 32,” she says. She tried dieting and exercising on her own, joining gyms, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, meal plans, apple cider vinegar challenges and waist trainers. For her, nothing worked for good. Her weight peaked at 255 pounds.

“This is such a common scenario, and it can be really discouraging,” says Samantha Cassetty, RD, a New York City-based nutritionist. “But many of these strategies are quick-fix or restrictive approaches, so they don’t produce sustainable weight loss. When people create healthier eating and lifestyle habits, weight loss can be an achievable outcome.”

Surgery was the first step, but maintenance required a lifestyle change

“I started hearing about weight loss surgery,” Curtiss says. She met with a weight-loss doctor, who walked her through the steps she would need to take to succeed. She learned that the surgery could help, but she would need to make lifestyle changes to see lasting results. She decided to go ahead with gastric bypass surgery.

That was back in 2007. She says after surgery, she started losing weight right away. Now, her weight holds steady between 160 and 165 pounds. “That’s great for me and my body type. I don’t think I could be any smaller,” she says.

“I appreciate the mindset here. Some bodies are smaller and some bodies are larger and that’s totally normal and healthy,” Cassetty says. “When someone tries to achieve a body size that’s too small, it can lead to over-restriction and emotional distress, and that’s neither healthy nor sustainable.”

“I try to get on the scale every so often to make sure, maybe once every two weeks," says Curtiss. "I try not to let the numbers affect me mentally, so I don’t want to do it every day.”

Multiple studies show the scale can be a helpful tool. “But If the scale makes you nuts, don’t weigh yourself. There are other tools you can use,” Cassetty says.

The scale can give you a sense of your trends — if you notice your weight trending upward you can assess it without judgment. “Maybe you’ve been under a lot of stress and you aren’t cooking as much, or maybe you’ve been traveling a lot for work. How can you address this to take care of yourself in a self-loving and respectful way?” Cassetty says.