Sitting on a plane and not being able to buckle her seat belt -- that was the moment Joanna Pearson decided she would do whatever it took to lose weight.
"I had to ask the stewardess for an extender in front of everyone on the plane, I was horribly embarrassed and didn't want to put myself through that again," said Pearson, 32, who lives in Tempe, Arizona, and works as a public defender.
Joanna Pearson before her weight loss.
At her heaviest, Pearson was 410 pounds. But in January 2008, a couple of years after that moment on the airplane, she was determined to turn things. Pearson began taking walks, cutting out sodas and fast food and trying at-home workout programs. After losing 100 pounds that year, her confidence took off.
Pearson said she wanted to "ramp things up even more," so she found a personal trainer in 2009 and lost 75 more pounds in eight months. Within 2½ years, she lost a total of 200 pounds.
Pearson's personal training consisted of strength training, muscle confusion, cardio, boxing and outdoor exercises. "I maintained a healthy diet, limiting my carbs and increasing my protein and kept a strict exercise regimen," she said.
One of Pearson's biggest cheerleaders is her mother, Jane Pearson. She provided words of encouragement, prayer and athletic shoes in "every wild color" they could find. She gives her daughter one pair of athletic shoes for every weight loss milestone. Pearson has received 12 pairs so far.
Pearson's mom recalls the excitement they felt as they watched Pearson's jeans' size go down. "How wonderful that she didn't have to worry anymore about not being able to fit into an airplane seat, or having to use a seat belt extender, or be too heavy to ride on a roller coaster," Jane Pearson said.
College is where Pearson said she gained the most weight and felt like she didn't fit in.
"I was sad and depressed, issues with food were tied to my emotions," she said. "I didn't feel I was pretty enough to join a sorority, no other freshman girls looked like I did."
Pearson has deleted a lot of pictures from that time in her life because she does not identify with who she was then and feels like a different person now.
"I don't really remember who that 'Joanna' was. I changed so much since my weight loss, my personality is different. Now I'm more outgoing," she said.
But when Pearson does look at her "before" pictures, she is reminded of her progress.
"I feel proud because I know I've come so far and I've worked really hard," she said.
